Heinlein’s “Stealth” Black Character

Sneaking past fearful publishers

Robert A. Heinlein was America’s most influential science fiction writer.

A committed 1930s liberal and ardent New Dealer, Heinlein purposely populated his works with a diverse set of strong characters:

-- Jews (Morrie Abrams, Rocket Ship Galileo, 1947)

-- Asians (Lieutenant Wong, Space Cadet, 1948)

-- Muslims (Doctor Mahmoud, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961)

-- women (Podkayne Fries, Podkayne of Mars, 1962), and so on.

But fearful publishers shied away from black characters, worried that it would have an adverse effect on book sales. So Heinlein decided to create a “stealth” black main character, Rod Walker, in his 1955 novel, Tunnel in the Sky.

(Another giant of science fiction, Englishman Arthur C. Clarke, had already created the black character Jan Rodricks in his 1953 novel, Childhood’s End, but the British have always had fewer foam-at-the-mouth racists than the USA, probably because they never permitted slavery within the country (their colonies were a different matter altogether, of course.))

Heinlein’s trick worked. Although he sprinkled clues throughout the novel, hardly anyone twigged to it for decades. I certainly didn’t when I read it around 1959 or so, but I grew up in deeply segregated Florida, and didn’t even have a conversation with a black person until my junior year of college. (I’m not going to tell you what those clues are—you’ll have to read the book yourself.)

That Heinlein created Rod Walker as black was never in doubt; Heinlein scholar Robert James, Ph.D. says ”The evidence is slim but definite. First and foremost, outside of the text, there is a letter in which RAH firmly states that Rod is black… RAH often played games with the skin color of his characters, in what I see as a disarming tactic against racists who may come to identify with the hero, then realize later on that they have identified with somebody they supposedly hate.”

Today, publishers make sure that everyone knows that Rod is black, and the cover art shows it. It makes the publishers look “progressive.”