Waldo
Encyclopedia
Waldo is a short story
by Robert A. Heinlein
originally published in Astounding Magazine in August 1942 under the pseudonym
Anson MacDonald. It is available in the book Waldo & Magic, Inc.
, as well as other collections. This story is not related to the story "Magic, Inc.
" other than both stories being about magic in one form or another.
The essence of the story is the journey of a mechanical genius from his self-imposed exile from the rest of humanity to a more normal life, conquering the disease myasthenia gravis
as well as his own contempt for humans in general. The key to this is that magic is loose in the world, but in a logical and scientific way.
Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones was born a weakling, unable even to lift his head up to drink or to hold a spoon. Far from destroying him, this channeled his intellect, and his family's money, into the development of the device patented as "Waldo F. Jones' Synchronous Reduplicating Pantograph". Wearing a glove and harness, Waldo could control a much more powerful mechanical hand simply by moving his hand and fingers. This and other technologies he develops make him a rich man, rich enough to build a home in space.
In the story, these devices became popularly known as "waldoes". In reference to this story, the real-life remote manipulator
s that were later developed also came to be called waldoes.
Waldo's personality can best be described as arrogance combined with misanthropy
. He does not think of himself as crippled. In his mind he is superior to all other humans because of his weakness. He reasons that if a chimpanzee
is ten times as strong as a man, and a man is ten times as strong as Waldo, then Waldo is as far above men as men are above chimpanzees. He calls the rest of humanity "smooth apes". His home's location, high above the Earth, is symbolic of his relation to them.
The scene changes to James Stevens, Chief Engineer of North American Power-Air, or NAPA. Stevens is desperate to discover what is causing vehicles driven by broadcast power to cease functioning without reason. Society has harnessed cheap atomic power, broadcast by NAPA, to run homes, factories, ground vehicles, and even personal aircraft which can travel into space. If the failures continue, not only will he be out of a job but the entire power system of the country could collapse.
The heart of the technology is the "deKalb receptor", which picks up the power beam and feeds it to the rest of the system. The deKalbs are failing, and no-one, not even Dr. Rambeau of the Research department, can identify the cause. In desperation, Stevens approaches Doc Grimes, the Farthingwaite-Jones family physician who has known Waldo since birth, to try to persuade Waldo to help. Waldo has a grudge against NAPA after losing a legal battle with them some years before. Grimes is Waldo's only friend, or as Grimes puts it, the only person who dares to be rude to him.
Waldo lives in a satellite in high orbit, where the lack of gravity allows him to move around despite his weakness. He makes his living as a consulting engineer, with a specialty in fine motor skills. He is training a machinist using remote controlled waldoes when Grimes and Stevens arrive. Waldo introduces Stevens to his home, and his pets, both adapted to free fall. Baldur the dog is a large mastiff
raised from puppyhood in orbit, while the singing bird Ariel, hatched in space, has learned to fly in a completely new way.
The atmosphere is cordial, but once Grimes reveals Stevens' purpose, Waldo turns hostile. Nothing, not even the collapse of Earth society, would persuade him to help NAPA. Stevens leaves, but Grimes has a few words with Waldo, pointing out where his food comes from and so forth. Waldo reluctantly takes the case, but Grimes insists on one more condition: Waldo must figure out what effect broadcast power has on humans. Grimes is seeing a slow weakening of the human physique, and he blames the radiant power industry.
Stevens returns to Earth, to find that one of his engineers who had experienced a power failure in his personal craft has returned. He tells Stevens that he fixed the deKalbs. Stevens is doubtful, since the devices often start working as mysteriously as they stop. The engineer, McLeod, presses the issue. He was on his way to look at a crashed aircar, only to have his own vehicle break down in Pennsylvania Dutch
country, where he grew up. Visiting an old hex doctor
, known as Gramps Schneider, McLeod lets him look at the deKalbs. Schneider announces that "now the fingers will make", meaning the antennas on the deKalbs will work. McLeod finds to his surprise that the deKalbs are indeed functional. However he has saved a surprise for Stevens. In operation, the antennas now flex and wiggle like fingers reaching for something.
Waldo, meanwhile, is working on the problem. Having satisfied himself that the deKalbs really are having basic problems, he also realizes that Grimes is right. Then he gets a call from Dr. Rambeau, who seems to have come unhinged. Having seen the wiggling deKalbs, he announces that he knows what is happening. "Magic is loose in the world!" he tells Waldo. He shows Waldo some tricks he can do now that he understands magic. He sticks a penknife through his hand and withdraws it without any bleeding, which Waldo finds unimpressive. "Hysterical vascular control, a perfect clinical case," he thinks. Then Rambeau places the knife on the palm of his hand and turns the hand palm down, the knife staying in place.
To Waldo, with his firm footing in the physical sciences, this is either a trick or something truly impossible. He calls Stevens to have Rambeau brought to him, but Stevens reports that Rambeau somehow escaped from his restraints without actually unfastening them. Not only that, he has made another set of deKalbs behave as strangely as McLeod's. Waldo is his usual self at first, calling Stevens incompetent, but then he seems to mellow. He thanks Stevens instead, and asks to have Rambeau's notes and equipment shipped up to him.
Seeing the eccentric deKalbs, Waldo realizes that he must learn what happened to them. Schneider will not leave his home, so Waldo has to go back to Earth, an experience he dreads. Shipped down in a medical craft, with Grimes in attendance, he lies in his waterbed
while Schneider examines him. Schneider thinks he should get up and walk, but Waldo protests he cannot. Schneider tells him he must "reach out for the power". According to Schneider, the "Other World is close by and full of power", waiting only for someone to grab it. In Schneider's hands, Waldo does indeed experience a sense of well-being, and is able to lift up a coffee cup one-handed for the first time in his life.
Schneider explains an old philosophy, how things can both be true and not true, especially that something which can be true for this world might not be for the Other World. Since our minds sit in the Other World, this is important. McLeod, according to Schneider, was "tired and fretful", and found one of the "bad truths", causing the deKalbs to fail. Schneider simply looked for the other truth, and the deKalbs worked again.
At first, returning to his home, Waldo thinks the journey wasted. Not really expecting anything, he tries Schneider's methods on a failed deKalb. To his astonishment, they begin to work in just the same fashion as McLeod's. At this point Stevens calls him to say that things are getting much worse. Waldo, thrown off balance by the "impossible" thing he has just seen, decides to twit Stevens with Rambeau's words: "Magic is loose in the world!" Having seen Waldo's sudden change of heart when Rambeau vanished, Stevens is now convinced that Waldo has come unglued as well—an unnerving prospect, if Waldo is the only one who can fix the problem.
Waldo realizes that Stevens' and Grimes' problems are related. Radiant power is affecting the human nervous system. People feel weak, rundown, fretful, and somehow transfer their malaise to the deKalbs. He also realizes something that Stevens has not noticed. The repaired deKalbs work without broadcast power! Apparently they draw energy from Schneider's "Other World".
Waldo uses this to effect his revenge. Summoning NAPA's representatives to his home, he demonstrates that he can fix deKalbs and can train others to fix them. The repairs are 100% reliable, he asserts. Having received their formal acknowledgment that he has fulfilled his contract, he unveils the "Jones-Schneider deKalb", a Rube Goldberg
contraption which appears to draw power from nowhere. He tells them that with this he can put NAPA out of business. Of course, NAPA offers a settlement from which Waldo profits hugely, even though the new deKalb is a repaired one with a lot of distracting technology attached.
Having triumphed, Waldo must satisfy himself that he is right. The "Other World" is just a space-time continuum, he thinks, possibly with a different value for the speed of light. It could be right next to our continuum, separated by an infinitesimal amount. If, as Schneider asserts, the mind sits in the Other World, that would explain many things.
Eventually Waldo realizes that he himself can draw strength from the Other World. At first he fails, but after a dream in which Rambeau pops in and out of the Other World to threaten him, he finds that he can indeed be strong. Tricking Grimes and Stevens into taking him to Earth again, he walks out of the craft, almost causing Grimes to have a heart attack.
As he prepares to lead a life on Earth, he has to deal with the fallout from his previous manners. Stevens tells Waldo that, had he not been crippled, some of the things he used to say would have gotten him into a fight. Thinking Stevens means that he should fight now, Waldo knocks him out. Once he recovers, Stevens explains that he no longer feels that way. In fact, he thinks Waldo would be a good friend once he learns some manners.
Returning to the dancer, who is of course Waldo, we see him depart the dressing room with great bonhomie. His principal assistant is the former Chairman of the Board at North American Power-Air.
praised "Waldo" for reflecting Heinlein's typical virtues: "his prodigality of invention, his shrewd grasp of human nature and his versatile knowledge of law, politics, business and science." However, he noted that although the story was "fast-moving," it "peter[ed] out at the end instead of rising to a climax."
There are three main factors involved in Heinlein's description of the tools:
on the wall of Schneider's house. The slogan on the button is "Free Silver
", a reference to the politics of the late 1800s in the USA. Waldo thinks, "Schneider must be - old!"
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
originally published in Astounding Magazine in August 1942 under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Anson MacDonald. It is available in the book Waldo & Magic, Inc.
Waldo & Magic, Inc.
Waldo & Magic, Inc. is a book containing those two novellas, one science fiction, one fantasy, by Robert A. Heinlein. It was published in 1950.Contents:*"Waldo"...
, as well as other collections. This story is not related to the story "Magic, Inc.
Magic, Inc.
Magic, Inc. is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein. It was originally published in Unknown Fantasy Fiction, for September 1940 under the title "The Devil Makes the Law"....
" other than both stories being about magic in one form or another.
The essence of the story is the journey of a mechanical genius from his self-imposed exile from the rest of humanity to a more normal life, conquering the disease myasthenia gravis
Myasthenia gravis
Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune neuromuscular disease leading to fluctuating muscle weakness and fatiguability...
as well as his own contempt for humans in general. The key to this is that magic is loose in the world, but in a logical and scientific way.
Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones was born a weakling, unable even to lift his head up to drink or to hold a spoon. Far from destroying him, this channeled his intellect, and his family's money, into the development of the device patented as "Waldo F. Jones' Synchronous Reduplicating Pantograph". Wearing a glove and harness, Waldo could control a much more powerful mechanical hand simply by moving his hand and fingers. This and other technologies he develops make him a rich man, rich enough to build a home in space.
In the story, these devices became popularly known as "waldoes". In reference to this story, the real-life remote manipulator
Remote manipulator
A remote manipulator, also known as a telefactor, telemanipulator, or waldo , is a device which, through electronic, hydraulic, or mechanical linkages, allows a hand-like mechanism to be controlled by a human operator...
s that were later developed also came to be called waldoes.
Waldo's personality can best be described as arrogance combined with misanthropy
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...
. He does not think of himself as crippled. In his mind he is superior to all other humans because of his weakness. He reasons that if a chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
is ten times as strong as a man, and a man is ten times as strong as Waldo, then Waldo is as far above men as men are above chimpanzees. He calls the rest of humanity "smooth apes". His home's location, high above the Earth, is symbolic of his relation to them.
Plot summary
As the story opens, a dancer is performing feats of astonishing virtuosity on stage. Afterward, in the dressing room, while preparing to depart for his other job as a neurosurgeon, Waldo reminisces to a reporter about what made him take up dancing. The rest of the story is told as a flashback.The scene changes to James Stevens, Chief Engineer of North American Power-Air, or NAPA. Stevens is desperate to discover what is causing vehicles driven by broadcast power to cease functioning without reason. Society has harnessed cheap atomic power, broadcast by NAPA, to run homes, factories, ground vehicles, and even personal aircraft which can travel into space. If the failures continue, not only will he be out of a job but the entire power system of the country could collapse.
The heart of the technology is the "deKalb receptor", which picks up the power beam and feeds it to the rest of the system. The deKalbs are failing, and no-one, not even Dr. Rambeau of the Research department, can identify the cause. In desperation, Stevens approaches Doc Grimes, the Farthingwaite-Jones family physician who has known Waldo since birth, to try to persuade Waldo to help. Waldo has a grudge against NAPA after losing a legal battle with them some years before. Grimes is Waldo's only friend, or as Grimes puts it, the only person who dares to be rude to him.
Waldo lives in a satellite in high orbit, where the lack of gravity allows him to move around despite his weakness. He makes his living as a consulting engineer, with a specialty in fine motor skills. He is training a machinist using remote controlled waldoes when Grimes and Stevens arrive. Waldo introduces Stevens to his home, and his pets, both adapted to free fall. Baldur the dog is a large mastiff
English Mastiff
The English Mastiff, referred to by virtually all Kennel Clubs simply as the Mastiff, is a breed of large dog perhaps descended from the ancient Alaunt through the Pugnaces Britanniae. Distinguishable by enormous size, massive head, and a limited range of colors, but always displaying a black mask,...
raised from puppyhood in orbit, while the singing bird Ariel, hatched in space, has learned to fly in a completely new way.
The atmosphere is cordial, but once Grimes reveals Stevens' purpose, Waldo turns hostile. Nothing, not even the collapse of Earth society, would persuade him to help NAPA. Stevens leaves, but Grimes has a few words with Waldo, pointing out where his food comes from and so forth. Waldo reluctantly takes the case, but Grimes insists on one more condition: Waldo must figure out what effect broadcast power has on humans. Grimes is seeing a slow weakening of the human physique, and he blames the radiant power industry.
Stevens returns to Earth, to find that one of his engineers who had experienced a power failure in his personal craft has returned. He tells Stevens that he fixed the deKalbs. Stevens is doubtful, since the devices often start working as mysteriously as they stop. The engineer, McLeod, presses the issue. He was on his way to look at a crashed aircar, only to have his own vehicle break down in Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch refers to immigrants and their descendants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries...
country, where he grew up. Visiting an old hex doctor
Folk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...
, known as Gramps Schneider, McLeod lets him look at the deKalbs. Schneider announces that "now the fingers will make", meaning the antennas on the deKalbs will work. McLeod finds to his surprise that the deKalbs are indeed functional. However he has saved a surprise for Stevens. In operation, the antennas now flex and wiggle like fingers reaching for something.
Waldo, meanwhile, is working on the problem. Having satisfied himself that the deKalbs really are having basic problems, he also realizes that Grimes is right. Then he gets a call from Dr. Rambeau, who seems to have come unhinged. Having seen the wiggling deKalbs, he announces that he knows what is happening. "Magic is loose in the world!" he tells Waldo. He shows Waldo some tricks he can do now that he understands magic. He sticks a penknife through his hand and withdraws it without any bleeding, which Waldo finds unimpressive. "Hysterical vascular control, a perfect clinical case," he thinks. Then Rambeau places the knife on the palm of his hand and turns the hand palm down, the knife staying in place.
To Waldo, with his firm footing in the physical sciences, this is either a trick or something truly impossible. He calls Stevens to have Rambeau brought to him, but Stevens reports that Rambeau somehow escaped from his restraints without actually unfastening them. Not only that, he has made another set of deKalbs behave as strangely as McLeod's. Waldo is his usual self at first, calling Stevens incompetent, but then he seems to mellow. He thanks Stevens instead, and asks to have Rambeau's notes and equipment shipped up to him.
Seeing the eccentric deKalbs, Waldo realizes that he must learn what happened to them. Schneider will not leave his home, so Waldo has to go back to Earth, an experience he dreads. Shipped down in a medical craft, with Grimes in attendance, he lies in his waterbed
Waterbed
A waterbed, water mattress, or flotation mattress is a bed or mattress filled with water. Waterbeds intended for medical therapies appear in various reports through the 19th century...
while Schneider examines him. Schneider thinks he should get up and walk, but Waldo protests he cannot. Schneider tells him he must "reach out for the power". According to Schneider, the "Other World is close by and full of power", waiting only for someone to grab it. In Schneider's hands, Waldo does indeed experience a sense of well-being, and is able to lift up a coffee cup one-handed for the first time in his life.
Schneider explains an old philosophy, how things can both be true and not true, especially that something which can be true for this world might not be for the Other World. Since our minds sit in the Other World, this is important. McLeod, according to Schneider, was "tired and fretful", and found one of the "bad truths", causing the deKalbs to fail. Schneider simply looked for the other truth, and the deKalbs worked again.
At first, returning to his home, Waldo thinks the journey wasted. Not really expecting anything, he tries Schneider's methods on a failed deKalb. To his astonishment, they begin to work in just the same fashion as McLeod's. At this point Stevens calls him to say that things are getting much worse. Waldo, thrown off balance by the "impossible" thing he has just seen, decides to twit Stevens with Rambeau's words: "Magic is loose in the world!" Having seen Waldo's sudden change of heart when Rambeau vanished, Stevens is now convinced that Waldo has come unglued as well—an unnerving prospect, if Waldo is the only one who can fix the problem.
Waldo realizes that Stevens' and Grimes' problems are related. Radiant power is affecting the human nervous system. People feel weak, rundown, fretful, and somehow transfer their malaise to the deKalbs. He also realizes something that Stevens has not noticed. The repaired deKalbs work without broadcast power! Apparently they draw energy from Schneider's "Other World".
Waldo uses this to effect his revenge. Summoning NAPA's representatives to his home, he demonstrates that he can fix deKalbs and can train others to fix them. The repairs are 100% reliable, he asserts. Having received their formal acknowledgment that he has fulfilled his contract, he unveils the "Jones-Schneider deKalb", a Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
contraption which appears to draw power from nowhere. He tells them that with this he can put NAPA out of business. Of course, NAPA offers a settlement from which Waldo profits hugely, even though the new deKalb is a repaired one with a lot of distracting technology attached.
Having triumphed, Waldo must satisfy himself that he is right. The "Other World" is just a space-time continuum, he thinks, possibly with a different value for the speed of light. It could be right next to our continuum, separated by an infinitesimal amount. If, as Schneider asserts, the mind sits in the Other World, that would explain many things.
Eventually Waldo realizes that he himself can draw strength from the Other World. At first he fails, but after a dream in which Rambeau pops in and out of the Other World to threaten him, he finds that he can indeed be strong. Tricking Grimes and Stevens into taking him to Earth again, he walks out of the craft, almost causing Grimes to have a heart attack.
As he prepares to lead a life on Earth, he has to deal with the fallout from his previous manners. Stevens tells Waldo that, had he not been crippled, some of the things he used to say would have gotten him into a fight. Thinking Stevens means that he should fight now, Waldo knocks him out. Once he recovers, Stevens explains that he no longer feels that way. In fact, he thinks Waldo would be a good friend once he learns some manners.
Returning to the dancer, who is of course Waldo, we see him depart the dressing room with great bonhomie. His principal assistant is the former Chairman of the Board at North American Power-Air.
Reception
L. Sprague de CampL. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
praised "Waldo" for reflecting Heinlein's typical virtues: "his prodigality of invention, his shrewd grasp of human nature and his versatile knowledge of law, politics, business and science." However, he noted that although the story was "fast-moving," it "peter[ed] out at the end instead of rising to a climax."
The waldo
A typical illustration of the tools in the story is Waldo's handling of his need to perform micro-dissection on the scale of cellular walls. He uses human-sized waldoes to make smaller waldos, then uses those to make even smaller waldoes, and continues the series until he has waldoes small enough to work at the cellular scale.There are three main factors involved in Heinlein's description of the tools:
- They work like human hands: not with a single active lever or twenty different tools, but with components arranged and with actions like human hands. The operator puts his or her hands in "gloves" and the waldos repeat the movements of the hands.
- They work in conjunction with viewing equipment that lets the user see the waldos as if they have the size and action of his own hands. This, in conjunction with the first factor, means that waldos are a "no-training" tool: if you know how to use your hands, you can use waldos.
- They allow work to be done remotely, in the next room or many miles away, or in an environment that could kill a human or be contaminated by human presence. They can be a different size from normal human hands: either huge for building construction or tiny for micro-manipulation.
Cultural references
The time in which the story is set is not mentioned, but is clearly decades ahead of the 1940s when it was written. When Waldo visits Gramps Schneider, whom McLeod described as being older than anybody even when McLeod was a child, he notices a campaign buttonCampaign button
A campaign button is used in the United States during an election as political advertising for a candidate or political party, or to proclaim the issues that are part of the political platform. Political buttons date as far back as President George Washington. They have taken many forms as the...
on the wall of Schneider's house. The slogan on the button is "Free Silver
Free Silver
Free Silver was an important United States political policy issue in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Its advocates were in favor of an inflationary monetary policy using the "free coinage of silver" as opposed to the less inflationary Gold Standard; its supporters were called...
", a reference to the politics of the late 1800s in the USA. Waldo thinks, "Schneider must be - old!"
See also
- TelepresenceTelepresenceTelepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance of being present, or to have an effect, via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location....
- Special Purpose Dexterous ManipulatorSpecial Purpose Dexterous ManipulatorDextre, also known as the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator , is a two armed robot, or telemanipulator, which is part of the Mobile Servicing System on the International Space Station , and extends the function of this system to replace some activities otherwise requiring spacewalks...
- da Vinci Surgical SystemDa Vinci Surgical SystemThe Da Vinci Surgical System is a robotic surgical system made by Intuitive Surgical and designed to facilitate complex surgery using a minimally invasive approach...