The Number of the Beast (novel)
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The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980 (ISBN 0-44-913070-3).
The book is a series of diary entries by each of the four main characters, Captain Zebadiah John Carter, programmer Dejah Thoris Burroughs (Deety) and her math professor father Jacob Burroughs, and an off-campus socialite Hilda Corners. Zeb and Deety's names are overt homages to John Carter and Dejah Thoris, the main protagonists of the Barsoom or Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The odd foursome dash off in Zeb's sports car spaceship, outfitted with the professor's continua device, into various fictional universes. There is plenty of sex, rivalry, and even a trip to Oz. An attempt to visit Barsoom, curiously, takes the quartet to a different version of Mars, seemingly under the colonial rule of the British Empire. Afterwards they discover that they had in fact been to Barsoom, the "colonial Mars" being an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians.
In the novel, the biblical number of the beast turns out to be, not 666, but [ ^6 ], or 10314424798490535546171949056, which is the number of parallel universes accessible to the protagonists.
The novel lies somewhere between parody and homage in its deliberate use of the style of the 1930's pulp novels. Many of the plot lines and characters are derived directly from the pulps, as referenced by the first line of the novel:
"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter." --Deety
The Number of the Beast contains many in-jokes and references. For instance, the name of every villain is an anagram of a name or pen name of Robert or Virginia Heinlein. The book's quality is disputed. Some critics have very low opinions of it; other schools of thought (see [link] [link] for an example) hold that it is an extended demonstration of Heinlein's knowledge of writing using bad examples; and still others find it amusing and engaging.
In this book Heinlein introduced the concept called "pantheistic solipsism" or "world-as-myth" -- the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere even fictional worlds (Oz is one of the examples Heinlein uses) are real.
Near the end, this book is connected to Time Enough for Love, and through it to several others of Heinlein's later works.
Editions
- July 12, 1980, Ballantine Books, paperback, 511 pages, ISBN 0449900401
- December 12, 1980, Ballantine Books, paperback, ISBN 0449900193
- May 12, 1982, Fawcett, paperback, ISBN 0449144763
- September 12, 1986, Fawcett, paperback reissue edition, 512 pages, ISBN 0449130703
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