Robert H Rimmer

Although it is not uncommon for one writer to make reference to another and/or their work,the extent to which Robert Heinlein is mentioned in the stories of other SF writers is surely exceptional. One author who puts Heinlein centre-stage is Robert Rimmer. Sadly, Rimmer's writing is nowhere near the standard of Heinlein's. That is a personal opinion, and strongly at variance with what is said on several enthusiastic Websites. One refers to Rimmer as a "master communicator" - I did not find it at all easy to receive the communications in these volumes, despite what seemed like attempts to bludgeon them into me with a very blunt instrument.

Rimmer was not so much a child of the sixties, as an adult of the sixties. Married with teenage children of his own at that time of social turmoil, he embraced wholeheartedly the idea that all ideas can be challenged, the concept that all types of lives can be lived out. His greatest enthusiasm was for sexual freedom, with the goal of putting an end to sexual guilt and unhappiness. Unlike most such gurus, Rimmer did not advocate unrestricted "free love". On the contrary, he supported monogamy; he disapproved of group sex, and of homosexuality (at least, he did at the time of writing the books with which I am concerned here). However, Rimmer's recommended style of monogamy was not at all conventional. As propounded in his books The Harrad Experiment, Proposition 31 and The Premar Experiments, it evolved from serial monogamy, through alternating monogamy, to what might be termed freestyle recirculating monogamy. This evolution is detailed in the comments on the books reviewed below. As a pre-requisite for the open sexuality Rimmer celebrated, and to allow this sexuality to be fully, vigorously and lovingly expressed, he was clear that body-shame had to be eliminated. All his forward-looking characters therefore adopt social nudity as a norm, which is why his stories deserve coverage here.

The Harrad Experiment

First published in the USA by Sherbourne Press, Inc, May 1966 (hardback). First published in Britain by The New English Library Ltd in 1967. Currently published in paperback by Prometheus Books UK, ISBN 0-87975-623-3.

Although not his first novel, Rimmer's The Harrad Experiment was the first to achieve substantial sales. It became immensely popular in certain circles, particularly on many US college campuses. That interest has been sustained, and The Harrad Experiment is still on sale today.

The book was written as a future history, looking back on an alternative present from the perspective of less than a decade. Instead of presenting a story of people, Rimmer sets out a sort of sociological text, reporting on an extensive and continuing research project. A group of advanced clear-thinkers, supported by equally advanced and stunningly wealthy philanthropic backers, establish a residential student centre. The youngsters all take standard degree courses at local institutions, but live at Harrad. This is no ordinary hall of residence. At a time when most official student accommodation was emphatically single-sex, Rimmer proposes that the students not only occupy mixed-sex flats, but that each will share a (twin) bedroom with a student of the opposite sex. The benign and insightful academics operating Harrad have pre-selected these pairs, and productive relationships mature all round.

Life at Harrad is not just eating, sleeping, bathing and bonking. Oh no. First of all, there's manadatory gym, swimming or other exercise - which is taken nude. Then, in addition to their standard college studies, the inmates have to attend Harrad seminars and work through a very heavy-duty reading list covering "more than a thousand books in the general area of psychology, history, sociology and sexology as well as selected novels and autobiographies" in their four years. Rimmer offers his readers a short selection from the thousand, including authors such as Albert Ellis, Erich Fromm, Inge and Sten Hegler, Abraham Maslow, A S Neill, Bertrand Russell and Gordon Rattray Taylor. Despite Rimmer's declared breadth of topics covered, the overwhelming majority of the titles offered deal with sex - albeit from a range of perspectives (psychological, historical, sociological, sexological).

Bonking there most definitely is, although some readers would be astonished at how long many of the students co-habit before finally sharing a bed. In this, as in other areas, Rimmer is truly prophetic in the first part of his dedication: "This book is dedicated to the men and women of the twenty-first century who may find it quaint but perhaps will consider it germinal." I doubt any present educational establishment would consider it necessary to operate a specific programme of student cohabitation, as they usually manage very well by themselves. Which is a patronising comment to make about Rimmer's ideals, given that he is concerned to offer much more than mere cohabitation. However, Rimmer seems to be happy to patronise his literary creations, and one aspect of the story which I find totally unbelievable is the extent to which all the students go along with this grand scheme. The white mice cheerfully enter the maze of their own accord. A few dissenters would have been interesting, and would have allowed some topics to be aired from significantly different points of view.

Rimmer makes some valid points, and has some reasonable ideas. For example, as you can read in the extracts, his characters suggest that abolishing censorship, so that images of nudity and loving sex are the norm would, in an idealised society led by Harrad graduates, drive out pornography by force of ridicule. Unfortunately, I find Rimmer utterly unconvincing. Too many possibilities have to stack up together for too long for his Utopia to appear. Most importantly, I do not believe a complete student body, however carefully selected, would meekly follow both a punishing intellectual programme and a rigidly-prescribed social and domestic regime - particularly when these are superimposed on a standard degree course. Also, it is just not credible that the Harrad "experiment" could run without at least some details of its radical (and, for the time, totally outrageous) domestic arrangements reaching the media.

Even leaving aside my reservations about Rimmer's hypothetical educational establishment and its wondrously biddable residents, I cannot recommend this book - it is just too dry. Rimmer has little talent for writing dialogue, and the device of telling the story through extracts from the diaries of the students is clumsy, not least because each student writes in a very similar style (note that the varied presentational styles used to head up these journal excerpts shown in the extracts are exactly as found in the book - another source of irritation to me). I have not seen the film which was based on the book, but I would expect it to be a lot more interesting. The characters should be more developed, and the editing out of vast swathes of irrelevant detail might let the basic ideas flower instead of wilting under acres of turgid prose and stilted dialogue.

In 1966, The Harrad Experiment must have created a furore. Today it is certainly "quaint", but, in my opinion, of significant interest only to those studying Rimmer's utopian ideas and concepts as just some of many set out in the 1960s. Since Rimmer only advocates social nudity as a means to an end, rather than as desirable or laudable in its own right, the book has only limited interest for the inquisitive naturist. I suggest checking out many of the other authors on this site before wading into Rimmer's work.

Proposition 31

First published in the USA by New American Library 1968 (hardback). First published in Britain by The New English Library Ltd in 1969 (hardback and paperback). Currently published in paperback by iUniverse.com, ISBN 1-58348-093-5.

In US politics, a sufficiently large number of citizens can require their state to include a "proposition" on the ballot paper to be used for the election of state officials. Rimmer tells the story of how, once again in the near-future of the time of his writing, California is asked to vote on making "corporate marriage" legal. The background to this innovation is that two families living next door to one another become friendly, then very friendly, until the adults decide to merge their marriages, assets and responsibilities. To get to this point, various pairings occur in various ways, while the marital and extra-marital arrangements of others are examined and investigated.

As in The Harrad Experiment, the characters spend a great deal of time indulging in seminars and lengthy debates, quoting large chunks from Rimmer's reading list to one another. Also echoing the earlier book, there is no single form of presentation of material. Rimmer switches from first-person narration, to conventional third-person omniscient narrator, to a different first-person narration, and on, and on. For me, this did nothing to aid either reader understanding/interest or authorial exposition.

Things have moved on from Harrad. The former's primary characters paired off, then re-paired, in what I term "serial monogamy". There were no threesomes or moresomes. In Proposition 31, the two couples end up freely mixing and matching, but the sex always involves just one man and one woman with nobody else present. Full-on swapping, orgies and homosexuality are explicitly eschewed. The difference from serial monogamy is that the coupling-of-the-moment arrangement can last as long or as short a time as the participants wish; the monogamy alternates at will, with the "corporate marriage" persisting, and providing the envelope within which the alternation occurs. As a counterpoint, the central foursome variously encounter pick-ups, one-night stands and organised swapping.

One respect in which things have not changed is the conviction that acceptance of social nudity and absence of body shame are essential to the more enlightened frame of mind in which corporate marriage can develop and flourish. You can read about some relevant episodes in the extracts.

	The Premar Experiments

First published in the USA by Crown Publishers Inc 1975 (hardback). First published in Britain by The New English Library Ltd in 1976 (hardback). Currently published in paperback by iUniverse.com, ISBN 1-58348-095-1.

The final volume to be reviewed here was written almost a decade after The Harrad Experiment. Like the other two books, The Premar Experiments is set a few years after first publication. There are strong similarities between Premar and Harrad, both tales being told primarily by extracts from the journals of participants, both being focussed on a group of first-year college students. This is no accident, since Premar relates the first stages of a scheme to take the Harrad approach into a wider context, aiming to educate and enlighten a community as well as a student group constituted as a commune.

The story concerns one particular commune in Boston. The lead "commune parent" ("Compar") is postgraduate firebrand Bren Grattman, whose "Confamiliaum" concept also proposes urban regeneration through re-fitting and rearranging existing low-cost run-down housing. The result is a combination of advanced concepts of sexual enlightenment, experimentation with novel social structures and community self-development of resources. This heady mix manages to avoid political and economic obstacles, winning acclaim at street level and in the City chambers.

As usual, Rimmer's students discourse at length on sociological and sexological topics. As usual, there is a substantial list of recommended reading. As usual, waverers see the light - usually fairly quickly.

The Premar Experiments differs from the earlier books in several key respects. First, race and ethnicity are introduced as issues which can create tensions and bias. Second, while the movers and shakers are still materially well-off, the financially disadvantaged are given a role and a voice. Thirdly, mere guided self-education in matters sexual is dropped in favour of in-your-face sex instruction. Whether to prevent this book being seen as just a re-write and update of The Harrad Experiment, or to cast his net somewhat wider than New England, Rimmer also spends a fair amount of time and wordage on a fictional Caribbean nation.

In sexual terms, Rimmer has also taken several steps beyond what I dub the "alternating monogamy" of Proposition 31. Although sexual activity is still limited to a heterosexual couple in private (plus some solo or semi-solo masturbation), the speed with which the couple's members can change partners, and the pool from which they pick partners, have both increased. Social nudity has also expanded a little, but perhaps primarily to make the partner-mixing easier. See what you think of the nudity in the extracts.

Some of this book I found totally ludicrous, whereas the previous offerings merely peaked at "implausible" and "faintly ludicrous". There are other Rimmer books, most of which appear to deal with the same areas of sexuality and approaches to self-fulfilment. Frankly, I could not face subjecting myself to any more. In the hands of a more accomplished writer, any of these plots could have produced a really interesting book. Unfortunately, what is on offer is, in my opinion, only worth reading specifically so that one can honestly say that one has read them. For the rest of the reading public, there is far more rewarding material available, and lots of it. That probably counts as "farcical responses from a lot of old facicals", to use the words of one fan's Website. So be it.

Ratings (all three books):

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

An edited version of this review appears in the 2006 April issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Last updated 2005 November 2.
 
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