This is one of that handful of books that I must reread now and again. The stories are old and dated in some aspects - what Golden Age SF is not? - but the ideas are addictive. Reading them again is like greeting an old friend. ( )

Indeholder "Lost Legacy", "Jerry was a man".

"Lost Legacy" handler om ???
"Jerry was a man" handler om ??? ( )

‘Lost legacy’ poses the question of what, exactly, would you do if you discovered the area of the brain that holds the key to all sorts of neat things like telepathy, telekinesis and many other powers beginning in ‘tele’ that would have got you burned as a witch if you had exhibited them a few hundred years ago?

Three scientists discover just what lobe does all the magic stuff and, some hard mental training later, one of them develops superpowers or, rather, just develops access to powers that everyone has and has had for a long time, but which just lie there untapped while folk use the rest of their brain in a very inefficient way to do things like decide what side order they are going to have with their fried chicken meal.

Slightly frustrating is that one never learns what form this mental training takes, the scientist involved takes a leap straight from mundane human to superhuman in the space of a sentence. I initially thought I had turned over two pages at once but I suspect that the training to free up the dark corners of the mind is not detailed because Heinlein doesn’t want a sackfull of letters from readers angrily complaining that they followed the technique in the story and concentrated until their noses bled, but still can’t levitate for squat.

The bad news is that the same powers that would have had the villagers fetching kindling a couple of centuries ago can also get you into big trouble today. People without those powers fear them, and some folk who already have those powers are pretty keen to keep it a dark secret so that they can continue to rule the world in their shadowy way.

Because rather than use their powers to, for instance, making a fortune at the gaming tables, the trio decide to try and better mankind. Mankind though, has other ideas and it’s not until they bump into a mysterious sage on a mysterious mountain that they are mysteriously drawn to that they realise they are actually part of a larger community of superhumans, who are in conflict with others who would use their powers to block the advancement of the rest of mankind, thus ensuring their own selfish pre-eminence. The scene is then set for a showdown.

The second story in the book is a short story rather than a novella and, of the two, is much the more thought-provoking. Dealing with the excesses, and the consequences both direct, indirect, intended and unintended of genetic engineering, it examines man’s attitude not just to animals and the world around him, but to one another.

The science of genetic engineering is explained in some detail, or at least in as much detail as a science fiction story needs without getting in the way of the plot or the tension. Once we get past the science we get into the morality of tampering with nature, and it’s then that things get tricky. The rich can get creatures made to order; be it flying horses or dwarf elephants, anything they desire, as long as they have the money the scientists can disregard the morality. At the same time the corporation that is churning out a beastiary for billionaires also breeds/makes neo-chimps, genetically advanced apes that, as a slave class with no rights, provide menial labour for their human masters until they come to the end of their useful, productive, life, at which point they are destroyed.

Visiting the gene-factory to buy a plaything for her spoiled husband, a rich heiress learns about what happens to the genetically modified chimps and saves one from destruction, then goes about proving that ‘Jerry’ is a man.

The matter is settled in court with, among other things, a Martian explaining what it is to be a ‘man’. This is more than about human rights, it’s about being recognised as a human in the first place to be able to access those rights. This corking court-room climax has just the right mix of pompous corporate villains, innocent victims and knight-errant roguish heroes that you are rooting for, with an ending that should, if you’re human, provoke a tear. ( )