Somehow I’ve managed to read three Robert A Heinlein books in the last year, for a new grand total of, um, three. Credit Random for being my personal library.

Sadly, it’s been a downward trend: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966) is a classic that’s truly earned that credit: it’s a brave narrative supporting strongly reasoned ideas – ones that could stand to be made fashionable once again in these turbulent times of ours. Next up was the short story collection, The Green Hills of Earth (1941–1949), a ‘Mistress prequel in both timelines, since it’s all about pre-revolution Luna. A nice selection of personal snapshots in RAH’s world of ideas and ideals, just nothing that added up to anything so moving as ‘Mistress.

Which brings us to The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985), a very late RAH work by any reckoning, since he passed on in 1988. ‘Cat turns out to be a sequel of sorts to ‘Mistress, since they romp through Free Luna, and the plot ends up having to do with rescuing/reassembling Mike, the sentient computer from ‘Mistress.

An aside – the cover blurbs on ‘Cat are telling, because they include positive comparisons to both Total Recall, the movie, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Douglass Adams works. A product of the times, perhaps, but ‘Cat is only tangentially similar to either of those works, so I interpret it as a whiff of publisher desperation that by 1985 either RAH had outlasted his welcome as a leading light of Science Fiction, or – perhaps more broadly and sadly – it was already the twilight afterglow for the entire genre, and poor RAH was just another of the last dinosaurs plodding stupidly about a changed world. C’est la guerre…

So there’s nothing particularly “wrong” with ‘Cat thats not in keeping with RAH’s overall style – cardboard narrative and sometimes equally boxy characters, used as tagalong witnesses to his world of ideas and attitudes. The problem is that it literally collapses under the weight of his collected multiverses – by the end of the novel, we have what is essentially a parade of his major characters from every timeline, era, etc., all mashing about together in grand style. It’s like bloody Elric at the End of Time, to quote Moorcock. Which is perhaps great, cumulative fun, if you’re an RAH “lifer”, but it certainly diminishes ‘Cat’s capacity to stand as a worthwhile read on its own. Having read just two previous RAH novels – and don’t forget that ‘Mistress is a major landmark – I still ended up feeling rather short of the break-even point for the time invested.

Also marking ‘Cat as a late work is RAH’s apparent weepy sentimentality coming through. This is apparent not only in his assembling of all his major characters for a grand soiree, but also in his ultimate point (spoiler?) that all reality is Myth-driven, the products of great authors and lesser imaginations, literally driving all creation with their stories. Well, OK, sure, why not, but it has a clumsy, tacked-on feel, not the stuff of wondrous revelation that you might expect. And if you think it though long and hard enough, such an idea seems to stand in direct opposition to the belief that There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If the Mythic Multiverse were true, then instead of having the Time Corps running about mucking up history-that-was and history-to-be, perhaps they’d be better off setting up a School for Young Writers! Thank you, RAH, for helping to undermine one of your most enduring principles.

An aside, part two: the only “multiverse” I could ever handle in large doses was (again!) Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius, and only because it’s presented as “multiverse light” – which is to say that Jerry and his friends show up and do their thing from story to story with absolutely no connection to past or future events. It’s more like random drug trips – the scenery may change, but the overall effect remains pretty well constant.

In summary, ‘Cat is probably an essential “tie up the loose ends” novel for any RAH fan, but it should not be the first novel of his you read, since it may likely also be your last.