Job: A Comedy Of Justice, by Robert A Heinlein.

I can’t recall one book that has affected me so much, that it has changed my life. This book hasn't changed my point of view. but it affects me differently each time I read it. I have read it four times in 40 years and it’s like reading a new book.

It’s funny how age can change your point of view. Plus, my memory is so bad.

As a twenty something, rumbling along in the train as it transported me on my daily commute in and out of the beautiful harbour city of Sydney, to do my eight hours and then back home again, I would read. Between naps and longing gazes at the passing countryside, I would read. I never read a lot as a boy, Mad magazines aside. I thought myself literate enough to understand what I read and tended towards science fiction.

Frank Herbert, Issac Asimov, the incredible, untouchable Ray Bradbury, oh and Douglas Adams of course, and so many other names I can’t recall at this time. It was a long time ago. Special mention to Ursula K LeGuin, I reread her Earthsea series every couple of years. It didn’t change my life, but it made my life better for having read it.

Job: A Comedy Of Justice, which I had lost many years ago, was a difficult book to obtain. My daughter had to order it from America, and it is a first print. I don’t think it made it to a second edition because it hasn’t aged well. There is an amount of casual racism, maybe a little misogyny, and a definite lack of respect for religion. This last thing worries me the least.

As a child brought up in the Catholic world, the most common book to pass my eyes was the Bible. Not a riveting read, but I remembered some of the tales told. The adventures of pious people enduring horrendous trials to prove their love of God; it was a common theme. One of these was the book of Job.

Look, I’ll come clean now and say that I had to Google a summary about the bible character. As I said, it’s been a long time and my memory is dodgy at best.

The basics are this; a wealthy, prosperous, pious Job (an emphasis on the ‘O’), was put to task by Satan. He loses everything, including his family and health, to test his piety. He never wavers.

This book which was one of Heinlein’s last (he was quite prolific) has our ‘hero?’, Alex Hergensheimer, walking over hot coals in Tahiti, in a difficult to determine time, except that it was in the twentieth century. He makes it across and passes out. When he comes to, he is in a different ships cabin, on a different ship and his stewardess, Margarethe, is his mistress. A lovely Danish girl who is infatuated by him and though she calls him Alec Graham, trusts to follow him through each reality shift they encounter.

This is where his similarity to ‘Job’ ends. Alex Hergensheimer is not pious in the biblical sense; he’s just lazy and stubborn. He chose seminary school over engineering because he couldn’t do the math, not for any enlightenment and though he can quote chapter and verse effortlessly, he couldn’t command a congregation through a sermon.

Lack of commitment I say.

Ironically, he is put in charge of fund raising for his little church community in Kansas, and does so well, they give him a cruise holiday in the pacific; alone?

Job from the bible’s trust in the almighty comes from a deeper place and he is unshakeable in his beliefs. Alex Hergensheimer uses the bible as a work manual and ticks off boxes to stay on the path to heaven.

As each trial is put before him, he becomes convinced that it is the beginning of Armageddon. This puts his focus on making sure their souls are ready to be received in heaven, which is made difficult for Alex when Margarethe tells him that while she was brought up Christian, she has gone back to her traditional Viking beliefs and is convinced Loki is responsible for their woes. Ragnarök is nigh.

This is where you realise, she is the real Job, as she is unflinching in her beliefs. She makes the book worth finishing. I say this because by now Alex Hergensheimer is annoying. The lovely Margarethe, stoically follows Alex through each shift in reality without complaint. In her mind they are married and that is how they present themselves to others. Alex actually has a wife from his reality, who he can conveniently forget when it suits him; she hated him anyway. While his morals are tested on a daily basis and he regularly fails the test, Margarethe sticks to her guns and quietly guides him along through their troubles.

For all his stupidity and stubbornness, Alex knows Margarethe is the best thing to ever enter his life and makes every effort to ensure they are never separated; his only redeeming quality. There are many chapters of world hopping, where they lose their money, their food, their history and on more than one occasion their clothing, but never each other.

Towards the end of their adventure, they are picked up, naked, on the side of the road by Jerry, an amiable soul, who accepts their nakedness and unbelievable story, takes them home to his wife, who greets them naked, and they are welcomed into their futuristic home; this turns out to be an important friendship.

The couple stay a few days. Jerry and his family test his steadfastness, when they reveal beliefs other than Christianity (witchcraft), then set off again. For some reason Alex thinks the world hopping is circular and hopes by the time they reach Kansas all will be normal again. Their final days have them on the back of a horse-drawn cart and come across a revival meeting, being held in a large tent in a field in Kansas (they nearly made it home).

The inevitable occurs, and while the couple are knelt praying to be accepted into heaven, it all goes to shit. A tornado sweeps them into the sky and in the tumult, for the first time since Alex met Margarethe, they are separated. He still believed all would be well as everything he expected to happen, according to the scriptures, happened. The dead who were worthy were taken up and those left on Earth who were worthy at the end were also accepted into heaven.

Unfortunately, when he finally gets there, he finds heaven to be incredibly sterile, with millions of refugees trying to find their place, in a bureaucracy, run by disinterested, resentful angels. But even with his recent elevation to sainthood, no matter how hard he tried or which avenues of inquiry he pursued, he could not find Margarethe.

His fruitless search finally brings him before Saint Peter himself, who asks ‘The Spook’, to check the records, to no avail. In desperation he requests that he be tossed into the fiery pits of hell. So he was.

Time has no measure now that Earth is no more, so falling may have taken days or years. Eventually as he smells the brimstone and sees the fiery cauldron, he accepts his fate only to be plucked to safety and put up in a fancy hotel.

This is where we leave the book, because one of you might actually want to read this book and I have given away enough.

This Vocal challenge asked us to mention a book that changed our life, and it isn’t this book. Something that did change my outlook on life and my Catholic upbringing was Monty Python’s Life of Brian. This movie asked me to question a lifetime of indoctrination (all very dramatic, I know), but they did it with intelligence and humour, which will always get my attention. So, when this book came out in 1984, I was already ruined, and I picked up on the humour. I was 21 years old.

The second time I read it, nearly 40 years later, I was infuriated, not by any blasphemy, but by the main characters’ inability to look outside the box he was brought up in. He mistreated the woman he professed his undying love for, so she had to hide her true beliefs, because he stubbornly put his first. This responsibility falls on the writer of course.

Which brings me to the author, Robert Ansen Heinlein. I had read a few of his book through the years and enjoyed them; I mean he’s no Ray Bradbury, but if the characters are good and their interactions are realistic, then which planet or world or time the exist in is merely decoration. Science fiction without people is a robot instruction manual.

This book needs more wit and sarcasm to work. I think Heinlein was too old for this. It covers many eras from horse drawn to space-age, but everything felt like it was stuck in the 1950’s.

A series streaming now, is Good Omens, created from a book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. This is a brilliant example of clever writing. In essence it does the same thing as Heinlein, using biblical tales to weave a wonderful adventure through time. According to this story, an angel and demon a responsible for the continuation of human civilisation. It is funny and clever, everything you want in a story.

I have a bad habit of reading books after the movie comes out; The Lord of the Rings is a good example. I intend to do the same with Good Omens. I am sure it will be brilliant.

If you made it this far, thank you. I get a little carried away sometimes.