#robert a heinlein
Book #106 of 2018:
The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
This 1957 sci-fi romp is fun, but it bears many problematic hallmarks of the genre fiction written by white men in that era. Minor setbacks are blithely compared to slavery and rape, female characters are treated patronizingly, and the 30-year-old protagonist kind of falls in love with a preteen girl. (She asks him to marry her before he enters cryogenic sleep. He says that if she still feels that way when she turns 21, she can go into suspended animation herself at that point, and they can get married when they wake up in the future together. It’s a pretty small part of the overall plot, and you can argue that the character ultimately has adult agency, but their romance verges on predator grooming in a way that personally makes me uncomfortable.)
If you can get past all of that, this novel really is a neat little adventure story from the golden age of science-fiction, with clever time loop shenanigans and some imaginatively goofy visions of the then-future. It especially sparkles anytime the hero shows his utter devotion to his pet cat, as when he insists that it get cryo-frozen along with him. But the book is very much a product of its time, and some modern readers may wish to give it a miss.
★★★☆☆
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Darrell K. Sweet.
You might be wondering why it seems so many 60s-70s paperbacks had yellow backgrounds. This is because, in defiance of logic, it was widely believed in the publishing world that books with yellow covers sold better. However, whenever a publisher mixed it up and made a red or blue cover, that book sold stratospherically well. Why? All the yellow covers were background that made them stand out and pop.
Venturing into the Lost World with nothing but a staff? Good thing he’s got an escape lined up – he needs it.
Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution – human telepathy.
Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth. The only problem is that one of them has to stay behind, and that one will grow old while the other explores the depths of space. Always a master of insight into the human consequences of future technologies, this is one of Heinlein’s triumphs.
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Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
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