Glory Road

Glory Road is a fantasy-science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. First published as a serial in a 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, it quickly became a standalone novel and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1964. The novel follows E.C. Gordon, a military veteran from a long line of military family who nearly died fighting in Southeast Asia. In search of peace, Gordon moves to the French Riviera, where he discovers a personals ad from a beautiful woman named Star. He answers the ad and meets Rufo, a strange storyteller who asks him to join them on a quest for a lost artifact called the Egg, which contains a treasure trove of wisdom collected over the ages by the nobility of the Twenty Universes. Heinlein ironizes the patterns of the epic by combining it with absurd and impossible events and relationships common to the fantasy and sci-fi genres.

The novel begins shortly after E.C. Gordon is discharged from combat in Southeast Asia. Having been immersed in the war for what seems like a lifetime, he is unsure about what to make of his future. He decides to spend at least a year traveling France. Soon after his arrival on the Riviera, he meets a woman named Star on Île du Levant; he considers her supernaturally beautiful. Not long after, he learns that he may have won the Irish Sweepstakes. This discovery puts him in a bind since he wants to live an eventful life even more than one of comfort. He decides to answer a personals ad with the query, “Are you a coward?” He finds that Star is running the ad.

Star explains that the ad is recruiting for an adventurer to go on a journey to recover the Egg of the Phoenix. She asks for his hero’s name, and he replies “Scarface,” in reference to his facial disfigurement. Star cuts him off and settles on the similar “Oscar.” Rufo, Star’s assistant, introduces himself. Appearing older than Star, maybe in his late fifties, he is full of larger-than-life yarns whose truth is ambiguous.



The trio sets off on a path called the Glory Road. Along the way, they encounter a variety of dragons and other fantastical creatures, most hostile, which they dispatch with some cooperation. Meanwhile, Star and Oscar fall in love. As they approach the location of the Egg of the Phoenix, they say their wedding vows to each other. At last, they reach the tower where the Egg is said to be hidden. The tower is sprawling and labyrinthine, involving a series of traps and illusions that the questers overcome. Near the end, Oscar volunteers to forge ahead to look for any threats. He finds Cyrano de Bergerac, a fabled swordsman from the 1600s, guarding the Egg. They fight this fantastical hero, and though they do not defeat him, they flee with the Egg in hand.

Oscar travels with Star and Rufo to their home universe. Rufo divulges to Oscar that Star is the Empress of the Twenty Universes, and is actually his grandmother, having received a medical procedure that greatly lengthens her life. Oscar learns that the Egg is a highly advanced piece of alien technology that stores the memories and wisdom of Star’s ancestors. As Empress, Star has birthed countless children via artificial insemination. Oscar, unknowingly, receives the same life extension treatment as Star.

Oscar’s first months as Emperor of Star’s Twenty Universes are awe-inspiring. Nonetheless, he quickly gets bored and feels that he was given the prestigious position mistakenly. He asks for Star’s counsel, and she sends him back to his world, asserting that he is too heroic for his position. Oscar has additional difficulty reintegrating into the society of Earth, though he now has the wealth of a king. As the novel ends, he begins to think he might have made up the whole story about his journey and marriage with Star. His feeling is proven wrong when Rufo messages him, asking for his help on another quest on Glory Road. This ending to Heinlein’s novel suggests a sequel that might explain even more of Gordon’s capacious universe.