Job: A Comedy of Justice
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
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| Cover Artist | Michael Whelan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Del Rey |
| Released | 1984 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-31649-5 (first edition, hardback) |
Job: A Comedy of Justice is a novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1984. The title is a reference to the biblical Book of Job and James Branch Cabell's book Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice.
[edit] Plot summary
The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex, a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe, a Danish cruise ship hostess — and loves every minute of it. Enduring a shipwreck, an earthquake, and a series of world-changes brought about by Loki (with Jehovah's permission), Alex and Marga work their way from Mexico back to Kansas as dishwasher and waitress. Whenever they manage to make some stake, an inconveniently timed change into a new alternate reality throws them off their stride (once, the money the earned is left behind in another reality; in another case, the paper money earned in a Mexico which is an Empire is worthless in another Mexico which is a republic). These repeated misfortunes, clearly effected by some malevolent entity, make the hero identify with the Biblical Job.
On the way they enjoy the Texas hospitality of Satan himself, but as they near their destination they are separated by the Rapture — pagans don't go to Heaven. Finding that eternity as depicted in the Revelation is far from the bliss he had so earnestly anticipated, Alex's journey through timeless space in search of his lost lady takes him to Hell and beyond.
Heinlein's vivid depiction of a Heaven ruled by snotty angels and a Hell where everyone has a wonderful, or at least productive, time — with Mary Magdalene shuttling breezily between both places — is a satire on American evangelical Christianity. It owes much to Mark Twain's Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.
The novel is linked to Heinlein's short story, "Them", by the term, "the Glaroon".
The book's depiction of alternate realities in which the US is dominated by ultra-conservative religious groups may have influenced Frederik Pohl in taking up a similar theme in The Coming of the Quantum Cats published two years later (1986).
