Glory Road - Genre and Setting

Genre and Setting

Although the majority of Heinlein's work is generally classified as hard science fiction, Glory Road is a combination of fantasy and science fiction elements. The novel contains substantially more humor and whimsy than in Heinlein's other works. These atypical approaches, however, did not prevent Heinlein from infusing his story with the usual level of technical detail. For example, in one chapter the art of fencing is thoroughly described. (Heinlein had been a member of the fencing team at the United States Naval Academy.) The novel is also notable for its detailed characterization and psychological examination unusual for such a lighthearted novel.

Heinlein claimed to be inspired by the King Arthur stories of past generations such as T.H. White's The Once and Future King or Hal Foster's Prince Valiant. While their influences are apparent, many of the book's themes such as amoralistic heroes and focus on immediate action are highly reminiscent of Sword and Sorcery fiction. The novel also shares many similarities with planetary romances of E. R. Eddison.

Heinlein deliberately doesn't name the war Oscar Gordon was in. It is referred to as a war in Southeast Asia, giving some the impression it referred to the Korean War. However, on the first page, Oscar says "a background of beeping sputniks", which means it can only be 1957 or later, too late for the Korean War, which ended in 1953. Since the book was published in 1963, the conflict could be the Vietnam War before it was called that, when it was still sometimes referred to as a "police action", or possibly one of a hypothesized sequence of generic southeast Asian wars. Gordon actually says that they were "military advisers" in his war and that it wasn't even a "police action". Also, Oscar recounts at one point that he was living with his mother — and therefore presumably of high school age or younger — during the Korean War, a point reinforced on the second page when he says "write us all off as juvenile delinquents", a term rampant in the 1950s. On the first page, he says that it was an election year, and he "couldn't figure out which party to vote against", implying that it was a Presidential election year, i.e. 1960 or 1964 or possibly later. His father was in the Korean War.