There was a recent thread which mentioned Heinlein’s juvenile works. I’m thinking of reading them as I grabbed a couple from the library tonight. *Have Space Suit, Will Travel * looks like an interesting book.
I realize they are going to seem dated as the first 30 pages of *Have Space Suit * have shown. Any opinions from Dopers who have read them?
Well, they’re definitely dated, and reading them as an adult you really recognize that yes, they are written for a youth of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. But it’s no worse than reading something like Voyage of the Dawn Treader or The Hobbit.
Keep in mind that these were originally written for places like “Boy’s Life” magazine and the like. They are written for Boy Scouts. Keep that in mind and you will like them. They are very well-written, and contain a number of very good lessons for (young) people.
Heinlein was writing these books for boys (NOT girls) in earlier times. They are a bit sexist, though not as bad as many books written at about the same time. The science is definitely dated. But they are fun to read. Heinlein was a great storyteller, and he did some of his finest work in those juveniles. One of my all time favorite books is The Rolling Stones.
If you read Podkayne of Mars, try to get the edition with Robert’s preferred ending in it.
Ahh, I was just thinking about Heinlein when somebody mentioned Lazarus Long in the eternal life thread in GD. When I was young(er), my two favorite books were Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Red Planet. They’re by no means difficult books, but I think you will enjoy them greatly.
It’s an almost religious thing for me that reading Heinlein for the first time is a good thing.
As I said, reading those juveniles changed (and maybe saved) my life.
When I was in fourth grade I stumbled across Tunnel in the Sky, and I was hooked. My brother and I used to go scour every old used-book store we could find, and eventually read everything Heinlein ever wrote. Tunnel in the Sky (to which I was about to refer by its initials) is still a favorite, as are Red Planet and The Door into Summer.
They’re all good fun, though in the later novels you’ll notice the hyper-right-wing philosophy getting louder and louder. I prefer his earlier works for the pure adventure-value of them.
The early works have few if any females in them, so you don’t have to keep throwing the book across the room and shouting “you sexist pig!” Good clean fun. Boys save the universe with their sliderules. I enjoy them all. I have a particular fondness for Starman Jones and Farmer in the Sky. Read The Rolling Stones to see whence David Gerrold (unconsciously?) stole the idea of tribbles.
The best thing about them all is you get good Heinlein stories without any of the skeevy sexuality that creeped into his adult stories. Seriously, he had a really weird running theme about time travel and relativaty causing men to marry no longer much younger relatives.
I really like a short story he did, unfortunately I can’t remember the name, about boy scouts on Venus.
I dunno that “two” (“Time for the Stars” and, I suppose “Door into Summer” although she wasn’t related to him at all–she was his business partner’s daughter or neice) is all that much of a “running theme” when you consider that he wrote like 40 novels and a ton of short stories.
“Tenderfoot In Space”
Fenris
Sorry, Fenris, but you’re forgetting the whole mess of later works: Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, where major characters committed incest. Whether that is a flaw in the books or stories is something else entirely, but it is definitely there in those books. I won’t say that it’s a major part of the plot, but it is a recurring minor theme.
As for the Heinlein juveniles, while some of the planetology is dated, I think it’s a bit unfair to claim the science is dated. It’s rather a case of Heinlein having written, like most other writers of the time, ahead of known facts. Personally, my favorite of his juveniles remain Have Space Suit… Will Travel, and Space Cadet. And while I can’t recall the exact Boy scout story mentioned, I know that Heinlein wrote a large number of stories for Boy’s Life, many of them about scouting throughout the Solar System. BTW, none of the juvenile novels were actually written for Boy’s Life first, just at the same time as he was doing the bulk of his writing for that magazine. They were written expressly for the publisher (Harper Collins?) under an editor who took traditional gender roles far more seriously than Heinlein did. I recall in one of his books Heinlein relates how Tunnel in the Sky gave this editor conniption fits because of the way he wrote women.
Here is a list of the “Juvies” from this site
Rocket Ship Galileo 1947
Space Cadet 1948
Red Planet 1949
Farmer in the Sky 1950 Serialized Boy's Life Aug-Nov 1950
Between Planets 1951 Serialized Blue Book Sep-Oct 1951
The Rolling Stones 1952 Serialized Boy's Life Sep-Dec 1952
Starman Jones 1953
The Star Beast 1954 Serialized F&SF May-Jul 1954
Tunnel in the Sky 1955
Time for the Stars 1956
Citizen of the Galaxy 1957 Serialized ASF Sep-Dec 1957
Have Space Suit - Will Travel 1958 Serialized F&SF Aug-Oct 1958 Hugo nominee
Podkayne of Mars 1963 Serialized Worlds of If Dec 1962-Mar 1963 Uncut version published 1990
The last 5 are exceptionally good. The first 2-3 are definitely dated and are unimpressive compared to the rest.
Nitpick - “The Door Into Summer” is not a Juvie, although it would be a good choice as a follow-up read. As would “Glory Road” and “Starship Troopers” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
I loved these books and have read HSWT, TFTS, COTG many, many times!
But the question wasn’t “incest”, the question was “time travel and relativaty causing men to marry no longer much younger relatives.” which only happened one (or two, if you fudge things and count Door ) I’d admit that Heinlein certainly had more books where he played with the incest taboo, but the original issue was a much smaller sub-set :D.
Okay, you got me. 
<nitpick> Though I didn’t say they weren’t serialized, just that the primary market had been the book publication. </nitpick>
Seriously, considering the number of times that Heinlein is on record having written that the only reason to write is for the money, the fact he would sell the same work more than once isn’t all that surprising.
I have got to stop posting while I’m waiting for Microsoft’s ‘Critical’ updates to download via my phone modem (damn, I’m spoiled, I remember when I thought 1200 baud was FAST.) at 2 AM. I focused more on the accusation of ‘skeevy sexuality’ from the post you had been responding to. And considering the relationships you’d mentioned were so innocent on that level, I had to respond. :smack:
Well okay you got me there. But I was more focusing on the skeevy sex part anyway. Time travel and relativaty are perfectly welcome in my bedtime reading!
I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel for the first time at around age 8 and I must have read it over a thousand times since. It’s the book that got me into writing and into science fiction. I also have re-read Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Red Planet and Between Planets dozens of times each, well into my adulthood.
IMHO Heinlein’s juveniles are some of his best work.
Re: Sexism.
I haven’t read Have Spacesuit, Will Travel since I was a kid, but isn’t Peewee a fairly strong female character? She might be younger than the protagonist, but she’s also smarter. Genius level smarter.
An added bonus is that this novel might lead you (it led me) to read Jerome K. Jerome’s comic masterpiece Three Men in a Boat…Kip’s dad’s favorite book.
I wasn’t clear earlier about my intent, I’m afrid. :wally
Most of the complaints about sexism in Heinlein’s juveniles seem to break down into two categories: a lack of any female characters; and where there are female characters they’re wedded (pun intended) to traditional gender roles.
Since many of his juveniles take place within a framework of military or quasi-military organizations part of the dearth of female characters is simply due to that. And while I believe Heinlein was not an example of a traditional male chauvinist, it seems fairly clear that he didn’t think that (most) women belonged in ground combat. Also, as I tried to imply earlier, the editor on most of his juveniles was rather more conservative in this respect than Heinlein, leading to some period attitudes being incorporated into the books that I doubt would have been there otherwise.
Where the sexism occurs really isn’t in the capability of the female characters, but in their roles. HSWT is a good example, actually: Kip’s mom is mentioned several times in the book, in a supporting role. Kip himself makes the point she’s passive vice his father’s more active role. Not less important, just a different role. At the end of the book it is mentioned that she’d been Kip’s father’s best student from his university days, and the two of them chose to leave academia to become a ‘Leave-It-to-Beaver’ family. This is the sort of behavior that leaves many iron-clad feminists frothing at the mouth. It is the inherent acceptance of traditional gender roles through his juveniles for some impressive female characters that provides the substance for the claims of sexism. Time after time where there are strong female characters, they fall back into these traditional gender roles. Between Planets featured Isabella who acted as a decent intriguer for the resistance/revolution, but is expected by the main character to simply accept being defined by her relationship with him afterwards; The Rolling Stones except for Hazel, all the women in that book are ferociously capable, but stay in the back ground, even when Mrs. Stone goes to the other liner to treat the plague(?) they’d picked up; Starman Jones has, not only an all male crew for the ship (aside from auxilliary crew such as the Purser’s wife), but Ellie, who is at least as skilled in mathematics as Max is stuck being a potentate’s daughter, not allowed to consider a position as starship astrogator… This recurring theme strikes me as terribly sexist, too. But in most cases the female characters in question have chosen their roles. And part of the lack of focus on female characters can be ascribed to stories focusing on those most self-centered critters in the known universe: teenaged boys.
I guess I’m trying to say that while sexism does exist in Heinlein’s juveniles, it’s often less a matter of the roles being imposed on the women involved, than roles they have chosen. Which is noteworthy, in my mind, since the current feminist movement is still suffering the backlash from the time when there was a great deal of criticism for any woman who choose to lead that sort of life as being collaborators in sexist practices.
You simply can’t go wrong with Heinlein’s juveniles. Some of them are better than others, of course (and you’re not likely to find folks agreeing on which those are), but even the worst of them are a great way to burn a few hours on a lazy weekend. Personally, my favorite is Space Cadet (of which I can’t find a copy for love nor money), but Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Podkayne of Mars, and Tunnel in the Sky are also high on my list. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel actually doesn’t impress me so much (perhaps because of the age when I first read it), and I think that Time for the Stars is the weakest of the lot, but that’s largely because I can recognize the holes in the science (Heinlein was usually very good on the science end, but relativity is a tricky topic for even the best SF writers).
That list posted by K364 seems awfully short… Off the top of my head, I would also call Orphans of the Sky a juvie. Maybe I’m just thinking of all of the short stories?
And speaking of short stories, while none of the novels were directly written for Boy’s Life, Farmer in the Sky was an expansion of a short story originally written for Boy’s Life.
Incidentally, for any aspiring authors out there, Boy’s Life magazine is very friendly to authors in their contract. After publication in the magazine, all reprint and other rights relating to the story devolve back to the author. My mom looked into them when she was writing short stories, and was very impressed, but unfortunately, most of her stories star girls.