Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein
GoodReads meta-data is 243 pages, rated 3.90 by 20,380 litizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Zippy.
An actor is hired as a stand-in for an incapacitated politician who just has to make a public appearance. Actor is reluctant to get tangled up with this exercise but the money is good and the thespian challenge is irresistible, and then there is the woman. These are the typical ingredients for a Heinlein novel with some Sy Fy window dressing which is seldom integral to either plot or character. Nonetheless it is a diverting ride to be sure.
Once in-role our hero finds he cannot leave it. The principal he is doubling combines being hors de combat with so many admirable qualities that Actor stays in part. The end.
While Martians figure in the early going, they more or less disappear and with them much of the Sy Fy element about other lifeforms. Though there are some good scenes, as when Actor discovers that not everyone is fooled by his flawless impersonation. That was nicely judged.
There are also some fumbles. Much is made of dropping a candidate from a cabinet nomination and then that line disappears. Surely such a victim of trade-offs would have had to be compensated. There are a few other glitches like this, but overall I was pleasantly surprised at the presentation of the political process. Subtlety is not something I associated with Heinlein’s fiction, but it is manifest here, especially in the realisation that a political campaign can do some good and for it to do that a team effort is best.
Dotted throughout are alternative history tidbits that add spice to the narrative.
In my prejudice these day I usually associated Heinlein with Ayn Rand bellowing about rugged individualism while enjoying the benefits of a well-ordered community made possible by everyone else. What I expected to find was there, albeit in a minor register: namely, many blokes furiously engaged in displays of manhood, aka, pissing contests that fascinate so many chaps. However they neither dominated proceedings nor put me off the story line this time.
I was reminded of this title (which I had read when a high school boy) after I posted a review of Il general della Rovere, a film with Vittorio de Sica, where a lowlife impersonates a hero and comes to live up to that heroic standard. There are parallels in that summary but the telling by de Sica is compelling and I cannot say the same about Heinlein, but I did read it to the end, and that is not something I do not automatically any more.