That’s definitely characteristic of Heinlein. The moral of the story (or at least what I take away from it) is that you should surround yourself with people you admire, and appreciate them for their gifts, and tell them about it every once and a while (though probably less often than every few pages.) I’ve had to “train” some of my friends to accept heartfelt compliments, but I like to tell my friends now and then why I think they’re great. You can also see the influence of Heinlein on polyamourous subculture even in his G-rated juvies. Even in nonsexual relationships, polies seem to throw themselves into loving their friends more intensely, or at least they talk about that love more openly.
'Course, it’s also characteristic of him to be just a little bit too in love with his own characters, and to want to beat you over the head occasionally with R. A. Heinlein’s Definiton of a Good Person.
And I forgot to mention that one of my favorite Heinlein quotes of all time is in Have Spacesuit:
“Son, any statement that begins with ‘I really ought to—’ is suspect. It means you haven’t analyzed your motives. … Find out what you want to do, then do it. Never talk yourself into doing something you don’t want.”
(Man, I love Amazon’s search in book feature! I almost had it from memory, but it was nice to get the exact wording.)
I have great difficulty being objective about Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. It was not merely the first Heinlein I ever read, but the first novel of any kind. It holds a sort of mythic quality in my memory, as the gate that led me into a vast new world. It was the first kiss in my lifelong love of books.
However, even making an effort to set that aside, I think it holds up well both as SF and as a coming-of-age tale. I think that was the thing that resonated most strongly with me, even though I was very young at the time–the idea of being pulled away from the familiar support of home and family and having to take a stand on your own. That seemed to me, at the time, to crystallize the essence of growing up.
The character of the Mother Thing is an element that still fascinates me when I return to the book. The idea of a kind, caring, protective being who is, frankly, very alien is one of the more important ones in the book, I think. It strikes directly against the “different is bad/scary” mindset that so often plagues us.
Everything you say I consider very, very true. (It was not my first SF, but one of the earliest.) But I want to add one point: In my opinion, it is the perfect first SF novel, to introduce someone to the genre. It’s fallen slightly from that role in the 50 years it’s been in print, but still is damn near ideal.
Consider: From the 50’s perspective, a very-near-future setting, Small town America, with TV linking it to the greater world, in which we have a single small base on the Moon. It starts quite literally in one’s own backyard. Then by steps, the scene moves to the Moon, Pluto, a planet of Vega, and the Small Magellanic Cloud, the significance of what’s happening increases in the same geometric proportion, Kip is called on to grow and take on adult decisions and responsibility, and through it all a sense of what it means to be human remains constant.
If that doesn’t simultaneously trigger your sense of wonder and expand your horizons of what’s possible (“Science fiction is the literature of the possible.”), then reload your cartridge of Grand Theft Auto and give up reading; you’re brain dead.
I came in here to say exactly this- even the age is the right year. The first 50 & last 50 pages are near-perfect, and the rest are still damn good.
I’ll throw in with the “Door Into Summer is my favorite” crowd- it’s got about 20 pages near the middle that could be cut, but they’re slow-going exposition rather than worthless. I’d probably recommend a book of short stories next- The Past Through Tomorrow isn’t a bad choice.
As for Job-It’s hard to recommend. At the very least read Voltaire’s Candide first- so you get an idea of what RAH’s parodying. If you can find copies, Faust & Jurgen add something- it’s basically the latter book with the main character willing to admit he’s wrong and getting a happy ending. If you’ve read these, then I’d say go for it.
A man after my own heart. I also think that Spacesuit is a bit overrated (though still not bad), and my favorite juvie is also Space Cadet. I think my favorite aspect of it was the sense of “responsible responsibility”, if you will, which pervades it. A common theme in Heinlein’s books, but more prevelant in Space Cadet than the others, I think. And I get shivers down my spine whenever they call the roll… “‘Dahlquist?’ ‘I answer for him’”.
Quoth OtakuLoki:
With regards to the dark side of Mercury, it was actually between the story’s acceptance and its publication that the news came that Mercury was not locked. Niven frantically contacted the publisher, and apologized that the story would have to be canned. The publisher (I can’t remember who) said that true or not, it was still a good story, and he’d still publish it.
jrfranchi, silenus. I thank you both very much for your offers and I’ll definitely be taking you up on them if the offers are still available down the line. Up on my plate thus far is Door, then the George RR Martin book, then Moon, and finally I’ll be tackling a different genre with The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins though I doubt that’s the kind of book you sit down and read through from start to finish. After that and a short story collection I’m still working my way though I should be ready for more.
RikWriter, perhaps illogical isn’t the right term, per se, but I doubt if the sudden introduction of an invading alien species followed by entire groupings of aliens with the ability to bend space, time and entire planets across axis not known to man to be what one would consider logical. (hi run on!) Here was a nice story of a boy with dreams of space travel off for a jaunt through the countryside and then BAM! Two alien crafts land near him and the entire structure of the story changes. It wasn’t bad by any means, merely a tad unexpected. It didn’t quite fit with what had happened thus far in the story and it kept getting stranger as we went along.
Oh, and there seemed to be a bit of fuzzy math as well. First, Kip assumes that Wormface’s people have faster than light travel merely because he can extend an equation far enough along that acceleration must break 188,000 m/s. This would be like saying that because the Porche is capable of going 0-60 in 5 seconds then in 1 minute it will be traveling at 1200 MPH. Doesn’t quite work that way.
Second, the mass of Pluto is .002 that of Earth and your weight there is 1/15th that of Earth’s. So it seems strange that Kip couldn’t jump the full 18 feet required to reach the top of room he was trapped in on Wormface’s base.
Chronos, I may be mistaken, but I believe the guy you’re speaking of was Charles Sheffield. I say this because he wrote the various introductions to the collection called the Super Hugos where I think I first heard that story.
Balance, it’s funny that you’ve mentioned that. Your experience is very similar to mine with regard to Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Although I cut my teeth on kids’ SF (such as The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and the Danny Dunn books), I consider HSWT to be the first adult SF I ever read (Yes, I’m aware that it’s one of the “juveniles”. That’s a silly designation. Well… maybe not silly, but a designation that’s more of a historical curiosity than anything else. His “juveniles” had adult themes, conflict, moral/ethical dilemmas, etc. Pretty much everything but the sex.) So I, too, have a soft spot for HSWT.
BTW, somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to remember that the book once had another title. Am I hallucinating that? Is there another Heinlein that was renamed and I’m confusing them? Have I simply lost my mind? (Don’t be silly, chum. Of course you have.)
Enderw24, I had much the same reaction as you did regarding the plot, but my “bam!” moment is when Kip wakes up on Vega. Until then it’s a straight action-adventure against a bunch of BEMs, then it takes a sudden turn to a sort-of intergalactic courtroom drama. It doesn’t hurt the story, but it can throw you a bit off your stride. Regarding Pluto, don’t forget that until (someone correct me if I’m wrong) 1977 or so, Pluto was thought to be much larger - somewhere between Mercury and Mars sized. I believe that this was due to it’s high reflectivity and the fact that previous telescopic observation couldn’t resolve well enough to distinguish Charon as a seperate body.
I don’t think so. It’s been a long time since I read the book, but I thought his conclusion was merely something like, “Why, these monsters had star travel!” I think he was thinking along the lines of being able to accelerate to significant fractions of the speed of light and get from star to star in a matter of years, not centuries. When the Mother Thing’s ship arrived FTL, Kip could not believe it. He was not prepared for that at all.
Was the mass of Pluto well known when Heinlein wrote the novel?
I cannot wait to see what Ender has to say about The Door Into Summer (and if we want to start discussing it before he reads it, I’d be highly in favor, recommending spoilers so as not to give away plotline for him ahead of time). What I think about it can best be inferred from noting the upper right of this post.
Well I’ve only had an hour to read so far but it’s an extremely fast read. I’m 50 pages into it. Not much has happened yet, obviously, but one thing I found to be hilarious.
Heinlein invented the Roomba!
He really holds a patent on the waterbed and was quite brilliant.
His history is fairly amazing and the old Sci-Fi writers hold him on a very high pedestal. Larry Niven will sneak in a character who is Heinlein into his stories sometimes.
HSWT has one of my favorite types of end-bits in it… they’re back on earth, things are settling back to normal, and Kip’s bummed about his college chances, when the mildly-deus-ex-machina governmental official points out, “He went on a trip to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and he can’t get into MIT? I think we can help with that…”
Nope. There is no patent on the water bed; the concept of it is in the public domain, owing to Heinlein having written the details of the concept into a novel (Stranger In A Strange Land, although he may have written something about it earlier). Later on, someone else tried to patent the waterbed but was rejected because it was already in public domain. I think Heinlein (and his then-future wife) do have their names on a couple of patents regarding attachment methods/fasteners for Plexiglass windows, but those patents are “owned” by the Department of The Navy (and have doubtless passed into the public domain by now).
I don’t believe Heinlein ever patented any of the devices he details in his book, but he was famous (or perhaps notorious) for working them out in detail before writing about them. His training as a mechanical engineer becomes apparent when he talks about mechanical linkage design (The Door Into Summer), gyroscopic orientation control (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls), or a progressively boosted howitzer (…If This Goes On). The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is full of technical information and descriptions. He’s not the only scifi writer to do this–Clarke also jams in very exacting technical details–but Heinlein manages to segue hard science with three dimensional characters, something very few authors can manage.
And yeah, Niven (and many other post-Golden Age) writers will reference back to Heinlein; in the long-short Spirals (can be found in the compilation Limits) the Admiral MeLeve character is clearly an avatar for Heinlein (former naval officer who wrote science fiction stories), and there is another story, the title of which escapes me, in which he has Senator William Proxmire paying a scientist to go back in time and cure Heinlein of tuberculosis so that he never leaves the Navy and inspires the space program…with unexpected results.
Heinlein (and several other noted scifi writers, including the authors themselves) appear - renamed but easily recognizable - in a scene in Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall, when the President consults with them as to how to respond to an alien invasion.
