“If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.”
Double Star has all the makings of a classic Heinlein yarn: breathless plotting, a breezy style, savage wit, an intriguing leading man, a believable future culture, palatable politics. It’s somewhat light on storytelling, lacking in obstacles and setbacks, but the author is so adept at delivering his tale that it’s easy to cruise through to the short novel’s conclusion without realizing just how little has actually happened.
One of Heinlein’s many talents is his ability to conjure unique worlds and draw you into them. He doesn’t do this by showing off his zany creations and fancy inventions—that would undercut his aims toward verisimilitude and jaunty pacing. Instead, he transports the reader into his novel world by simply telling the story. You see, Heinlein’s characters live and breathe and die in this tech-advanced future where various planets have been colonized and interplanetary empires have sprung up. They’re intimately familiar with it and so to them there’s nothing strange about it. Thus we get offhand references to dropsickness, bounce tubes, Silicoflesh, and autosecretaties, none of which are explained to the reader. There are space yachts and injection guns, Martian political cults and cones of silence. But all of these details are conveyed to the reader casually, generating malleable mental images based on context and connotations.
It is a wise choice to avoid bogging down the pace with detailed explanations of these future technologies because they’re ultimately secondary to the engaging tale of Lawrence Smith, a washed up actor otherwise known as The Great Lorenzo. Formerly renowned for his skills as an entertainer and a mimic, Smith is down on his luck and boozing the last of his coin away in a dingy bar. Heinlein hits the ground running: it takes only half a page for our unreliable narrator to be approached by a suspect astronaut, and only one more for that stranger to offer him a high-paying mystery job. Within a chapter, he’s sliced up the dead body of a Martian—Heinlein’s Martians are squiggly aliens who stink and procreate via fission, not human immigrants from earth—and tacitly thrown in with the spaceman.
If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he’s a spaceman. It is a logical necessity. His profession makes him feel like boss of all creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants.
His job is to impersonate John Joseph Bonforte, a prominent politician who is part classical liberal, part civil rights activist. The two happen to look similar, hence why Lorenzo was chosen as a double when the leader of the Expansionist coalition was kidnapped. The only hitch is that Smith vehemently disagrees with the man’s politics, particularly his friendliness toward the Martians. Indeed, he must undergo emergency hypnosis to get over his repulsion when it is revealed to him that his first public appearance as Bonforte is at a Martian ceremony where he will be adopted into one of their clans.
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay—and claims a halo for his dishonesty.
However, as he wholeheartedly dedicates himself to what he considers the “perfect work of art”—the act of long term impersonation—he gradually begins thinking like Bonforte and reacting “naturally” to the situations he finds himself in. He even rewrites speeches penned by Bonforte’s closest collaborators—much to their chagrin—because he has internalized the man’s politics, mannerisms, and speech patterns. Perhaps most interesting is the way that Lorenzo, who narrates the story, doesn’t seem to realize that his own personality and politics are shifting the longer he stays in character. Initially a simulacrum, he eventually metamorphoses into Bonforte himself—a reality that is cemented when he wins the election and the genuine article drops dead from the harms suffered during his kidnapping. But Lorenzo never lets on that he is aware of the changes within himself, always relaying the story in an unwaveringly self-assured tone.
A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!
While Double Star excels as a character study, its story is mostly forgettable. Lorenzo studies archival footage, makes thorough use of the politician’s Farleyfiles, shakes hands, makes speeches. The drama is very low key and repetitive, stemming primarily from two sources: people growing suspicious of Lorenzo’s impersonation and the real Bonforte’s prolonged ailment. The best moments come when Heinlein knocks Lorenzo up against other characters that have some rough edges to them, such as the daring spaceman from the book’s first sentence, the scotch-drinking toy train fanatic who happens to be the earth’s monarch, Bonforte’s steely-eyed secretary, and the frail old man himself whose kidnapping kickstarted Lorenzo’s arc. But on the whole Lorenzo is an engaging protagonist stuck in a story with an engaging premise and a lackluster plot, spiced up with interesting asides, mild soap-box politics, and sharp wit.