The Year of the Jackpot is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein, first published 1952, and collected in one of Heinlein's anthologies, The Menace from Earth. Image File history File links Year_of_the_Jackpot_Galaxy_03-52. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... This article is in need of attention. ... Heinlein autographing at the 1976 Worldcon Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of hard science fiction. ... 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Menace From Earth is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. ...

In the story, a trend-following statistician finds romance and a disturbing conclusion. The story touches on recurrent Heinlein themes of survivalism and the prudishness of social mores of the time. For Wikipedia statistics, see m:Statistics Statistics is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data expressed in quantitative form. ...

Plot

Potiphar Breen is a middle-aged bachelor with a settled, orderly life, and a rather unusual hobby. We meet him first at breakfast in a Los Angeles diner, where he orders his usual meal, takes notes of various apparently unrelated items in several newspapers, and carefully counts out his payment, adding an exactly calculated tip. He then walks out to a bus stop, where a young lady is removing all her clothes. A bachelor is a man above the age of majority who has never been married (see single). ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... A diner in Freehold Borough, New Jersey This article is about a type of restaurant. ...

A pair of passing transvestites try to provoke a beat cop into arresting her, but the cop refrains for fear that the publicity will simply inspire more kooks to disrobe. Breen is unmoved. He waits for her to finish undressing, then wraps his coat around her just as the bus arrives. She promptly faints. He drives her to his house, and after explaining that he is not trying to take advantage of her, interviews her. She explains that she has no idea why she had the sudden urge to take her clothes off. He tells her why he was not surprised at what she did. Apparently women have been doing the same thing, all over the city, for some time. The news has been carefully hushed up, just as Breen himself called a friend at the newspaper and fed him a phony account of this incident.

Breen is a statistician. Working mostly for insurance companies, he advises them on probability and trends. In his spare time, he studies cycles. Human behavior seems to run in cycles, with prices, wages, hemlines, fashions, and entire economies crashing and rising again for no reason, except that each was following the ups and downs of a cycle. Three big cycles bottomed out in 1929, causing the Crash of 1929. It is now 1952, and every cycle he tracks will either trough or crest simultaneously in about six months. The Great Depression was a global economic slump that began in 1929 and bottomed in 1933. ...

Breen explains to Meade Barstow, the young lady, that humanity is about to "put its thumbs in its ears, roll its eyes, and go wugga-wugga-wugga". Meade's striptease, along with the commonplace public transvestism, the new churches with their ceremonial nudity and all the other pieces of minor insanity are simply symptoms of the inexorable trends. As Breen puts it, while any one person may seem to be rational, in the bulk people behave statistically, whether they like it or not. "Meade," he says, "I think we're lemmings." The term transvestism has undergone several changes of meaning since it was coined in the 1910s, and it is still used in all of these meanings except the very first one. ... Lemming or Lemmings can refer to: A small rodent — see Lemming A computer game — see Lemmings (video game) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ...

Meade and "Potty" grow close^[1], and as the weeks pass and the craziness increases, both abandon their jobs and prepare for when it will be "time to jump". Breen has transport, supplies and a firearm or two. He plans to head for the Mojave Desert. Then the record drought breaks, and the skies open. They decide to leave. On the way, there is an earthquake. A hitch-hiker attempts to steal the car at gunpoint. Meade surprises Breen (and herself) by shooting the thief with Breen's pistol. Far from the city, they are horrified when a nuclear explosion apparently destroys Los Angeles. Looking across from Emigrant Pass towards the Kingston Range in the eastern Mojave. ... An earthquake is a phenomenon that results from and is powered by the sudden release of stored energy that radiates seismic waves. ... It has been suggested that Nuclear explosive be merged into this article or section. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ...

Living at an isolated cabin, they wait for things to stabilize. There has been a full-scale nuclear exchange, but the weather was so bad that few bombs reached their targets. Breen himself has had to shoot a group of marauding Russian soldiers. But now the world is at peace, and Breen can catch up on his reading, in journals of astrophysics. He comes across an article where the author calculates the exact conditions required to make the Sun explode in a nova ^[2], and even offers predictions about when in the life of the Sun this might occur. The Titan II ICBM carried a 9 Mt W53 warhead, making it one of the most powerful nuclear weapons fielded by the United States during the Cold War. ... Spiral Galaxy ESO 269-57 Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties (luminosity, density, temperature and chemical composition) of celestial objects such as stars, galaxies, and the interstellar medium, as well as their interactions. ... Artists conception of a white dwarf star accreting hydrogen from a larger companion A nova (pl. ...

Meade comes out of the cabin to join Potiphar and watch the sunset. There is a rather large sunspot on the Sun's face. Suddenly Breen realizes that this has not just been a bad year. Looking again at the article, he knows it is the final year. "There's something wrong with the sunset," says Meade. A sunspot is a region on the Suns surface (photosphere) that is marked by a lower temperature than its surroundings and intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of low surface temperature. ...

"No," replies Potiphar Breen, "with the Sun."

Notes, references

1. ^ The couple marry themselves once they escape. This is a typical Heinlein theme, where marriage is something that takes place in the minds and hearts of the couple, and a ceremony is no more than a public recognition of that fact. Similar situations occur in Time Enough for Love, The Puppet Masters, Farnham's Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land.
2. ^ Like many stories of the time, this one makes no distinction between a nova, a flaring white dwarf star, and a supernova, an exploding star. At the time of writing, the different phenomena had not been fully explained by physicists. Comparable stories include The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, and The Star by Arthur C. Clarke.

Time Enough for Love is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1973. ... In 1951, Robert A. Heinlein published a science fiction novel, The Puppet Masters, in which American secret agents battle parasitic invaders from outer space. ... Farnhams Freehold is a science fiction tale set in the near future by Robert Heinlein. ... Stranger in A Strange Land Cover Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. ... Artists conception of a white dwarf star accreting hydrogen from a larger companion A nova (pl. ... White dwarf Sirius-B in x-rays A white dwarf is an astronomical object which is produced when a low or medium mass star dies. ... Multiwavelength X-ray image of the remnant of Keplers Supernova, SN 1604. ... The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov is a science fiction novel, with mystery and thriller elements, on the subjects of time travel and social engineering. ... Isaac Asimov, Ph. ... The Star is a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke that won the Hugo award in 1956. ... Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (born December 16, 1917) is an English author and inventor, most famous for his science-fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name. ...

See also

• Kondratiev wave

In economics, Kondratiev waves, also called grand supercycles or surges or long waves, occasionally also referred to as the K-waves, are the term for a regular S-shaped cycle in the modern (Capitalist) world economy. ...

External link

"The Year of the Jackpot" publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Internet Speculative Fiction Database is a database of bibliographic information on science fiction and related genres such as fantasy fiction and horror fiction. ...