On Re-reading all of Robert Heinlein via The Virginia Edition

Cafe Society
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I’m not sure I would rate it as Heinlein’s masterwork - rather too episodic for that - but it is one of my favourites. A few other important points to add to your summary:

The sections are given musical titles, Counterpoint, Variations on a Theme, Da Capo, Coda etc. Never been quite sure - maybe to indicate the structure is deliberate and complete? Any thoughts on this?

Time Enough for Love contains the* Notebooks of Lazarus Long* as two intermissions. Supposedly aphorisms extracted by Minerva from their late night conversations but read on their own a fair guide to Heinlein’s own views. Even people who have never read a word of Heinlein will recognise some of them. Personally I like ‘A touchstone to tell the actual worth of an “intellectual” - find out how he feels about astrology’.

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Personally, I thought that the theme of Time Enough for Love, as suggested by the title, is that it’s only by living as long as he has that Lazarus has had time for love. He only really loves thrice in his life: First, as a child, the filial love of a boy for his mother. Then, it’s not until a full millennium after that that he truly knows love again, with Dora. And then it’s another millennium yet after that that he meets his mother again, and loves her in a different way. Alas for we ephemerals: How many of us must love as slowly as Lazarus, but yet never have the chance to find our Dora? And yet, Dora, despite her eight short decades, does find love as well: She really does live as long as Lazarus, one lifetime, no more nor less.

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“You got what everyone gets, Bernie. You got a life.” - Neil Gaiman

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Farmer in the Sky
Volume 13 of The Virginia Edition

Or, as I’ve always thought of it, that book that goes on after you think it’s over.

Farmer in the Sky is - at first blush - a standard Heinlein juvenile. It was serialized in Boy’s Life and published in book form between the far superior Red Planet and Between Planets. Your mileage may vary, of course. All three books pursue the basic young-man-does-things-to-grow-up but in FitS it’s more personal. The protagonist, Bill Lermer, isn’t dealing with politics or revolution or any larger issues, he is, instead trying to carve a life for himself.

While the book can be seen as very straightforward. Bill and his widowed father live in crowded California, decide to emigrate, have adventures, there’s a bit more to it.

To begin with, it’s a very dark book in terms of the details.

[ul]
[li]Bill’s mother is dead prior to the book’s beginning[/li][li]Bill rejects early his father deciding to remarry[/li][li]There’s a new sibling he hates at first[/li][li]Then he warms to her[/li][li]Then she dies[/li][li]There’s very rough food rationing in the United States[/li][li]One of Bill’s friends - also planning to pioneer - accepts a bribe from his father not to[/li][li]Two thirds of the colonists die in a disaster[/li][li]Bill gets the crap beat out of him by another boy and never gets his own back[/li][/ul]

Bill’s life isn’t necessarily a happy one on Earth, things are too crowded and food and such are limited. But he does greet the hard work of pioneering with a certain amount of gusto. And it’s him, make no mistake. His father, George, is an engineer and - while he intended to farm - he finds himself using his degree at the colony instead of proving ground. When it’s wiped out in the disaster it’s Bill’s pain we feel, not George’s or his wife.

Bill also reaches a point where, when his young sister dies in the disaster, it gets a mention and that’s that.

Still, while the forward to this one - written by Patterson and James - describes it as one of the best of the juveniles I find it one of the weakest because it refuses to end when it should. The narrative arc here is:
[ol]
[li]Bill and George decide to pioneer[/li][li]They travel to Ganymede to do so[/li][li]Bill proves the farm and learns to pioneer[/li][li]Disaster happens[/li][li]They regroup and learn more about themselves and what it means to be a pioneer[/li][/ol]
Voila.

Unfortunately, and this occurred to me at age 11 - even more so now as a experienced writer - Heinlein can’t leave it there. After that part, which would have been a good ending, there are two more chapters.

The first has Bill on a survey party - who’s watching the farm? - and getting a dose of ‘we’re here because a Malthusian disaster is coming to Earth’ from the scientist head of the survey party.

The second has Bill and a friend sort of deus ex machina discovering the leftover gear from an alien race - never before mentioned - hidden in a cave. That comes, literally, in my edition - in the last 10 pages of the book. That either needs to be a standard part of the background of the book or made central to the plot somehow or simply be eliminated. It feels like it was either some extra stuff that mostly got cut from the book or a chance to pad out the word count with non-relevant material.

If - as many seem to say - FitS is about the pioneer spirit and the ability to know when it’s time to GO and make a new life with parallels to the migration west during the 1700s and 1800s, this last bit would be as if the father in Little House on the Prairie discovered an APC in some cave or ravine or something. It’s out of place in the book and I’ve always been bewildered as to why it was in there.

Still, a pleasant read and enjoyable as an adventure and to learn a bit about farming. Major points for the basic story that the first pioneers won’t be intrepid explorers, but instead they’ll be people who can farm and grow food. That sort of thing isn’t written about enough.

Next up: TANSTAAFL!

Books Completed:
Vol 1: I Will Fear No Evil
Vol 2: Time Enough for Love
Vol 3: Starship Troopers
Vol 5: The Door Into Summer
Vol 8: Stranger in a Strange Land
Vol 9: How to Be a Politician
Vol 10: Rocket Ship Galileo
Vol 11: Space Cadet
Vol 13: Farmer in the Sky
Vol 14: Between Planets
Vol 17: The Star Beast
Vol 18: Tunnel in the Sky
Vol 19: Time For the Stars
Vol 20: Citizen of the Galaxy
Vol 22: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. I
Vol 23: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. II
Vol 24: Friday
Vol 26: Job: A Comedy of Justice
Vol 30: Sixth Column
Vol 32: Creating a Genre (short stories)
Vol 35: Glory Road
Vol 36: The Puppet Masters
Vol 44: Screen Writing of Robert A. Heinlein Vol. I

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Yeah, I never though Farmer was all that either. It just kinda sits there. The interplay about the apples and the apple tree are moderately entertaining, but the rest is done much better in other of Bob’s books.

Get to reading - next up is my favorite of anything RAH wrote.

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I have just ordered The Virginia Edition!

Between an inheritance from my late Father, & my annual bonus, I felt confident enough.

Ordered through Amazon, & they will donate $110 worth of Heinlein books to a Catholic High School I once attended.

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<licks chops, sharpens claws, smiles>

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To back up a bit, *Time Enough for Love *is probably my favorite. The initial story telling part of a very old man who has seen it all, and lived it all, develops a realization in Lazarus that his experiences have value and perhaps he isn’t quite ready to die yet.

I have always felt that the “The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail”, was a metaphor for the life of R.A.H. That David Lamb is Robert Heinlein commenting upon the way that fortune and fate had led him to the life he had. I read it that way when I was 17 years old and though I haven’t read the book for a few years, I still see it that way.

“The Tale of the Adopted Daughter” particularly appealed to me as a young man because of the pioneering aspects. Growing up in Oregon near the end of the Lewis and Clark Trail I have always been interested in the basic details of life on the frontier. It might have bogged down for other readers but I really liked that section. Dora’s last words as see hears the geese flying over head still choke me up.

Some of the other stuff where he veers off into typical Heinlein sexual fantasies take me out of the story.

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I’ve always been rather fond of Farmer in the Sky, because I like the pioneering part of it. But I’ll definitely agree that it’s good in spite of the tacked-on bit about the alien tech at the end, and would be stronger if it weren’t carrying that dead weight.

I like the bits that challenge expectations, but which are perfectly logical once you think about them, like the neighbors bringing over wheelbarrows full of garbage… because they’re generous and welcoming. That’s the kind of thing that makes for good science fiction.

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"The Tale of the Adopted Daughter and “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” are the only parts of the book I really liked.

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It’s true. The most interesting parts of the book are the nuts and bolts of farming as a pioneer under unusual circumstances. In this case even the soil needed to be grown.

Hell, it’s even possible to consider the farming techniques one of the focal points of the book. Like the movie Bull Durham - which is a baseball movie in which no score is ever mentioned - Farmer in the Sky is a farming book in which crops - except the apples - are never mentioned. In effect, Bill spends his time building a farm…not working it.

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Wait, I thought Bull Durham was all about scoring.

693

Har de har har

Though to bring it all full circle, in FitS it’s clear that young Bill will have his choice of smoking hot farmer’s daughters. He’s just completely oblivious - in that mid-20th century juvenile book kind of way - to his opportunities.

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Wasn’t there one smoking hot farmer’s daughter in particular who had already decided that he wasn’t going to have a choice? Been a while since I’ve read it.

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Indeed, Johnny Appleseed’s daughter Gretchen was full tilt for his farming frame. But he was oblivious. When she tried to arrange a picnic he told her she should invite her sister, too.

She didn’t take it well. Either he’s totally oblivious or he’s got brass ones, I’ll tell you that.

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We switch partners daily
To play as we please.

[GIRLS]
Twosies beats onesies,

[EMCEE]
But nothing beats threes.
I sleep in the middle,

[GIRL 1]
I’m left,

[GIRL 2]
Und I’m right,

[EMCEE]
But there’s room on the bottom
If you drop in some night.*

697

Good God, it is.

698

He can’t be as oblivious as Rod Walker, who never noticed that the “fellow” he was sharing a cave with was female

699

I think Heinlein had a bit of fun playing with the sexual mores that were required for a “boys book” in the 50s.

700

Towards the end of the book, where he is trying to decide whether to return to Earth for schooling or stay on Ganymede, Bill compares Gretchen very favorably to Earth girls (or what he imagined Earth girls would be like). I have always assumed that they would eventually get together, given that he ultimately decided to stay.