Double Star

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This page is about a novel by Robert Heinlein. For other uses, see double star (disambiguation).

Image:Doublestardckwb.jpgDouble Star is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It was published in 1956 and received a Hugo Award the same year (for Best Novel).

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The plot centers on a down-and-out actor. A brilliant mimic and pantomimist, Lawrence Smythe ("The Great Lorenzo") might have been another Charlie Chaplin had not his poisonous self-centeredness kept him socially isolated. Reduced to sleeping in a coin-operated cubicle, he is down to his last coin when a spaceman hires him to double for a public figure. It is only when he is reviewing the tapes for his impersonation that he realizes how deeply he was deceived.

Lorenzo grows tremendously as a person during the story, for the person he is doubling for is Joseph Bonforte, literally a "good and strong" political leader (who is similar in personality and leadership style to Franklin D. Roosevelt). When the role he assumes becomes extended due to the incapacity of Bonforte (who had been kidnapped and drugged into insensibility by political opponents), Smythe takes on more and more of Bonforte's persona. When Bonforte dies of the aftereffects of the drug overdose, Smythe realizes he has little choice but to assume the role for life. In a retrospective conclusion, twenty-five years later, we learn that he has been generally successful, and that he has carried forward Bonforte's ideals to the best of his ability. Penny (Bonforte's adoring secretary; now his wife) says, "I never loved anyone else." Smythe has transformed from self-centeredness to nobility and almost literal self-sacrifice.

The central political issue in the book's background is the granting of the vote to Martians in the human-dominated Solar System - a central issue in Earth's politics. Lorenzo shares in the anti-Martian prejudice prevalent among large parts of Earth's population, yet he is called upon to assume the persona of the main liberal opposition leader and conduct the struggle for Martian enfranchisement - which he does successfully. At the end of the book his former life, including the prejudice he used to have, seem like something which happened to somebody else.

Publication of the book coincided with the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the US South.

This story, like many other Heinlein stories, inspired later works. In this case, the plot of this book (along with similar works such as Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper and Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda) inspired the 1993 film Dave.

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Monarchy

A curious aspect of the book is that the prevailing political system of the time is a constitutional monarchy, with the House of Orange, royal family of the Netherlands, elevated to the role of Emperors of the entire Solar System and having a palace on the Moon.

This detail is not really needed for the story line, and it does not really make a big difference in the reality of the book itself (the Emperor is an enlightened person, he reigns but does not rule, and the real power is in the hands of a democratically-elected Prime Minister).

Presumably, this is an example of Heinlein's love of startling his readers with provocative ideas which were not necessarily his own considered opinion - in this case, facing American readers with the possibility that their country may once again be under a monarch (and that it would, in fact, not be so terrible).

The idea came up briefly in other Heinlein books. In Job: a Comedy of Justice, one of the many alternative realities through which the hero wanders is a history where the US has a monarch (called "Hereditary President"). And in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress one of the characters suggests that the Moon colonists set up a monarchy once they get free of Earth rule.

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Trivia

Double Star expands on an earlier description of the waterbed in Beyond This Horizon. Heinlein's detailed descriptions made it impossible for the waterbed to be patented later, when waterbeds actually began to be manufactured.
The cover illustration for the 1970s UK edition of Double Star (artist: Anthony Roberts) was the subject of an unlikely controversy, when it was used as the basis of an entry for the 2000 Turner Prize for modern art. The artist in question, Glenn Brown, was accused by some people of plagiarism.

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