of "If This Goes On—". "The Sound of His Wings" covers Nehemiah Scudder's early life as a television evangelist through his rise to power as the First Prophet. "Eclipse" describes independence movements on Mars and Venus. "The Stone Pillow" details the rise of the resistance movement from the early days of the theocracy through the beginning of "If This Goes On—". These stories were key points in the Future History, so Heinlein gave a rough description of Nehemiah Scudder which made his reign easy to visualize—a combination of John Calvin, Girolamo Savonarola, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, and Huey Long. His rise to power began when one of his flock, the widow of a wealthy man who would have disapproved of Scudder, died and left him enough money to establish a television station. He then teamed up with an ex-Senator and hired a major advertising agency. He was soon famous even off-world—many bonded laborers on Venus saw him as a messianic figure. He had muscle as well—a re-creation of the Ku Klux Klan in everything but name. "Blood at the polls and blood in the streets, but Scudder won the election. The next election was never held." Though this period was integral to the human diaspora that would follow several hundred years later, Heinlein stated that he was never able to write them because they featured Scudder prominently; he "dislike(d) him too much". Nehemiah Scudder already appears in Heinlein's earliest novel For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs (written 1938–1939, though first published in 2003). Scudder's early career as depicted in that book is virtually identical with the above—but with the crucial difference that in the earlier version Scudder is stopped at the last moment by the counter-mobilization of Libertarians, and despite mass voter intimidation carries only Tennessee and Alabama. In fact, the Libertarian regime seen in full bloom in that book's 2086 came into being in direct reaction to Scudder's attempt to impose puritanical mores on the entire American society. References External links . Archived from the original at Baen Ebooks. A review of the Future History by Robert Wilfred Franson A review of the Future History by Galen Strickland at The Templeton Gate Libertarian science fiction books Novels by Robert A. Heinlein Robert A. Heinlein Short stories by Robert A. Heinlein Science fiction book series