DIMENSION X - The Green Hills of Earth (Robert Heinlein)

DIMENSION X
The Green Hills of Earth
June 10, 1950

Robert Heinlein's short story The Green Hills of Earth is part of his "Future History" series of stories, all of which occur in the same universe and have overlapping characters. The Green Hills of Earth was first published in The Saturday Evening Post on February 8, 1947 and was later included in Heinlein's anthology of 1949. It was then adapted as a radio play by Ernest Kinoy and aired on Dimension X, June 19, 1950. A year later, in 1951, Heinlein titled an anthology "The Green Hills Of Earth" in which this story appeared. At the end of that same year, the story was adapted for Television and aired on Out There Dec 2, 1951. It was later performed as a radio play in 1955 on X Minus One, and then on CBS Radio Workshop in 1957.
The Green Hills of Earth has made a great impact on many readers, including the Apollo 15 astronauts who named a Moon crater after the main character, Rhysling. Astronaut Joe Allen even quoted from the story as their last moonwalk concluded.
The surviving recording of this Dimension X episode is missing the end credits. The only actor whose identity I have been able to confirm is the singer / songwriter Thomas Zachariah Glazer (1914 - 2003) who wrote the music for, and sang, Rhysling's songs.
The story begins by "reminding" us of a historical figure from hundreds of years in the future who is lauded for the depth and greatness of his poetic songs. The story goes on to humanize this traveling bard by telling the gritty tale of his life, a life characterized by dissolute living and punctuated by longing.

HISTORICAL GLOSSARY

Rhysling calls Casey "Jimmy Legs". That is a naval term referring to chief petty officer on a war ship, specifically, or generally simply someone in charge on a ship.

Casey asks Rhysling to sign his name and Rhysling's response is, "I'll make my mark." We take literacy for granted in the US now, but there was a time when it was not uncommon for an adult to be unable to read and write, especially if they were from a rural area like the Ozarks. If a person couldn't write and they were in a situation where they had to sign their name, they would sign with a capital letter 'X'. Casey points out Rhysling's signature is "Three X's" Rhysling makes a joke that one of the X's is for a middle name.

Twice Rhysling is referred to as a "deadhead". This is not referring to the fans of the band The Grateful Dead, though if you spin it just right there is a connection. A deadhead is a person who travels, attends a performance, or uses a service without paying the usual fare or fee. The term is often used for travelers who get a job on a boat, train or airplane for the singular purpose to get from one place to another. It is assumed this type of worker will not be invested in the job and thus "deadhead" implies someone who is a loafer or useless. And what about those deadheads whose occupation was following around a popular 1970's band? No disrespect to the unemployed hippies that devoted their lives to tagging along to every Grateful Dead concert, but the term kind of fits.

Captain Hicks tells Rhysling "And I'll see you ride the rest of the way in slop lock-up." A slop tank on a ship holds ballast. So the captain is saying he'll lock him in a slop tank.

When Hertzman runs into Rhysling years after he became blind, he describes Rhysling as having "... a dirty rag tied over his eyes with a jetman's knot". Heinlein is developing the setting here, creating a universe where space travel is as common as ocean travel. There is no such thing as a "jetman's knot" because in the real world there are no jetmen. But we do have sailors, and a "sailor's knot" is a common enough term.

At the beginning when Hertzman asks how much Rhysling made playing guitar in the bar Rhysling says, "Three dollars, Martian, and a slug." Then years later when Hertzman meets him busking on Mars, Rhysling asks Hertzman if one of the coins he received is a Venusian dime and Hertzman says it's a slug. I'm sure from context you figured out a slug is a fake coin... but what kind and why? In the 1950s purchases could me made from vending machines, mechanical machines that sold items like cigarettes or played music. They accepted coins. So did pay telephones. It was the weight and shape of the coin that the machine was able to identify. So if you could get a bit of metal and shape it like a coin and weigh it to the exact weight of a coin, you could fool a machine. Not a person, of course, who would be able to see it was just a smooth round disc, but the vending machine couldn't tell. Once machines became electronic slugs no longer worked.