Read at one level, this novel is a updated biblical Book of Job. The main character is put through the wringer because of a wager made by his Creator. Read at another level, it is the story of transformation: religious bigot and all-around prig Alex Hergensheimer is transformed into a much better person, even if that may not have been anyone's intent. But at another, deeper level, Heinlein illustrates what is really important, what really matters, what really endures. Because Alex discovers, over the course of the story, what real love can be, and how real love is the most important thing in the universe. More important than the dubious Heaven he finds when, about to lose his wager, the Creator pulls the Last Trump and Alex ascends to sainthood and Heaven, without his true love. He abandons Heaven and harrows Hell to find her. Heinlein couldn't have put it much more plainly.
My favorite scene: when, risen into Heaven as a Saint, Alex asks Heaven's help in finding his wife. And Heaven produces his wife. His first wife. From before he found real love. She's a harridan, and the transformed Alex is appalled. Even the angels are embarrassed for Alex.
The denouement hearkens back to the denouement of "Jonathan Hoag." For me, it works, but I can sympathize with those who find the ending, quite literally, too deus machina.
Like "Jonathan Hoag," you are never sure where this story is going to end, and I won't spoil it for you here. Except to say that the implied limits on human understanding are bittersweet. We can find true love, Heinlein seems to be saying, and we can live lives filled with love, but we cannot really understand the universe.
This is Heinlein at his best. No pontificating all-knowing protagonists, very little of the political polemics that started with "Stranger." Just an excellent story that invites deeper thought. Highly recommended.
As it is, Heinlein's novel bears only a superficial resemblance to Job. Namely, lots of bad things happened to Job; lots of bad things happened to Alex Hergensheimer. The story begins as Alex, head of the Churches United for Decency, walks a bed of fiery coals on a stupid bet and suddenly finds himself in a different universe--or is it he that changed, not the universe--a universe in which there is no Alex Hergensheimer. Rather, he is Alec Graham, a man with a beautiful mistress, Margrethe. They connect and marry, and together, the two shift from universe to universe, each time losing money, jobs, friends, everything, sometimes their shirts. And pants even. It is a compelling testament to the power of relationships in a person's life. As long as one has real love, one can endure almost anything.
In the beginning, I wondered what was causing these changes of world. At least, was there a pattern to them? Then as the pattern became more established, my focus turned to Alec and Margrethe, how they handled their predicament and when it would end. As the story approached the climax, this became tiring. My heart wrenched each time the world changed, and I just wanted to give up. Usually, that level of repetition would be merely boring, but in Heinlein's hand it reflects his characters' torment, and I got to revel in the way they handle it.
Then the climax hit. In the biblical story, Job talks to God, comes to terms with his experiences, then lives on better than he had ever lived before. In Heinlein's story, Alex goes to heaven, hell, and everywhere inbetween, and it's so weird that Alex himself, being a fundamentalist theologian, should've called God to account. He should've thought he himself was dreaming or being deceived. That would be part of his character. But he didn't. H.P. Lovecraft once pointed out that you have to manage the strange elements of your story carefully; otherwise, your story will lose all credibility. And that is the gaffe Heinlein fell into here. At the climax, the story quickly turned boring, boring, boring. I glossed through page after page of heavenly weirdness, then page after page of hell, then some more stuff. At first, I knew Alex was going to wake up and have an epiphany--or at least I thought I knew; I just didn't know how it would come. As the prose went on, I gradually came to realize that, no, this was not supposed to be a dream or deception. Oh well, I guess not all stories can have plausible endings.
However, if not plausible, at least it kept me scanning until I reached the epilogue, because I wanted to find out how things turned out for Alec and Marga. In summary, it was a compelling story, even though it did have a storytelling gaffe. It was not, as some of the cover blurbs imply, the best Heinlein ever. I enjoyed The Moon is a Harsh Mistress much more than JOB, as that earlier work left me satisfied and convinced. It was all real, despite the fact that its premise is impossible, SF gibberish (though it wasn't at the time Heinlein wrote it). Not so with JOB, in which the premise turned out to be merely unbelievable.
The various paralell universes turn out to be prety interresting themselves, the wonder of such things as street lights(people will actually obey a light?) or other minor things add to the story. As they move through elaborate tests, the world changing around them with no warning at random intervals they seek some kind of stability on which to stand. At every turn they work hard, save thier money, only to find all thier hard work for nothing, and themselves destitute once more.
And why all the suffering? His "all-powerful" god wants to have fun with a wager, and send him all this suffering and pain. Unlike the biblical Job, our protaginist does not suffer from boiles and fevers and sickness. Finally, he comes to understand that the world of his creator is not as he had thought, and those enemies of his creator are not all bad.
Why do we believe what we do? Why are certain parables regarded as examples of morality? Have we been conditioned to believe that great evils were in fact just and moral? What the heck is morality anyway?
These are a few of the questions that Job will challenge you with. It is a book that left an indelible impression on me, and caused me to reject many of the things I had been force-fed as a child.
If you are looking for Heinlein's typical science-fiction, you won't find it here. Instead you'll find a story spun from Heinlein's ascerbic wit that navigates the human system of beliefs and values, and does so with greater incisiveness than he's done in any other title.