Three Heinlein Books

Cafe Society
1

This is a slight continuation of the discussion in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=337770&highlight=enderw24

But rather than resurrect a ten day old thread for what would essentially be a hijack on its original premise, I’ve decided to create a new one.

Recently Jonathan Chance sent me three book:
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
The Door into Summer
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I haven’t had the time to read that I’d like. I don’t get five hours of time to sit down and bang out a book and so unfortunately I have to do drastic things like read on my way to work (don’t worry, I walk) or in any bits and spurts I can. Consequently I’ve only finished the first on the list. I’ll finish the second this week no doubt and I’ll start on Moon sometime after I finish the monstrocity that will be A Feast of Crows (out in a week! yay!).

So I welcome all to participate as I discuss these books. I don’t mind getting into larger themes of what is a Heinlein book but understand that, save Spacesuit and the Cat book from the first thread, I haven’t read ANY Heinlein and would appreciate you not to spoil the upcoming two books.

OK then with that said, I’ll post this and discuss Have Spacesuit, Will Travel next.

2

HSWT is one of his juveniles. My favorite part was the “hearing” that Pee-Wee and Kip, (along with Iunio and the caveman) went through. I also thought that Heinlein’s mild slap at modern education methods, near the beginning of the book, was amusing. Not my favorite juvenile, but I like it.

Now, I liked all his juveniles, but my favorite was Space Cadet. How the young Patrolmen worked out the cultural differences with the Venusians was intriguing.

A common theme in his juveniles, and several adults as well, was having the courage to take a stand, even if if was dangerous.

3

I won’t spoil anything but I reckon you should go with The Door into Summer next. As far as I’m concerned it’s Heinlein’s most consistently entertaining book. Why it hasn’t been made into a movie, while the Puppet Masters, Starship Troopers and Destination Moon have is a mystery.

4

Have Space Suit, Will Travel was the first Heinlein book I ever read—at age 8—and I’ve read it literally hundreds of times since. Awesome book, with unforgettable characters and a true sense of wonder. One thing that always strikes me is just how unself-conscious and humble Kip is.

5

I remember being VASTLY entertained by* The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress*; I read it several times. Don’t recognize the other two though.

6

Well the first thing that came to me as I was reading this is that it’s really not a kids book. I was warned of that already but I still expected a novel that read appropriate to its age group. The inside cover said ages 7 and up. I defy a single seven year old on this planet, living, dead or not yet born, to fully comprehend the references and asides that this novel offered. I’m four times that age and I can’t even make that claim. I also wonder how much a 7 year old would identify with a kid graduating from high school and trying to decide what he wants to do with his life.

At least I get why sci-fi geeks love Heinlein. The random math tidbits he’ll throw in, the way he’ll get the minute details of a spacesuit right, the nuances of space travel he’ll include will sate the Hard Sci-fi’s appetite.

What I also found amazing is the number of details about space travel he got right even though it was written in the dawn of the space age. It made it all the more jarring at how much he got wrong in his predictions considering the book, though he never officially names a date, essentially takes place in what is now present day. There are no moon bases. We’ve progressed a tad further than slide rules and black&white tvs. We don’t go to the local drug shoppe for a malted with our main squeeze.

Heinlein also seems to love the needless, extended compliment from one character to another. It shows up here in Spacesuit, and in The Cat who walks through walls it downright brings the novel to a standstill at times. I get that character X thinks character Y is the most wondiferous, sensational, brilliant, lovely, generous person ever in the history of history but you don’t need to keep reminding us of this every few pages.

All that said, it was a pretty fun story. Have spacesuit will travel. The book lives up to its title. It read fast. It introduced characters and entire alien cultures without feeling the need to explain EVERYTHING about them. They just were and you accepted them because they fit into the story. The twists and turns made sense…in a completely illogical sort of way.

I can get more in depth as I see what others might want to discuss. But overall a thumbs up for me.

7

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely not a kids’ book. It’s a great read. If you liked your first Heinlein “juvenile”, you’ll love this.

8

'Cause nothing gets blown up adn there are no aliens in it. It’s a great book, mind you…it just wouldn’t make a popular movie.

Save The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress for last; it is the most complex and involved of the three, and makes a good pair up with the movie The Battle of Algiers, if you do the film thing.

If you like that, check out …If This Goes On, a novella which can be found in The Past Through Tomorrow or Revolt In 2100. It is much underrated but an excellent story of revolution.

Stranger

9

After Moon, try Revolt in 2100. Three semi-connected novellas. The aforementioned …If This Goes On * (excellent), Coventry* (good), and Misfit(good). They set up a number of things in the Future History saga. Then you can move on to Methusela’s Children, which introduces Lazarus Long, whom you will either love or hate. :smiley:

Moon is by far my favorite Heinlein.

If you want to try more of the juveniles, go for Farmer In The Sky or Star Beast.

10

I loved the Wormfaces and the Mother Thing. And of course Oscar.

11

But not him.

12

Double Star is a Heinlein book that has one of the more alien concepts in all his works, an honest politician no less!

But seriously folks, I loved that book, and all the other titles mentioned so far.

13

I read HSWT when there still was a space race, sorta (early 70’s). It didn’t seem dated then and must have been cutting edge in the late 50’s. The idea of a moon base didn’t seeem at all far fethed at the time.

Up to TMiaHM, I read most of Heinlein as he was trying, and succeding to write the fiction as if it was contemporary to the time the action takes place. This is vastly different from most other SF writers and one of the major things that set Heinein apart.

14

If I was recommending Heinlein to somebody who hadn’t read him before, I’d go with Double Star, Citizen of the Galaxy, Podkayne of Mars, The Door Into Summer (with the acknowlegement that there’s a little creepiness in the romance), Starship Troopers, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

15

Funny, I only really like his juveniles and short stories. I would be more likely to recommend things like Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and Starman Jones (the first Heinlein book I ever read.) Similarly, I’d recommend The Menace From Earth (with the titular story being one of my favorite short stories) and The Green Hills of Earth sooner than I would any of his other novels. Though Beyond This Horizon* is an interesting read and benefits somewhat (in my opinion) of him not trying to jam it into his Future History. Job: A Comedy of Justice* drove me nuts because things jumped too much without adequate explanation. The same thing drove me nuts with The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, The Number of the Beast, and Stranger in a Strange Land. Oddly, I don’t care for several his juveniles–Farmer in the Sky, Podkayne of Mars, The Star Beast, and Tunnel in the Sky stick out in my mind.

Perhaps some of his stuff just didn’t age well for someone in my generation. The Puppet Masters is hurt by movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and it can be kinda hard to suspend disbelief for solar system colonization when you were born 10 years after Apollo 17. The fact that Heinlein pretty much managed to completely miss computers has always given me trouble. Heck, now that I think about it, though I’ve read just about everything published by Heinlein, I wound up not liking quite a lot of it. And I’ve never been a fan of authors trying to cram early works into some sort of continuity with later works.

16

I think you’re being a little harsh here. First off, why should Heinlein lose points for not predicting semiconductor computers? If you read his stories closely, he’s got computers all over the place, they’re just not called that: The library system in The Puppet Masters is obviously computerized; the majority of his early computers were based on the real computers of his day: large, bulky, limited machines. Excellent for number-crunching, but hard to work with. Like Brainiac, Eniac, et al.

As for your specific criticism about The Puppet Masters, it’s a little hard to claim it loses something to a latter work and make that stand up. It’s like saying that, to choose another example, H.P. Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu loses something because of Stephen King’s It. I understand how you can come to one before the other, but faulting the earlier work seems a bit unfair. :wink:

(If you want a real kick-me-out-of-suspension-of-disbelief issue for The Puppet Masters, consider the unlikelyhood of an alien parasite being able to control the nervous system of an organism that evolved on a whole different planet. That’s always been the kicker there for me.)

As for the whole: “The world doesn’t work that way, so the story sucks,” argument: I think this is an entirely unfair criticism. SF, in particular, pushes the boundaries of what is known about the universe. By the very nature of that, authors are going to make guesses or stories that seem to fit what’s surmised so far, but doesn’t stand up to further examination. One of my favorite of Heinlein’s Juveniles is Space Cadet, and much of the action takes place on a jungle-world Venus. We know, now, that this is not the case, but at the time that it was written, this was the accepted explaination for the constant cloud cover over the planet. Other authors, paying close attention to the known theories made similar mistakes: Larry Niven talks about Pluto being the most dense object in the Solar System, and that the darkside of Mercury is the coldest spot in the Solar System, both of which are now known to be untrue. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust, an excellent story and engineering puzzle, failed the test of reconizing the effect of vacuum welding, which means that the loose dust that the book depends upon for the whole setting doesn’t exist.

I guess I’m just saying it seems silly, when reading a ‘what if’ story, to dismiss the story as art, when the world it was based in has been proven to be just another Neverneverland.

For the OP, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed HSWT. And I really want to thank Jonathan Chance, again for helping you learn that all Heinlein isn’t as flawed as Cat. And I’ll suggest, too, that if you like these three - try Double Star, next.

17

Didn’t notice that AT ALL in HSSWT. Don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Illogical isn’t a term I would use to describe that book.

18

Yeah, I realized after posting that there should have been a seperate thread started with half the contents of my post. Maybe I’ll do so. I can’t remember if I’ve started a thread before about what drives me nuts about old science fiction–if I have, it’s too old to be resurrected.

My apologies for the hijack. I should’ve said that, surprisingly (because I had never really thought about it), there were actually very few of Heinlein’s works I would recommend beyond his short stories and some of his juveniles and left it at that.

19

Enderw24
Very happy you liked HSSWT. The next 2 books are better.
I will follow-up Jonathan Chance’s offer and send you another 3 when you are ready.
I have most of the books in my collection and we can try and come up with the best 3 based on what you liked and didn’t like about Door & Moon. I am leaning towards sending Glory Road. If you are interested, my email is public.
HSSWT was the second RAH book I read, Rocketship Galileo was the first.
Door & Moon are probably my favorite Heinlein books.

20

Ender, I’ll take up the three after jrfranchi. I’ve got multiple copies of most of RAH’s works, because I give them to students all the time.