{"id":4700,"date":"2022-07-05T15:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4700"},"modified":"2022-07-05T15:00:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:00:47","slug":"jerry-is-a-man-by-robert-a-heinlein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4700","title":{"rendered":"Jerry is a Man by Robert A. Heinlein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jerry is a Man<\/em><\/strong> by Robert A. Heinlein (Thrilling Wonder Stories<\/em>, October 1947) starts with a wealthy businessman called Bronson Van Vogel deciding that he needs to one-up an acquaintance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. and Mrs. Bronson van Vogel did not have social reform in mind when they went to the Phoenix Breeding Ranch; Mr. van Vogel simply wanted to buy a Pegasus.
He had mentioned it at breakfast.
\u201cAre you tied up this morning, my dear?\u201d
\u201cNot especially. Why?\u201d
\u201cI\u2019d like to run out to Arizona and order a Pegasus designed.\u201d
\u201cA Pegasus? A flying horse? Why, my sweet?\u201d
He grinned. \u201cJust for fun. Pudgy Hartmann was around the club yesterday with a six-legged dachshund\u2014must have been over a yard long. It was clever, but he swanked so much I want to give him something to stare at. Imagine, Martha\u2014me landing on the Club \u2019copter platform on a winged horse. That\u2019ll snap his eyes back!\u201d
She turned her eyes from the Jersey shore to look indulgently at her husband. She was not fooled; this would be expensive. But Brownie was such a dear.\u00a0 pp. 46-47<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The next part of the story takes place at the ranch, where the couple see a variety of bio-engineered animals. However, after a long lecture from one of the company\u2019s scientists about how a flying horse is an impossibility without massively changing its shape and metabolism, Van Vogel settles for one something that will look like a Pegasus, but will not fly (although this is only settled on after the scientist consults with a Martian alien called B\u2019Na Kreeth). Meantime, Van Vogel\u2019s wife Martha buys Napoleon, a midget elephant that can write with its trunk. Then, as the couple leave the complex, they pass through the breeding laboratories that produces the \u201capes\u201d, anthropoid workers that are used for labouring.
Towards the end of their visit the couple pass an enclosure of old apes, and some of them crowd the wire and beg for cigarettes. The supervisor apologises, but Martha goes over to one of the apes and gives it a cigarette anyway. The ape thanks her and tells her it is called Jerry. Then, when Martha asks it why he looks sad, Jerry replies that it has no work, and therefore can\u2019t get any cigarettes. Subsequently, Martha learns that the apes in this enclosure are either old, senile, or have medical conditions (Jerry has cataracts) and, when she asks the manager why other work can\u2019t be found for them, her husband, irritated by her concern, tells her that old apes don\u2019t retire\u2014they are liquidated and then used as dog food.
At this point the story pivots in a couple of ways. First, the focus of the story completely switches from Van Vogel to Martha and, second, we find out that (as hinted at the end of the quoted passage above) she is the one with the money. Further to this latter fact, when the manager of the facility doesn\u2019t agree to her request to give her Jerry and to stop the killings, she calls her business managers and begins a hostile takeover of the company.
Martha\u2019s attempt to buy the breeding ranch eventually proves abortive (by making the call in front of the manager she has tipped her hand and others have bought up stock) and Martha ends up having to employee a \u201cShyster\u201d called McCoy. He decides, after seeing Jerry sing (and lie to Napoleon), that their best bet is for Jerry to bring a lawsuit against Workers Inc. (During all this, Martha also discovers that her husband is working against her, and unceremoniously dumps him.)
The final part of the story (spoiler) sees Jerry in court. At the end of the trial he is declared a man because (among other reasons) the Martian who appeared earlier in the story is also considered a man due to an Earth-Mars treaty. The story concludes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are exploring the meaning of this strange thing called \u2018manhood.\u2019 We have seen that it is not a matter of shape, nor race, nor planet of birth, nor of acuteness of mind. Truly, it cannot be defined, yet it may be experienced. It can reach from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit.\u201d He turned to Jerry. \u201cJerry\u2014will you sing your new song for the judge?\u201d
\u201cSure [Mike].\u201d Jerry looked uneasily up at the whirring cameras, the mikes, and the
ikes, then cleared his throat:
\u201cWay down upon de Suwannee Ribber Far, far away; Dere\u2019s where my heart is turning ebber\u2014\u201d
<\/em>The applause scared him out of his wits; the banging of the gavel frightened him still
more\u2014but it mattered not; the issue was no longer in doubt. Jerry was a man.\u00a0 p. 60<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is an entertaining piece, if not the most convincing one, this latter perhaps partly caused by its kitchen sink quality (apart from uplifted animals used in a labour economy, we also have Martians, and some sort of dodgy legal system that requires the use of \u201cShysters\u201d, etc.), and partly due to its rationale for Jerry\u2019s humanity (he can sing, lie, and appears less monstrous than the Martian who testifies).
I\u2019m also not sure what to make of Jerry\u2019s song at the end of the story: I assume this, and the fact that Jerry calls everyone \u201cBoss\u201d, is a reference to pre-Civil War slaves and their lack of civil liberties\u2014or was Heinlein thinking about the situation of minorities at the time he wrote the piece?
Finally, I note that this story has a powerful and rich female character at its centre, which is unusual for SF of this period (and I suppose that the reason that Heinlein started with the husband as the main character and then switched was to wrong-foot his readers).
*** (Good). 9,150 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry is a Man by Robert A. Heinlein (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1947) starts with a wealthy businessman called Bronson Van Vogel deciding that he needs to one-up an acquaintance: Mr. and Mrs. Bronson van Vogel did not have social reform in mind when they went to the Phoenix Breeding Ranch; Mr. van Vogel simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1125],"tags":[260,24,851,1129,7,1127,585,1128],"class_list":["post-4700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robert-a-heinlein","tag-260","tag-3-2","tag-bioengineering","tag-civil-liberties","tag-novelette","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-thrilling-wonder-stories","tag-uplifted-animals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4700"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4721,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions\/4721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}