Waldo (short story)

Waldo & Magic, Inc.

1942 original publication magazine cover
Author	Robert A. Heinlein
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction short story
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	1950
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)

"Waldo" (1942) is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein originally published in Astounding Magazine in August 1942 under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald. It is available in the book Waldo & Magic, Inc. (as well as other collections). Except that both stories in that book involve magic, the stories are otherwise unrelated.

The essence of the story is the journey of a mechanical genius from his self-imposed exile from the rest of humanity to a more normal life, conquering the disease myasthenia gravis as well as his own contempt for humans in general. The key to this is that magic is loose in the world, but in a logical and scientific way.

Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones was born a weakling, unable even to lift his head up to drink or to hold a spoon. Far from destroying him, this channeled his intellect, and his family's money, into the development of the device patented as "Waldo F. Jones' Synchronous Reduplicating Pantograph". Wearing a glove and harness, Waldo could control a much more powerful mechanical hand simply by moving his hand and fingers. This and other technologies he develops make him a rich man, rich enough to build a home in space.

In the story, these devices became popularly known as "waldoes". In reference to this story, the real-life remote manipulators that were later developed also came to be called waldoes, some even by NASA. Later, an American company, The Character Shop, which creates animatronic devices and objects (often for motion pictures), obtained the trademark to Waldo for "data-capture input devices".

Waldo's personality can best be described as arrogance combined with misanthropy. He does not think of himself as crippled. In his mind he is superior to all other humans because of his weakness. He reasons that if a chimpanzee is ten times as strong as a man, and a man is ten times as strong as Waldo, then Waldo is as far above men as men are above chimpanzees. He calls the rest of humanity "smooth apes". His home's location, which he calls Freehold, is located in orbit high above Earth and is symbolic of his relation to the rest of humanity.