That is a great example. The writers were arguing over anything and everything until their senior member walked in. They who show nothing great respect, showed him great respect. It was a great scene and definately Heinlein he was writing about.
Sorry, I found this in wiki
tips hat
My apologies, Ma’am.
And Ender, just think how all of us Heinlein fans felt when the Roomba was invented!
Well I was taking too long on this book going in bits and pieces so I sat down Friday evening and ran through the last 1/3 of the book in a couple of hours. As I said before, it’s a really fast read. I also thought this book was better in terms of both plot and storytelling as compared to Spacesuit. Here are a few observations.
-
It’s interesting what was predicted to be mainstream in the “future.” Future, since the book was written in 1958, is defined by two times in this book, 1970 and 2000. Interesting predictions that didn’t pan out. Canada swallowing the UK for instance or various wars and struggles throughout. There were predictions he got right. Test tube babies. His invention of the Roomba (though his model from 1970 did a heck of a lot more than our 2005 model does). The crash of 1987 was particularly interesting.
But also a number predictions were almost laughable in their creation. Predictions of technology run a fine line between being way too advanced for even the future or completely outdated in its premise. Everyday personalized robots that can do hundreds of household tasks and run on what are essentially vacuum tubes? That one hit both sides of the line simultaneously! Computerized newspapers with coding in them to allow one to instantly flip the pages, which were printed using three dimensional type? And I’ll ignore the greatest prediction of all, suspended animation by 1970, because without it you can’t have a story!
But these predictions give me new insight not only in to “predictions of the future” made today but also as to what types of predictions will and won’t be mocked when year X actually arrives. -
I wish the back of the cover didn’t say anything about time travel. Time travel didn’t show up until the last 100 pages of the book and cueing me in to the fact that Dan B. Davis would go back in time allowed me to pick up on all those hints I never should have gotten as a first time reader.
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Once again we run into the concept of a female who is too young by societal standards to do anything with the protagonist. So Heinlein’s solution is to instantly zap her age forward just enough that she’s suddenly legal. In Cat, the girl goes from 13 to 18, which isn’t quite as bad as here in Door, where the girl goes from 11 to 21. It’s good to know that science has a solution to all of life’s dilemmas and every technological advance can aid one’s ability to sleep with a minor.
It also tends to make no sense, narration-wise. You get to the “future” and suddenly think “boy that 11 year old I knew for a couple of years way back when, why,. I think I’m going to marry her!” What? There are only three reasons you do something like this in a story: 1) to show how much of a freak your protagonist is. 2) To play upon it and twist the plot in some way or 3) both. Heinlein chose option 4: to pretend Dan B. Davis is an otherwise normal kind of guy who gets to have his cake and eat it too. -
So the intriguing questions about time travel: Is time continuous? Can we change the past or is it the way it is and always will be. Dan oftentimes got his ideas from himself and made conscious choices to do things as he knew they must be done for that is how he saw them in the “past/future.” So did he do them a certain way because he chose not to change things or because he literally couldn’t? It appears as if Heinlein was trying to show in this book that time is uniform and any changes that will be made to it have always been made. One timeline. Yet…Dan continued to have choices and he even muses that he might slit his past’s own throat just to see what would happen. The key is that he chose and he chose to keep with what he knew to be correct. Does that really make it a choice then?
Anyway, just a few long thoughts I wanted to share.
I’ll start the discussion on the next 3 books.
I think another Juvenile, another from the 60’s and then a collection.
What say all.
My choices would be:
The Rolling Stones
Glory Road
6xH which includes
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (1942)
The Man Who Traveled in Elephants (1957)
“—All You Zombies—” (1959)
They
Our Fair City Robert A. Heinlein
“…And He Built a Crooked House”
All You Zombies is a very important story in Science Fiction History.
Glory Road is a good read and a good romp.
Rolling Stones will re-introduce him to a character he should meet shortly.
Jim
I’d recommend:
Tunnel In The Sky (juvie)
Double Star (Short novel)
Methuselah’s Children/Revolt in 2100 (contains the serials Methuselah’s Children and If This Goes On with the short stories Coventry, and Misfit.)
or
The Past Through Tomorrow, containing all of the above plus some other Future History stories including his first published story, Life-Line, Delilah and the Space-Rigger, The Green Hills of Earth, and the amusing The Menace from Earth (in which the protagonist from Cliff and the Calories is translated to a lunar setting).
Stranger In A Strange Land is obligatory at some point, but don’t be in a big rush. As previously discussed I’d recommend avoiding I Will Fear No Evil, and I’m none to fond of Beyond This Horizon, Sixth Column, and Farnham’s Freehold. (I can’t say much for Glory Road, but it’s a popular selection so chalk that up to variations in taste.)
Stranger
Either of the previous lists is a good one. Tunnel In The Sky is one of my personal favorites, but so is Double Star. Read them both, and Methuselah’ Children/Revolt In 2100. Save Glory Road for sometime when you are sick of the conventions of heroic fantasy.
Well, I’ll merge them and switch juvies - partially just for the hell of it. If voting on Tunnel vs. Stones though, I’d go with Tunnel based on personal preference ( something about the Stone family annoys me a bit, though I can’t quite put my finger on what ).
Double Star
Citizen of the Galaxy
6 X H
- Tamerlane
Another excellent juvenile I’d recommend is Starman Jones. One of my favorites.
Also, I’d put in a vote for Citizen of the Galaxy. It’s a pretty good bridge between his juveniles and his adult fiction. And a great story.
Running tally of suggestions:
1 The Rolling Stones
1 Glory Road
2 6xH
1 Starman Jones
2 Citizen of the Galaxy
3 Double Star
2 Tunnel In The Sky
2 Methuselah’ Children/Revolt In 2100
I don’t have my copy of The Past Through Tomorrow, I loaned it out and it did not return. So we can skip voting on it for the next 3.
Keep us updated Enderw24
Jim
Since I guess I really should drop in on Heinlein threads, I’ll just second a few. I’d start any recommendation list with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which should be obvious 
) but I’ll add:
Citizen of the Galaxy
Double Star
Glory Road
The Puppet Masters
The Rolling Stones
I’ll also toss out Orphans of the Sky. It’s one of his juveniles but still has its moments.
Podkayne of Mars- A juvenile.
Double Star- A short novel, not quite a juvenile.
Glory Road- A grown up, though not quite sci-fi book.
Hard to pick grown ups that you don’t have to have read other grown ups, dang it.
Not a juvenile in any strict sense of the term, though it does involve a young adult discovering the truth about his world, which makes it a good “coming of age” story. Probably the weakest early Heinlein, it was comprised of two stories appended to the end of the Future History, “Universe” and its sequel “Commonsense” [sic], published as novellas (or novelets or whatever that length is called) in Astounding and joined together to make up the short novel. Its similarity to the juveniles results from 1940 magazine taboos, not from an intent to “write a juvenile.”
Is there an update Enderw24?
Great thread.
Is it just me or does Friday anticipate the internet?
My favourite is probably ‘The Number of the Beast’ if only because of the alternative Earth with The Great Game being carried out by Great Britain and Imperial Russia on Mars. A fun concept that I wish he’d run with a little further.
Friday does indeed anticipate surfing the internet.
Not juveniles, but *Assignment in Eternity, Beyond this Horizon, * and Revolt in 2100 are also enjoyable.
Heinlein’s juveniles inspired me to get a slide rule and learn about logs and exponents as a kid. Heinlein was the first “adult” author who inspired me to read all of his available books. I kept up through The Cat Who Walks through Walls and then stopped except for the uncut Stranger in a Strange Land.
I have a preference for the transitional novels, where there are interesting female characters who have not yet become busty semen-seeking babes.