Requiem (short story)

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Requiem is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein, serving as a sequel to his short science fiction novel, The Man Who Sold the Moon , although it was in fact published several years earlier than that story. It is also the first story in the retrospective Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story centers around the lead character of "The Man Who Sold The Moon", Delos David Harriman. Harriman, a tycoon and latter-day robber baron, had always dreamed of going to the Moon, which is why he spent much of his career and resources making space flight a practical commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, his business partners prevented him from taking the early flights (as shown in the novella). Now an old man, Harriman has still not been to the Moon, a fact that frustrates him, since he lives in a world where such flights are so commonplace that carnivals have their own Moon rockets. No longer bound by his contractual obligations, he is now too old; every attempt he makes to hire a rocket result in rejection because of his frail health.

Absurdly rich, Harriman bribes two spacemen to help him get to the Moon. The three of them fight many obstacles, including Harriman's nieces and nephews, he himself having had no children, who want him declared insane before he can spend their inheritance. In the end, Harriman finally makes it to the Moon, only to die on the surface soon after landing (but content at finally having reached his goal). His body is left there, with his epitaph scrawled on the tag from an oxygen bottle. It is Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem", which is inscribed on his own headstone in Samoa.

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

Harriman first encounters his co-conspirators at a funfair in a small town outside Kansas City, Missouri, where they sell rides on their old, somewhat run-down ship. Later the narrative reveals that the town is Butler, Missouri, Heinlein's birthplace.

v • d • e Robert A. Heinlein's Future History
Collections	The Past Through Tomorrow, Orphans of the Sky
Short Stories	Life-Line, "Let There Be Light", The Roads Must Roll, Blowups Happen, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Delilah and the Space Rigger, Space Jockey, Requiem, The Long Watch, Gentlemen, Be Seated!, The Black Pits of Luna, "It's Great to Be Back!", "—We Also Walk Dogs", Searchlight, Ordeal in Space, The Green Hills of Earth, Logic of Empire, The Menace from Earth, "If This Goes On—", Coventry, Misfit, Universe, Common Sense
Novels	Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love, To Sail Beyond the Sunset