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interpretation of evolution. Heinlein's fictional utopia exhibits the author's vision of such a societybut it also includes his fantasy of transcending the biological limitations of evolutionary development as we know it by endowing the best specimens of the human race with telepathic powers and the certainty of reincarnation. The soul of Carvala, an aged female member of the Board of Policy, does not die with her body, but turns up in Felix's newborn daughter, Justina. This double fantasy, survival of the fittest humans coupled with the award to that elite group of telepathy and immortality, is a common one in Heinlein's fiction. Even in fictions where such transcendence is not provided, the happy endings usually affirm that the hero and the elite will be able to cope successfully with their problems.
In other early fictions Heinlein also portrays optimistically political systems which reconcile the need for social order with what he sees as the optimum condition for evolutionary advancement: maximum personal freedom and competition for the individual. In some cases, such as The Day After Tomorrow and "'If This Goes On-'" elite revolutionary groups are depicted successfully overturning oppressive authoritarian regimes in order to reestablish the original political freedoms of the vanquished United States.
In The Day After Tomorrow (serialized 1941, published as a book 1949, originally titled Sixth Column) the United States has been conquered by the PanAsian hordes. A small band, or "sixth column," of patriots routs the yellow peril with racial rayguns which are able to " 'knock over all the Asiatics in a group and not touch the white men.'" People of other colors do not figure in this novelAmerica is made safe for the return of the white man's government. Heinlein's hero, Whitey Ardmore, plans that after the defeat of the invaders he will " 'locate all the old officials left alive and get them back on the job to arrange for a national election.'" Except for stopping the plot of a crazed American scientist who wants to establish a dictatorship, Ardmore shows no further concern for postwar politics. But he does make clear that the United States' original error consisted in not heeding a biological/political law: '''We got into this jam by thinking we could settle things once and for always . . .. Life is a dynamic process and can't be made static.' "
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Philip E. Smith II, "The Evolution of Politics and the Politics of Evolution: Social Darwinism in Heinlein's Fiction," Robert A. Heinlein, ed. Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg (New York: Taplinger, 1978), pp. 14142

 
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