I grabbed an old copy of a Heinlein book I had never heard of from eBay for almost nothing. I figured since 2100 is just around the corner, though I'll likely not live to see it, it'd be fun to hear what a sci-fi author speculated about it back in the fifties. After having read it, I think he might be a hundred years off on his projected date, but the story certainly seems plausible - a bit frighteningly so.
"Revolt in 2100" is divided into three sections that are only tenuously related to one another. It's almost like three novellas in one book, really. That's not a criticism or an admonishment...just an observation. At a high level, the premise is that as humankind makes space travel more affordable and more practical, some parts of society, in this case the United States, may regress a bit and become isolationist, dogmatic, and outright suppress human liberties. In this case, it is by a religious icon who perverts the Bible and its teachings to be a seal of approval on his leadership...as if he were appointed by God Himself. It catches. The first of the three sections of this book deal with a revolution intending to overthrow this tyrannical rule.
Some of the measures employed by the tyrant are concerning in their realism. The author quips that words are magic...and if you know how to use them, they can be black magic. There is a whole science in the book of measuring words' impact on people based on the context, the people's backgrounds, and the characteristics of the word itself. This science is applied to create a propaganda machine that solidifies the tyrant's hold on power. Heinlein also notes that you can convince a thousand people of something by being selective about what you say and how you say it...making the target audience feel a certain way so that they respond consistent with your designs...while it is extremely difficult to convince even one person using strictly logic. I think that's true...
The revolution, characterized in the book as America's 'second revolution' is successful. However, it replaced the tyranny with a different albeit still-broken form of government....one that still suppressed liberties but just used different methods and different reasoning to do so. The tyranny was gone, but what it was replaced with wasn't much better. The second section of the book deals with a counter-revolution designed to reestablish democratic principles and to ensure personal liberty. The counterrevolutionaries were grouped by the government in an exiled location surrounded by a nearly impenetrable barrier called 'Coventry.' Which was funny to me because there's an apartment complex just down the road from me that shares that name. One of the new residents of Coventry learns of the counterrevolution and is concerned about the violence of their upcoming methods. He flees Coventry to try to warn the government that had banished him about the upcoming attack.
Coventry's attack was apparently largely successful in that it transformed the government into one more conducive to liberty and to the expansion of human knowledge and experience. It came with its own prices but seemed to be less egregious in nature than the original tyranny or the subsequent revolutionary government. Freedom is never free, though. The third and final section of the book follows a group of folks on a space travel mission. They were to land on a specific asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, modify it so it could be a space station, and then move it to orbit between Mars and Earth. The placement was critical so that it could be a touchpoint for other travelers...allowing them to stop for fuel and other resources, maintenance and repairs, or whatever else they may need while away from Earth. One of the crew members on the mission was basically a savant in mathematics. I was thrilled to read about him even though it's just involving math. But it's math! How fun. The Foundation trilogy is similarly rooted in math and statistics. It works because it's real.
I thoroughly enjoyed "Revolt in 2100' and am glad I read it. I think I'm going to take on some longer books this year, but we shall see. This one wasn't too long, but it gave me lots of food for thought, which is among the best things that a book can do.