One of the things I enjoy about Heinlein is that he likes to play with Big Ideas. While he did dip into the well of action and adventure, especially for his juvenile stories, he treated his readers like they were only slightly intellectually inferior to him, and so explored concepts that required a lot of heavy thinking. The need for war, the inevitability of messiahs, revolution, life, death, immortality - he's not afraid to shy away from some of the greatest philosophical topics that reside in the human heart, and this book is no exception.Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is a very old, very sick, very rich man. He built himself up from nothing and rose to financial prominence in what is a little more than a regular human lifetime. Smith had it all - a rich and exciting life, complete financial security, good friends and good memories in a world that had, frankly, gone to hell. He had very nearly everything a person would want to have.What he didn't have was time. He lived in daily pain, kept alive by only two things: an ever-increasing number of machines and a plan to release himself from the geriatric horror his life had become. He knew that this plan would probably fail. He knew that he was facing death no matter what happened. He knew that it was crazy, and not necessarily crazy enough to work. But it was all that stood between him and suicide.That plan was, in theory, very simple: transplant his healthy brain into the body of a healthy young person. By doing so, he would gain a whole extra lifetime to enjoy the fruits of his first lifetime's labor. Not being a monster, he was prepared to do this in a legal and ethical fashion. With his legal, medical, and judicial contacts, he made arrangements with a medical advocacy group to get the body of a healthy young person who died due to some massive brain trauma. And - and this is important - who consented to having their body used for medical experimentation. Everything would be above-board, legally sound and ethically certain. All Smith had to do was stay alive until a body became available.When it did, however, he was in for a double surprise. Not only was the healthy, youthful body that of a female, it was that of his healthy, youthful, beautiful secretary, Eunice Branca. Eunice had been murdered, but her body was in excellent condition. She had the right blood type, and had consented to have her body used for Smith's experiment. The one doctor in the world who could perform the surgery was brought in to perform it, and against all odds, it worked. Johann Sebastian Bach Smith was reborn as Joan Eunice Smith, and her new life began.But she was not alone.By some means, Eunice's mind survived to live with Joan, and tutor her in all the ways of being a woman. Joan dove happily into her new life, exploring her new femininity and sexuality as best she could.In that sense, this whole book is an exploration of sexual identity. Here we have a man who is now a woman, even though that was never his intention. He soon finds himself thinking like a woman, though, bringing up the question of whether gender is determined by a person's mind, or by the body it inhabits. If you put a male mind into a female body, with the vastly different hormones and sensory inputs, will that male mind start to act like a female? And even if it does, should it? Smith makes a decision to, with Eunice's help, be the best woman he can be, mostly because he feels that is what is expected of him. After a lifetime of conforming to male societal roles, Smith wholeheartedly embraces the female ones, up to and including seducing his best friend of many decades. Gender identity in this book is a tangled mess of biology and intention, and it looks at being female from a distinctly male point of view.Which brings me to my first problem with this book: the casual misogyny. I know it's a pretty loaded word to throw around, and it's not entirely accurate, but it was the one that kept coming to my mind. While Heinlein is certainly capable of creating strong and independent female characters, and emphasizes over and over again that both Eunice and Joan are actively choosing the lives they lead, those lives are almost entirely dependent on and revolve around men. One of Smith's first actions when he goes from Johann to Joan is to latch on to a man - her old friend Jake Saloman. She views her identity as a woman as incomplete without a man to base it on, and spends most of the book trying to figure out who she is in relation to men - Jake, her security guards, Eunice's widower, and more. She repeatedly mentions how helpless she is without a Big Strong Man in her life, and all of this culminates in what is possibly one of the most misogynist moments I have ever read in sci-fi: a spanking scene.And not a sexy one, either. In a moment of adolescent pique that Jake won't sleep with her when she wants him to, Joan throws a fit, disrupting their dinner plans. Jake proceeds to throw her over his knee and give her a spanking because, and I'm quoting here, "You were being difficult... and it is the only thing I know of which will do a woman any good when a man can't do for her what she needs." Joan accepts the spanking meekly, not only thanking Jake for his spanking, but also claiming that she had her first orgasm while he did it.Wow. That's nearly as bad as the other major female character, Winnie, who talks about a gang rape experience with what can almost be imagined as fondness.Oddly enough, this is not my biggest problem with the book. I mean, it was written in the late '60s, and it reflects the thinking of that era. For all his progressive beliefs, Heinlein was still a man of his time, and it really shows here. Legend [1] has it that he was really sick when he wrote this book, and that may have had something to do with the fact that no matter how many complex hot-button issues he touches (gender roles, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, overpopulation, government overreach), the fact remains that there is no story in this book.Let me explain. A story needs conflict. It needs not only a protagonist that is trying to achieve something, but obstacles that impede that achievement. There were so many potential goals and obstacles to be explored in this story - a man's brain in a woman's body - but Heinlein manages to artfully dodge all of them. The story of Smith's inner struggle to resolve the gender he grew up with with the gender he now possesses would have been fascinating. But it didn't happen. Smith pretty much accepts the change right away, with few if any reservations. Even so, he could have struggled with how to live as a woman – should he adopt the identity that a patriarchal society would confer upon him as a woman, or forge his own as a uniquely gendered person who has gone from the privileged to the unprivileged sex? Unfortunately, the conflict doesn't even occur to Joan. She decided to be the best woman she can be, constantly asking others what that entails, rather than asking herself.Or how about the concept of Identity itself? Smith is an old brain in a new body, so is he legally the same person he was before the surgery? That would be an amazing story as he tries to prove that Johann has become Joan, and that even though Eunice's body is still walking around, she's actually dead. But no - Smith has some powerful legal friends with ironclad arguments, and the legal proceedings are pretty much a foregone conclusion. Or how about rejection by society? Regular transgendered people have a hard enough time getting society to accept the modification of the body they were born with - what about when someone takes on an entirely new body entirely? Joan could have struggled to get her friends and family to accept who she has become, to stand before the world with her head held high. But no.... She has enough money that she doesn't really need society's approval, none of her friends have any trouble with what she's become, and even Eunice's widower has only a moment of uncontrollable emotion before accepting that his wife is dead, but still walking around. And he might get to sleep with her again.One last one - the soul. Joan hears Eunice's voice in her head, but it's unclear whether it is really Eunice or if it's just Joan's imagination. What's more, they never fight. They never have a serious disagreement and have to resolve their differences so that they can continue to occupy the same skull. Eunice and Joan live together like wisecracking sisters and never have to deal with the problem of living with someone you can't get rid of, even if you're not sure if they're real.In other words, there's no there there. It's a long, talky, philosophical exploration of some fascinating topics, but as a novel, it's incredibly dull. You keep waiting for the blow-up, for the accident, for the Big Problem that Joan and Jake have to struggle to overcome, and it never arrives. Everything works out either through money or force of will or Heinlein's trademark Sheer Damn Reasonableness. Between that and the constant thought of, "He did not just say that," I found this book rather stressful to plow through. It offers up a lot of big ideas to think on, raises some very important questions, and Heinlein's gift for dialogue makes some fun conversations, but I think I would have liked it more if it had been completely different.------------------------------------------------------"Sir, if you want to give me a fat lip, I'll hold still, smile happily, and take it. Oh, Jake darling, it's going to be such fun to be married to you!""I think so too, you dizzy bitch."- Joan and Jake, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein------------------------------------------------------[1] Wikipedia
I took me about a month to read this sluggish piece of pelican crap. Every day I’d pick it up, read about 5 pages, and immediately become so bored I actually started ‘cutting’. Yea, right. I may not have started outwardly displaying my inner pain by blading like a distraught high school dork destined to be the next trench-coat mafia moron, but anyone who liked this book probably should.Having read the lauded Heinlein classic Stranger in a Strange Land about a year ago, and not enjoying it, I really can’t comment on why the hell I’d think this largely ignored (and rightfully so) work might be some sort of improvement. But, the resale shop down the street has paperbacks for 50 cents, so, I guess that was the impetus for buying it.I got about 1 percent of that investment back, at least, I will.... should I ever be stranded on a frozen tundra and need to burn this for heat. It seems Heinlein is unable to write a book without having an integral character that's ancient, beyond-rich, seething with sarcasm, unspeakably clever, and possessing an unparalleled sexual appetite. This time, that character is the focus of the book, old-ass Johann Smith, entrepreneur/billionaire/life-supportee. In order to cheat death as he’s cheated the IRS, legal system, and the masses for years, he enlists a controversial Aussie doctor to perform a brain transplant into a fresh, young vessel for him, giving him another chance to do whatever the hell he wants. Alas, the transplant takes place, but his consciousness is unceremoniously dumped into the body of the ultimate male sexual fantasy; his former secretary, Eunice, the epitome of male desire and a genuinely decent person to boot. While trying to overcome the remorse and guilt that such a beautiful life was lost in order to extend his own wretched timeline, Eunice’s body actually retains her ‘essence’ and the two fuse into one in a very cumbersome and unreadable manner. And then they start fucking everyone. Seriously. Absolutely everyone. Nurses, doctors and orderlies (male, female, or transgendered) from the hospital where Johann was housed. Johann’s longest-tenured friend and lawyer, his entire security crew, and anyone else able to get their groove on joins in, including Eunice’s former husband and his new love interest.Is the book a tongue-in-cheek statement to how sexually-repressed American’s have become? Is the wanton promiscuity even remotely interesting? Is the cerebral debating between brain and host body ever close to redeeming over the course of 500 pages? Absolutely not. This book has threesomes, foursomes, and more-somes, but it completely lacks any redeeming substance. The same bullsh!t repeated incessantly about the divergent sexual mores and public misconceptions between Eunice’s day and some prehistoric epoch in the dawning Iron Age when Johann could still get it up.You’d expect that there would have been something of interest concerning the social impact of the transplant procedure, something involving anyone outside the microcosm of Smith’s immediate group of friends that might take place. Nada. If it doesn’t involve a sticky climax between awkward relations, it didn’t make the cut, and that’s the main reason this book doesn’t have anything to offer. Sure, Heinlein probably realizes that his focus in books is a bit too narrow, so he has little introductory recaps of the goings-on in the larger world before some chapters. This only exposes the reader to the realization of how large a gap this is, and detracts from the tale if anything.
What do You think about I Will Fear No Evil (1987)?
The Bad -- Sexism (Misogyny?): Reading Heinlein's books today, any of his books, it's hard not to wince at the things that just aren't acceptable by today's standards. His sexism is probably the most difficult, so reading a book where the main character, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith has his brain transplanted into the gorgeous and perfect Eunice Branca -- effectively becoming a woman -- is bound to be off-putting. And it is.The way that Heinlein saw women would make anyone taking a Women's Studies course angry, give a Professor of Women's Studies an aneurysm and make most of the rest of us cringe -- at least. Once Johann becomes Eunice, or Joanne Eunice as s/he has everyone call him/her, we enter Heinlein's vision of what it is to be a woman. His concepts of a woman's power and "utility" are inextricably bound to a woman's sexuality and ability to procreate. Through the lens of today it is undeniably sexist and would more than likely be considered a misogynist vision of femininity.Conflict: There isn't any. I suppose one could imagine that an ancient man becoming a young, beautiful girl is conflict enough, but it turns out that's not the case. Sure there were a few minor impediments to Joanne Eunice's easy life, which occurred every chapter or so (and more than a few social complications due to his/her surgery), but they were so mundane and handled so perfectly by Joanne Eunice as to be non-starters. No problems in the book, made for a big problem in readability. The Title: Kept waiting for the "evil" in the title that the characters wouldn't fear and it never came. One of Heinlein's worst titles. The Weird -- You might think that the idea of a gender reassignment brain transplant from the seventies would be the "weird," but that really wasn't all that weird after all. What was weird was this: The Juxtaposition: The bulk of I Will Fear No Evil takes place in the mind of Johann Smith, but along with Johann/Joanne, up in that grey matter, is Eunice Branca, so what we get is a constant back and forth between the two. A sort of half flirtation - half support group wherein the two voices navigate their world with one wanting to become the perfect woman and the other making sure he always gets it right so that they can cheer each other on and pat each other on their metaphorical backs. They never argue, so even the multiple voices fail to generate conflict. Joanne Eunice is all harmony. And when those two voices are eventually joined by a third voice and still nothing changes other than to add another harmonious voice to the mix, well, it is one of the weirdest bits of narrative I have ever read (and not terribly effective). The Good (or maybe just The Interesting)--A Reminder:: Our western view of sex and sexuality has shifted so much in the decades since I Will Fear No Evil was written that I think many of us who lived through those times forget what the attitudes were, and those who didn't live through those times find it difficult to understand just how different the attitudes were from what they now are. We take for granted today, for instance, that there are homophobes out there, and that there are people who are belligerent towards the transgendered, but we generally see them as kooks or bigots or flat out evil. Most of us are accepting (and increasingly so) of sexuality and gender fluidity and see that acceptance as a no brainer. We ask the question "Why wouldn't we be?" and expect that we all know the answer. As a bisexual man I am surely pleased with this cultural shift, but I have also been very sensitive to the situation over the years and often had it in the forefront of my mind when dealing with the world. Similarly and in the other direction, we forget that child molestation/paedophilia was seen differently too. Today we accept it as a horrible evil, but as recently as the Seventies and Eighties our societies saw it as the gateway to the far worse and more disgusting crimes of ... wait for it ... homosexuality and sex change operations. In the city I grew up in, everyone I knew from every community in the city had a child molester living somewhere in their suburb. Everyone knew his or her name, everyone lived calmly with the molester there, and everyone was complicit in sweeping the molestation under the rug. We were trained to steer clear of the molester and if we didn't, it wasn't really a big deal. That's the attitude I grew up with. It came from home, it came from school, it came from friends, it came from television. It came from everyone. We don't feel that way anymore, but we did, and not just the kooks and bigots or those who were flat-out evil.I Will Fear No Evil is a good reminder (or a primer), for anyone who needs one, of how society saw sexuality not so long ago. I am not entirely sure that this was anywhere in Heinlein's intentions, but there it is for all to see. His strange little novel of Joanne Eunice is a fascinating moment in sexual time, and it is worth a read just for that (of course, don't take Heinlein's sexual fantasies as part of that snapshot. Be careful not to confuse his extreme horniness and rejection of monogamy has part of the reminder, although ...).Credit to Heinlein: All the sexism (misogyny) aside, who the hell else would write about gender reassignment (Marge Piercy, but only much later) in the seventies, but even more, have all those around the reassigned accept it without even the slightest hint of unease. Every man and woman who comes in contact with Joanne Eunice is instantly at ease with the gender and sexuality of the situation. If they have any problems at all they are about greed or memory, not about gender or sexuality. If nothing else is impressive, this, at least, is.
—Brad
Bizarre. Very bizarre. One other reviewer said this is where he thought Heinlein started going off the tracks--well, if it isn't, it's dang close. The book drips sex, sex, sex, and more sex--and that's not necessarily the bizarre part. Now, I'm not adverse to sex in a novel (so long as it's written well and not gratuitous), it's part of the human condition and all, but this was ridiculous! And I'm used to old Heinlein's free love characters. But did he really think we're all like this? Of course the character is curious about sex from the female perspective and is eager to try it; I think most people would be in these circumstances. But from then on, every 3rd thought is about sex, whether for pleasure or using it to "bribe" others. Please, not everyone's minds work like that.And speaking of thoughts, his set-up for the internal chatting is very confusing--all those parentheses! Hard to keep tabs on who was talking. And then the end just came out of nowhere. Very unsatisfactory.Side note: in Time Enough for Love, Lazarus says he knew of a man who was transplanted into a female body and the shock (or something) killed him. While Heinlein certainly did self-reference himself, I'm not sure if this the case Dates might not be right and this is not the time line of Lazarus Long. But I'm wondering if that's not what got RAH thinking.
—Dawn
FYI: The title is taken from Psalm 23:4. Although the work probably deserves only a 3 or 4, I gave this 5 stars for sentimental reasons.I Will Fear No Evil was one of the first Robert A. Heinlein novels that I read as a young adult. I was forever "hooked." Continuing to read Heinlein's works, I soon realized it wasn't his best - possibly because he was quite ill while writing this book. What tantalized me most about the plot was the co-existence of the two personalities, of opposite sex, in the same body. Their communication with one another and shared responses piqued my imagination.
—Heather's Mum
