Glory Road

infobox Book |
name = Glory Road
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First Edition of "Glory Road"
author = Robert A. Heinlein
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = G. P. Putnam's Sons
release_date = 1963
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Glory Road" is a fantasy novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" (July - September 1963) and published in hardcover later the same year. Heinlein himself reported that the book only took several weeks and was a lot of fun to write; some of his other works, such as "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress", required several years and were relatively difficult.

Plot summary

E.C. "Easy" Gordon, the protagonist, has been recently discharged from an unnamed war in Southeast Asia. He is pondering what to do with his future and considers spending a year traveling in France. He is presented with a dilemma: follow up on a possible winning entry in the Irish Sweepstakes or respond to a newspaper ad which asks "Are you a coward?". He settles on the latter discovering it has been placed by Star, a stunningly gorgeous woman he had previously met on L'Isle de Levant. Star informs him that he is the one to embark on a perilous quest to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix. When she asks what to call him, he tells her "Oh, Scar." She repeats this as "Oscar", and thus gives him his new name. Along with Rufo, her assistant, who appears to be a man in his fifties, they tread the "Glory Road" in swashbuckling style, slaying minotaurs, dragons, and other creatures.

Shortly before the final quest for the Egg itself, Oscar and Star get married. The team then proceeds to enter the tower in which the Egg has been hidden, navigating a maze of illusions and optical tricks. Oscar scouts ahead and finds himself crossing swords with the final guardian of the Egg, a fearsome foe known only as the "Never-Born". Oscar slays his opponent and the party escapes with the Egg, after which Rufo informs him that Star is actually the empress of many worlds -- and Rufo's grandmother.

The Egg is a cybernetic device that contains the knowledge and experiences of most of her predecessors. Despite her youthful appearance, she is the mother of dozens of children, and has undergone special medical treatments that extend her life much longer than usual. She has Oscar unknowingly receive the same treatments.

Initially, Oscar enjoys his newfound prestige and luxurious life as the husband of the empress of worlds across the Twenty Dimensions. However, as time goes on, he grows bored and feels out of place and useless. When he demands Star's professional judgment, she tells him that he must leave; her world has no place or need for a hero of his stature. It will be decades before she can complete the transfer of the knowledge held in the Egg, so he must go alone. He returns to Earth, but has difficulty readjusting to his own world, despite having brought great wealth along with him. The story ends as he contacts Rufo to set up another trip on the Glory Road, which is, by this point, revealed as an allegory for Life's Adventure.

Genre and Setting

Although the majority of Heinlein's work is generally classified as hard science fiction, Glory Road is a combination of fantasy and science fiction elements. This fact does not prevent Heinlein however, from infusing his story with the usual level of technical detail. For example, in one chapter the art of fencing is thoroughly described. (Heinlein had been a member of the fencing team at Annapolis [http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/history/annapolis.html] ). The novel is also notable for its detailed characterization and psychological examination unusual for such a lighthearted novel.

Heinlein claimed to be inspired by the King Arthur stories of past generations such as T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" or Hal Foster's "Prince Valiant". While their influences are apparent, many of the book's themes such as amoralistic heroes and focus on immediate action are highly reminiscent of Sword and Sorcery fiction. The novel also shares many similarities with planetary romances of E. R. Eddison.

Heinlein deliberately doesn't name the war Oscar Gordon was in. It is referred to as a war in Southeast Asia, giving some the impression it referred to the Korean War. However, on the first page, Oscar says "a background of beeping sputniks", which means it can only be 1957 or later, too late for the Korean War, which ended in 1953. Since the book was published in 1963, the conflict can only be the Vietnam War before it was called that, when it was still sometimes referred to as a "police action", or possibly one of a hypothesized sequence of generic SE Asian wars. Gordon actually says that they were "military advisers" in his war and that it wasn't even a "police action". Also, Oscar recounts at one point that he was living with his mother — and therefore presumably of high school age or younger — during the Korean War, a point reinforced on the second page when he says "write us all off as "juvenile delinquents", a term rampant in the 1950s. On the first page, he says that it was an election year, and he "couldn't figure out which party to vote against", implying that it was a Presidential election year, i.e. 1960 or 1964 or possibly later. His father was in the Korean War.

Publishing History

*1963, G. P. Putnam's Sons, hardcover
*January 1976, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-02834-8
*January 1976, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03134-9
*November 1977, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03783-5
*October 1979, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04349-5
*April 1982, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04865-9
*May 1983, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-06438-7
*February 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-07311-4
*December 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-08156-7
*August 1985, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-08898-7
*August 1986, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-09666-1
*August 1, 1991, Ace Books, paperback, ISBN 0-441-29401-4
*May 1, 1993, Baen, hardcover, 304 pages, ISBN 0-671-72167-4
*January 1, 1996, Baen, paperback, 304 pages, ISBN 0-671-87704-6
*October 1, 1999, Sagebrush, library binding, ISBN 0-7857-1328-X
*October 1, 2004, Tor Books, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 0-7653-1221-2