Robert A Heinlein's "Double Star" (novel, politics): When an imposter became the ruler

This is a fast paced action story with a lot of election politics. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to because at some places the world view is too provincially Western; the thing that irritated me most was a small passage on the classification of world's languages - confidently told & totally bogus.

Story summary.

Here is a solar Empire spanning many worlds, dominated by humans though there are aliens on other worlds. It's a monarchy similar to British one - emperor is supreme but is a rubberstamp, & sits in a city on the moon. The parliament has the power & is elected; aliens can vote but must choose a human representative. Head of government is the "Supreme Minister", probably majority leader in Parliament.

Current ruling party has arranged the kidnapping of the leader of opposition at a time where he's absolutely required to be present at a Martian ceremony. So his underlings will recruit an actor, Lawrence Smith aka Lorenzo Smythe, to act as an imposter at the function. One thing will lead to another & new situations will keep coming up & the imposter will end up becoming the politician he's impersonating.

The story is, first & foremost, the character study of this actor, & evolution of his personality.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, Feb/Mar/Apr 1956.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Winner of Hugo Award 1957 in novel category.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Heinlein fanboy

Steve Fahnestalk recounts his recent visit to Heinlein hometown, including some pictures of the house Heinlein was born in, & of a reading room added to local library in his memory.

[via SF Signal]

Free audio fiction: Some readings & adaptations of various stories of Heinlein

@Quasar Dragon.

"Astounding Science-Fiction" (British Edition), August 1939 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Three rather well-known stories here - "The Blue Giraffe", "Heavy Planet", & "Life-Line".

Where I've read a story, my rating appears in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. Link on an author's name fetches more fiction by author.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line" (A): Soothsaying considered harmful...
   
   This is the first published story of Heinlein.
2. [novelette] L Sprague de Camp's "The Blue Giraffe" (B); humor: When a man was honored with the opportunity to marry an uplifted baboon!
3. [ss] Lee Gregor's "Heavy Planet" (B): "A dead spaceship drifted down to the heavy planet--& whichever side would learn her secrets, ruled the planet!"
4. [ss] Nelson S Bond's "Stowaway" (B): A Venusian electricity-eating "ampie", a pet of a Venusian stowaway aboard a Venus to Earth ship, has got loose & wrecking havoc to ship's systems. Until they figure out it need not be a pest but can be an essential part of the ship...
5. [serial - 1/2] Frederick Engelhardt's "General Swamp, C.I.C.": "The General that ruled that war was--Swamp--swamp that made half Venus!"
6. [novelette] Lester del Rey's "The Luck of Ignatz": "Meet Ignatz--who sleeps in boiling water or on superheated steam pipes!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XXXIII No 6.
No mention of editor's name on Toc page (but it's probably John Campbell).
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link fetches a RAR file that contains target CBR, probably to work around file the naming constraints of hosting service.
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (whole issues only); old pulps; 1930s.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", May 1941 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

I've read stories of Heinlein, Asimov & Russell elsewhere; am posting this only for the two unread shorts - "Fish Story" & "Subcruiser".

Links on author fetch more stories of author. Where I've a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. My rating for stories I've read & still remember appears in brackets.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "Universe"; MP3 of radio adaptation: "an unique & fascinating civilization in a spaceship that missed its goal!"
   
   Collected in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A" (ed Ben Bova).
   
   See also: its sequel, "Common Sense", in Astounding, October 1941.
2. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory" (as by Anson MacDonald): "a story of the very near & grimly probably future. Man's apt to have that irresistible weapon soon--& no method of control!"
3. [ss] Isaac Asimov's "Lier!": "Herbie was a robot; he was also a mistake. Somewhere in the assembly, an accident made him telepathic, with inevitable & disturbing consequences!"
4. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score" (A): A passenger ship on earth to Venus voyage is hit by a meteor, & is now headed for Sun! 
5. [ss] Vic Phillips & Scott Roberts' "Fish Story" (B): A "fishing" adventure on Venus.
6. [ss] Harry Walton's "Subcruiser" (B): Foiling a warship hijack.
7. [serial - 2/2] L Sprague de Camp's "The Stolen Dormouse": "In a slightly delirious world of the future where noble Sir Businessman feuds, & the times are more than a little out of joint."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XXVII No 3".
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Related: Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell, old "pulps", 1940s.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), August 1956 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

I've read "Exploration Team" & "Minor Ingradient" elsewhere before, but don't recall much of them now.

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Herbert L Cooper's "A Nice Little Niche" (B): When vitamin K craving alien bacteria invaded human guts...
2. [ss] Algis Budrys' "Man in the Sky" (B): Cold engineering vs public opinion.
   
   It's a story about early spaceflight, before there was space flight.
3. [novelette] Murray Leinster's "Exploration Team": "The perfect machine for exploring a new plant would, of course, be self-repairing, self-maintaining, able to construct its own repair parts from local materials, & even able to replace itself with a new unit..."
4. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Minor Ingradient": "A critically necessary lesson any true officer must learn is the crushing burden it is to be Master of a slave..."
5. [serial - 2/3] Robert Heinlein's "Double Star": "Lorenzo, the conceited pipsqueak, was stretched & inflated to fill a mold. But Lorenzo, while conceited beyond question--was not a fool!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XII No 8 (British Edition)".
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link points to a RAR file that contains target CBR, probably to work around some hosting service file naming constraints.
Related: Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell, old "pulps", 1950s.

"Astounding Science-Fiction" (British Edition), June 1940 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

I'd read Heinlein's story long back & liked. I have since read its criticism: that it's an impractical idea. Not only did I like the story for its own sake, but Mumbaikars might see something of Mumbai here: a long city organized along its public transport artery. Even the constraint Mumbai's planners often express in public when the issue of increasing carrying capacity of "locals" is being discussed has something of this story in it: peak hour frequency is determined by minimum safe distance that must be maintained between two trains on the same track. This story removes this minimum distance constraint!

Last two stories - Knight's & Vincent's - are both minor, but with uncommon methods of presentation: Vincent's is told by someone still uncomfortable with English, Knight's is put together as a historical record of dubious authenticity.

Where I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Link on author fetches more fiction of author. My rating is in brackets. Where I'm aware of a story's availability elsewhere on the internet, I include that link too.

Table of contents (best first).

1. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" (A); download radio adaptation: A world where conveyer type moving "roads" are the norm, & cities are organized along the length of the road. You don't drive your car on the road; you just get on the road & get down at appropriate place, tram like.
2. [novelette] Douglas Drew's "The Carbon Eater" (A): Neutralizing a carbon-eating poison gas.
3. [ss] Norman L Knight's "The Testament of Akubii" (B): Adventure on a world where sulfur plays the role that oxygen plays on earth, & has practically no oxygen. Combined with a variation of "two men stranded in a boat with food enough (till rescue) for only one".
   
   It has unusual presentation, however. Put together from unreliable historical record.
4. [ss] Harl Vincent's "Deputy Correspondent" (B): Why did the mythical island of Mu vanish, & how to bring it back.
   
   Told by someone not proficient in English. It didn't come in my way; not sure how native English readers will react to it.
   
   This story is a precursor to James Blish's oft-cited "Cities in Flight" series of stories. Blish replaces Mu with New York City.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XXV No 9.
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link fetches a RAR file that contains target CBR, probably to work around file the naming constraints of hosting service.
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (whole issues only); old pulps; 1940s.

"Galaxy Science Fiction", March 1952 (ed H L Gold) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Where I am aware of a story elsewhere, I include that link too. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. Links on author fetch more works of author.

1. [novelet] Robert A Heinlein's "The Year of the Jackpot".
2. [ss] H B Fyfe's "Manners of the Age"; download: "With everyone gone elsewhere, Earth was perfect for gracious living--only there was nothing gracious about it!"
3. [ss] Jerry Sohl's "The Seventh Order" aka "The 7th Order"; download: "History is filled with invincible conquerers. This one from space was genuinely omnipotent, but that never keeps humanity from resisting!"
4. [ss] Damon Knight's "Catch That Martian" (B); download: A "Martian" in New York is turning people into ghosts!
5. [serial - 3/3] Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man".

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol 3 No 6.
Download whole issue from Internet Archive (does not include pages for 3 stories - "The Year of the Jackpot", "Catch That Martian", & "The Demolished Man").
Related: Fiction from Galaxy (whole issues only); old pulps.

Robert Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" (novel, alien invasion): Parasitic aliens are taking over humanity

I wonder if the story is primarily a criticism of the Soviet communism. Author makes several uncharitable remarks on the subject, which make me suspect.

It's very readable, though. Action packed, hard to put down.

Note that there are at least 3 versions of this story:

1. Original (long version) that was printed for the first time in early 1990s. This post is based on this version.
2. A shortened novel version that was published sometime in 1950s.
3. A serialized version of this shortened version, that appeared in Galaxy after extensive editing by its editor, H L Gold.

Story summary.

Think brainwashing parasites. If you are infected, you are aware of your identity, but your body does parasite's bidding.

Parasites are intelligent alien invaders from Titan, with amoeba-like flexible body. Their preferred method of infecting a human host is by extending a tendril to any part of victim's body to paralyze the host; eventually attaching themselves to the upper half of the spinal cord of victim in the form of a shaft a couple of inches thick & half the spine long (& hidden underneath the shirt). They can multiply very fast where there is opportunity. They prefer infecting humans, because that's the path to ruling earth. But when needed, they can infect all sorts of animals too.

At a place in the story, it is surmised that they probably are a single huge organism with common memory. And the individual parasites have some sort of urge to sync their memories often - by physically attaching to each other. How they evolved like this is not explained; I would think the tendency to spread an infection through most population quickly by frequent physical contact would have rooted it out by evolution long ago. In fact, that's the way they're eventually defeated; an engineered virus artificially introduced into infected human population that kills parasites far faster then their hosts - so hosts can get treatment.

Story is of a small team of a super-secret US government agency discovering the infection & helping fight it.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, September/October/November 1951.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Robert A Heinlein's "Starman Jones" (novel, space opera): Boy comes of age, in style

Now that I think of it a few days after reading, I guess it required an incredible suspension of belief as circumstances conspire to turn Maximilian Jones, a vagrant boy & hero of the story, from a penniless urchin to captain of Asgard, a big spaceship, in a matter of months - a captain who'll get the passengers back home safely after getting lost in uncharted reaches of galaxy. But it was a fast quick read, & didn't feel like suspending too much belief! That's Heinlein at his best.

A few chapters near end have an adventure on a world ruled by centaur-like intelligent aliens - aliens to whom the newly arrived humans are probably food, & whose tools are biological rather mechanical - a snake-like being that serves as rope & is controlled by special patting, balloon-like flying creatures used for keeping watch on things, small beings that can be made to glow to make light by touching a pressure point on their body, scavengers specially trained (or engineered or bred?) for city's garbage disposal, ...

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke & Gentry Lee's "Rama Revealed": Another novel featuring aliens whose tools are biological rather than mechanical.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1953.
Rating: A.
Credits: I found this book via ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo group.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Some recommended works of Heinlein

rasfw is discussing & doing the recommending.

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; "best of" lists.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", March 1940 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of this magazine in CBR format are online as part of a larger package.

Table of contents. 

Links on author fetch more fiction by author.

1. [novelette] Nat Schachner's "Cold": Two worlds dependent utterly on one mine--& the mine gives out! The warmth of two worlds' friendship freezes in the cold of a tiny world--"
2. [novelette] L Sprague de Camp's "The Emancipated": "Johnny Black & Company--& what company! Johnny learns to talk, but when McGinty the ape starts--"
3. [ss] P Schuyler Miller's "In the Good Old Summertime": "He liked heat--was sure he'd like even the hear of a Venus summer, while he set up his kingdom. But a drying mud-puddle meant--"
4. [ss] A M Phillips' "Chapter from the Beginning": "Half a jawbone & the end of a tooth are clues to a new pre-man. But how many species have we missed--how many unknown half-men--"
5. [ss] Willard E Hawkins' "The Dwindling Sphere": "The inventor figured it was a failure. It was an overwhelming success--a success that overwhelmed the Earth--"
6. [serial - part 2/2] Robert Heinlein's "If This Goes On--": "Astounding's second Nova story--one of the most powerful novels of dictatorship science-fiction has produced."

See also.

1. Fiction from Analog/Astounding (only issues edited by Harry Bates, John Campbell).
2. Stories written by John Campbell.
3. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
4. Fiction from 1940s.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", Vol XXVIII No 2 (October 1941) (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of this magazine in CBR format are online as part of a larger package.

"By His Bootstraps" & "Universe" (download MP3 of radio adaptation) are among Heinlein's best known stories. Though not among his best stories, in my opinion. Former appears in "The Adventures in Time & Space"; later in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A".

Table of contents. 

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I'm aware of other online copies of a story, I include them too.

1. [novella] Robert Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" (as by Anson MacDonald) (B); download MP3 of radio adaptation; grandfather paradox: "Bob Wilson met himself--in a highly redundant sort of way. He met himself several times in fact, & became inextricably tangled in Time--"
2. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "Common Sense": 'The sequel to "Universe", a tale of a civilization that developed aboard a giant spaceship lost in interstellar space for 4,000 years--"
3. [ss] Isaac Asimov's "Not Final!": "The Jovians wanted to get out & destroy every other living thing in the Solar System. They would--if they could find a way to retain their terrific atmosphere in a spaceship--"
4. [ss] Winston K Marks' "Manic Perverse": "Only mechanical violence could bring death in that era--& the force field kept men from committing suicide. And that alone was enough to make some mad--"
5. [ss] Theodore Sturgeon's "Two Percent Inspiration": "A Martian might be as good as any Earthman in most things--but when it came to a short hike on Mercury--"

See also.

1. Fiction from Analog/Astounding (only issues edited by Harry Bates, John Campbell).
2. Stories written by John Campbell.
3. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
4. Fiction from 1940s.

Note: I could not find any mention of editor's name either on cover or on ToC page or with signature at the end of editor's column. ISFDB, however, note that the editor is John W Campbell, Jr.

For authors: Heinlein on his story writing technique

Relavant quote by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein, Cory Doctorow.

Free fiction: Audio of Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps"

Looks like a radio adaptation, though I've not played it. [via Free SF Reader]

Not among the better Heinlein stories, but it's included in the very famous "The Adventures in Time & Space". Sort of ... a longer & not-funny version of "All You Zombies" (download), but told in a somewhat Henry Kuttnerish style.

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Some recommended Heinlein novels

Dorothy J Heydt does some recommending at rasfw.

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; "best of" lists.

Robert Heinlein's "Space Jockey" (short story, hard sf, free): Nitty-gritty of regular earth-to-moon travel

This story is not for everyone, but very good read for folks with the right aptitude: lot of technical details of what the life of a pilot on a 3-leg earth-to-moon run would be, if lifting weight off earth were sufficiently cheap.

Fact sheet.

First published: The Saturday Evening Post, 26 April 1947.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; fiction from 1940s.

Robert A Heinlein's "Delilah and the Space-Rigger" (short story, hard sf, humor, free): Ensuring sex-neutral employment opportunities

Hard sf & humor - that's an odd combination. But Heinlein manages it well.

Story summary.

A geosynchronous space station ("Space Station One") is being built, with a several hundred men construction gang headed by "Tiny" Larsen. Partway through, a new radio operator arrives - one G Brooks McNye. Only it turns out to be a woman (G for Gloria) - the first woman on the crew, sending Larson into fits.

Some funny episodes, a revolt of crew, & Larson will see a solution that doesn't discriminate based on sex...

Notes.

1. What does "Delilah" of the title stand for? It's not the name of anything in the story. Is it some mythological woman who seduces hard working men, like Menka in Indian tales?
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Blue Book, December 1949. [via Wikipedia]
Download full text from Webscription.
Download script of a play based on this story.
Rating: A.

Related.

1. Stories of Robert Heinlein.
2. Stories about space stations.
3. Tuesday Classics.
4. Fiction from 1940s.

Free fiction: 3 stories of Heinlein

At Webscription: "Delilah and the Space-Rigger" (download), "Space Jockey" (download), & "The Long Watch" (download).

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Free fiction: BBC's podcast of Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth"

Link. [via Marooned]

No downloading as MP3; can only listen online in their player within the browser. Also online only for next 5 days.

Related.

1. MP3 version of this story from an old radio show.
   
2. Stories of Robert Heinlein.
3. My old post on this not so great story.
   

Robert Heinlein's "Jerry is a Man" (novelette, human rights, free): A woman's fight for justice for "sub humans"

Generally in the same class as Asimov's much better known "The Bicentennial Man". Instead of a robot who gets full human rights in Asimov's story, it's an uplifted chimpanzee who gets limited rights - that he & his kind not be killed by the corporation that breeds them for profit when they're old or otherwise judged "useless". Relatively slow start, but then the author gets in his element.

Notes.

Story makes a reference to Roman citizens & their "barbarian" slaves. I wonder if white/black issues from US history influenced it more? But my knowledge of that aspect of US history is limited to Alex Haley's "Roots" & Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" - may be I'm seeing more than warranted.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "An Ape About the House": Another story of an uplifted chimpanzee who's nearly human, even if not legally.

Collected in.

1. Samuel Mines (ed)'s "Wonder Story Annual, Vol 2 No 1 (1953 Edition)".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1947.
Download full text as part of an anthology's online scans.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; Uplift stories.

Free fiction: Audio: "Old Time Radio Downloads"

[Link]. [via Crosseyed Cyclops]

Many have been online elsewhere a while. I haven't personally played any from this lot yet.

Among the lot are Heinlein's "Universe" (MP3), "The Green Hills of Earth" (MP3), & "Requiem" (MP3); Asimov's "A Pebble in the Sky" (MP3) & "Nightfall" (MP3); William Tenn's "Child's Play" (MP3); Bradbury's "Marionettes Inc" (MP3), "... And the Moon Be Still as Bright" (MP3), & "Mars is Heaven!" (MP3); Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (MP3) (this is the story that coined the term "first contact").

Guardian on Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

In Sam Jordison's article.

Of the half dozen odd Heinlein novels I've read, this is clearly the best. In fact, among the very best of genre novels I've read so far.

But I happen to have very different tastes compared to Jordison when he's comparing Heinlein with Ayn Rand; in my book, Heinlein doesn't even come close to Rand when she's at her best.

Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Free fiction: Audio of Heinlein's "All You Zombies"

Link 1 & Link 2. [via QuasarDragon, Free SF Reader, & SFFAudio]

Text of this story is already online.

Free fiction: Audio: Arthur Clarke's "Childhood's End" & Robert Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children"

Huge collection of desperate stuff, including science fiction, at Internet Archives' Audios, Movies, & Books collections. But even browsing to figure out interesting will be substantial effort - its very big.

Blue Tyson seems to have browsed at least part of the audio collection & has identified some things worth looking up:

1. Robert Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children"; download audio: Not read.
2. Arthur Clarke's "Childhood's End"; download audio: One of the most famous novels of Clarke, though I found it among his worst (its original short story version with James Blish, "Guardian Angel", is a far better read that cuts out the crap). Later parts are essentially a religious story - a retelling of one of the Hindu beliefs.

Very terse notes on some Heinlein novels

By James Nicoll.

I've only read 3 books on this list, & he's right on the dot. Read the right way & with appropriate personal bias, these notes can probably be used to personalize the sequence in which to pick these books up.

Robert A Heinlein's "Have Space Suit - Will Travel" (novel, space opera): Two teenagers defending earth in a multi-galaxy courtroom!

The most interesting parts of this novel are first 3 chapters before the space opera really begins - a critique of US school system that probably applies to schools everywhere, what constitutes ideal parenting, & some other similar issues.

There is another chapter near end - kids defending humans in a multi-racial alien court where the decision is going to be either to exterminate humanity or let is live. Conceptually, this part of the plot is similar to Fredric Brown's "Arena". Not exactly my favorite plot line & it's clear Heinlein is exploiting the reader emotionally; but I still ended up liking it.

Rest of the story is ok, but ... I mean - most space opera sounds the same, & this is no exception. But there are quite a few good quotes; I collect them in a separate post.

This is the second Heinlein story I've seen that spends considerable text describing the technicalities of a space suit - mostly spread through (I think) 3 chapters. Other story is "Misfit" (space suit parts not as detailed because it's short fiction). More space suit stories.

Story summary.

Two US teenagers - a boy & narrator named Clifford Russell ("Kip") & a girl Patricia Wynant Reisfeld ("Peewee"). Both super-competent. They get kidnapped by bad aliens ("wormfaces"). This leads to adventure on moon, Pluto, Vega Five, & a world called Lanador somewhere in Lesser Magellanic Cloud!

Wormfaces are from an earthlike world somewhere, & are now laying claims to earth since it's "unoccupied" (animals like humans don't count). They've a forward base at moon & a supply depot at Pluto.

Then there are good aliens - "Mother Thing" & her people from Vega 5. Mother Thing, a galactic cop, is also a prisoner of wormfaces because she's been trying to foil their plans. She will destroy the Pluto base of wormfaces. Resulting rescue by her people will lead to kids' adventures on Vega 5 (27(?) light years from Sol) & Lanador (167,000 light-years from Sol!).

Lanador is the headquarters of Three Galaxies, a UN-like organization of elder races from Lesser & Greater Magellanic Cloud & the Milky Way. Humanity is about to be judged there in a court room - whether it is likely to pose a threat to them in days ahead & hence should be terminated now, or there is some hope it can coexist. Kids are taken there as human "samples" from which the judging entity can form opinions of the whole of humanity - current & future!!! In the courtroom, we also get a conjecture that may be humanity is descended from "Old Race, allowing for mutation" - one of the oldest elder races, via crew of a ship that once was wrecked somewhere near earth!

There is some emotional drama, & earth will be put on watch rather than destroyed right away.

Notes.

1. Near end, the story has a brief reference to Edwin Abbott's novel "Flatland".

Fact sheet.

First published: As a 3-part serial in F&SF, August/September/October 1958.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award in 1959 in novel category.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein (a few online).

Quotes from Robert A Heinlein's "Have Space Suit - Will Travel" (novel, space opera)

The quotes from Robert Heinlein's (juvenile) novel "Have Space Suit - Will Travel". I list them in order they appear in the book.

Quotes.

1. Taxman: "The law requires written records."
   
   "Look again. The law can't even require a man to read & write."
2. "Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them."
3. "a tough prep school back east can drill you so that you can enter Stanford, or Yale, or any of the best - but you can pick up false standards, too-nutty ideas about money & social position & the right tailor. It took me years to get rid of ones I acquired that way."
4. "Once I had a large income and a larger ulcer; I now have a small income and no ulcer."
5. "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe."
6. "in the long run it won't matter. A man almost always gets what he wants badly enough."
7. "any statement that starts 'I really ought to -' is suspect. It means you haven't analyzed your motives."
8. "Find out what you want to do, then do it. Never talk yourself into doing something you don't want."
9. "A man uses around three pounds of oxygen a day - pounds mass, not pounds per square inch."
10. 'people talk about "the bitter cold of outer space" - but space is vacuum & if vacuum were cold, how could a Thermos jug keep hot coffee hot? Vacuum is nothing - it has no temperature, it just insulates.
    
    Three-fourths of your food turns into heat - a lot of heat, enough each day to melt fifty pounds of ice & more... when you have a roaring fire in the furnace, you are cooling your body; even in the winter you keep a room about thirty degrees cooler than your body. When you turn up a furnace's thermostat, you are picking a more comfortable rate for cooling. Your body makes so much heat you have to get rid of it, exactly as you have to cool a car's engine.
    
    Of course, if you do it too fast, say in a sub-zero wind, you can freeze - but the usual problem in a space suit is to keep from being boiled like a lobster. You've got vacuum all around you and it's hard to get rid of heat.'
    
    There are some very interesting remarks on the concept of temperature in Hal Clement's "Sunspot". Basic physics, but it's easy to forget by the time we grow up.
11. On getting admission into a good university: "more depended on the student than on the school."
12. "the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible & concentrate on what's possible."
13. On moon: "one-sixth gravity is a better mattress than all the foam rubber ever made".
14. "in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem."
15. "Getting a problem analyzed is two-thirds of solving it."
16. "Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none."
    
    You also see this as a theme in Ursula K Le Guin's "The Flyers of Gy".
17. "the more you learn, the more you need to learn."
18. "They were encouraging my body to repair itself - not scar tissue but the way it had been. Any lobster can do this & starfish do it so well that you can chop them to bits & wind up with a thousand brand-new starfish.
    
    This is a trick any animal should do, since its gene pattern is in every cell. But a few million years ago we lost it."
19. 'I never met one of their young. Joe explained that children should not see "strange creatures" until they had learned to feel understanding sympathy. That would have offended me if I hadn't been learning some "understanding sympathy" myself. Matter of fact, if a human ten-year-old saw a Vegan, he would either run, or poke it with a stick.'
20. Ideal governmental laws would be the ones that simply encourage you to live your nature: "How could one possibly act against one's own nature?"
21. Dumb machines: '"You'll have to drag me."
    
    This is not what to say to a robot. It did.'
22. On aliens' view of empty earth: "When we clear jungle to make farms, do we worry if baboons are there first?"
23. "You speak of 'justice.' I know what you think you mean. But no two races have ever agreed on the meaning of that term, no matter how they say it."
24. During one of the emotional moments in court room drama: "It's not a defense, you don't want a defense. All right, take away our star. You will if you can & I guess you can. Go ahead! We'll make a star! Then, someday, we'll come back & hunt you down - all of you!"
25. "'good luck' follows careful preparation; 'bad luck' comes from sloppiness."
26. "The best things in history are accomplished by people who get 'tired of being shoved around.'"

Anil Aggarwal's "The Weird House" (as by Marygold Gupta) (flash fiction, weird physics, free): Heinlein fanfic

A variation of Robert Heinlein's "- And He Built a Crooked House -". Nowhere near the skill of Heinlein, but with 2 original ideas:

1. 4D house came into being by converting time dimension into the fourth space dimension! So time doesn't exist inside the house!
2. To rectify time issue, the architect makes a mistake & turns 2 space dimensions of the 4D house into time dimensions during repair - so we now have 2 time & 2 space dimensions!

Fact sheet.

First published: ?
Rating: B.
Download full text from author's website.
Related: Anil Aggarwal's stories/feed.

Audio of Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" is online

QuasarDragon provides this MP3 link at the Internet Archive via SFFaudio to an old radio adaptation of one of the better stories of Robert Heinlein - "The Roads Must Roll".

Robert Heinlein's "Blowups Happen" (novelette, about nuclear power plants, free)

While very readable, substantial parts of it are dated & it sometimes gets too imaginative. Story was written when "there was not a full gram of purified U-235 on this planet".

Story summary.

One single huge nuclear power plant in the US. It meets some 13% of the country's energy needs! This is a world where solar energy is widely used - most households have their energy requirements met by solar panels on roof tops. This is also the worlds where "road cities", built along the length of rolling roads of the "The Roads Must Roll", are common; these rolling roads also primarily run on solar power.

Anyway, because of the possibility that "tons" of uranium core of the plant might blow out at any time, everyone on the plant is constantly on edge. This is the one major thread of the story - frequent nervous breakdown of the technical staff because of onerous responsibility of the safety of the mankind.

Second thread is about the development of atomic rocket fuels that can give a rocket earth escape velocity. Story is apparently older than first space flight. Idea is to somehow make smaller piles than critical mass of nuclear material fissionable in a controlled way. One of the shunted engineers (Calvin Harper, because of imminent nervous breakdown) & his friend (Gus Erickson) do some superheroic work to develop this atomic fuel in days or weeks! But making this small piles requires the big pile! They will later outfit a rocket with engines based on this fuel - again on a schedule that will give creeps to best engineers out there.

Third thread is about how moon got its craters - some imagination run wild. There was once life on it, based on an active gas heavier than oxygen but still dependent on water. And intelligent beings who built atomic power plants that blew up to kill life on the whole world & threw a lot of the crust into space. Craters were formed by those blown blocks of crust that didn't get escape velocity & fell back.

Thomas P Harrington, an astronomer & Director of US Naval Observatory, has developed this lunar thesis. He has convinced both King, General Superintendent of the plant & the local man in charge, & Dr Lentz, a well known psychologist retained by King, that this plant poses a similar scale threat to earth.

That's how we get the final thread. Convincing, even blackmailing, the reluctant Board of Directors of the company that owns the plant to ship it out to space. The big pile will be fitted into a big rocket & sent to an orbit far enough away from earth to avoid danger. Small piles manufactured there will be used to run little & safe plants back on earth.

Notes.

1. Story features a "telechronometer", a wrist watch "radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington." Somewhat akin to modern PCs synchronizing time off an internet server. Apparently, such wrist watches are also commercially available now.

Collected in.

1. John W Campbell, Jr (ed)'s "The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940.
Rating: B
Download full text.
Related: All stories of Robert Heinlein.
Note: This post is based on the original 1940 version of the story. There appears to be at least one updated (& edited) later version that I've not read.

Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" (short story, grandfather paradox, humor, free)

Who is whose mother, father, lover, child, kidnapper, employer, ...? Solid confusion.

Very amusing & totally crazy tale of convoluted relationships. Rusty has more to say at Best Science Fiction Stories.

Glenn Davies' "In His Image" is a simpler & less interesting variation published a few months back.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, March 1959.
Rating: A
Download full text, or MP3 audio.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; time travel stories.

** Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe" (novella, science fiction)

A very well written variation of a technology civilization falling on primitive times, & eventually a hero who sees the possibility of a different future. Story is set on a huge slower-than-light spaceship - originally headed for Centauri on a 60 year journey but now adrift in space for unknown reasons for hundreds of years; descendants of crew form this primitive society & a religion around the ship's documents they've inherited.

Collected in.

1. Ben Bova (Ed)'s "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1941.
Rating: A

Note: Why is this post so short?

** Robert Heinlein's "We Also Walk Dogs" (short story, science fiction)

A man builds an anti-gravity device - so alien visitors to a conference on earth will not find local gravity too oppressive!

Fact sheet.

First published: ...
Rating: A

Note: Why is this post so short?

** Robert Heinlein - "Starship Troopers" (novel, science fiction)

Life of a military cadet, & later soldier - in a future where interstellar travel is not uncommon. Substantially different from Hollywood movie of the same name.

Fact sheet.

First published: ...
Rating: A

Note: Why is this post so short?

Robert Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" (novelette, free)

Terrorist attack on suburban transport system causes much mayhem.

Transport system is based on rolling roads - roads move rather than you. Road comprises of many strips moving at different speeds. Speed of nearby strips differ in small enough amount that you can walk across; strips in the middle of the road move rather fast.

Collected in.

1. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1940.
Rating: A.
Download full text as part of a larger package.
Download MP3 of radio adaptation. (this post is based on a reading of text version of the story).
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Note: Why is this post so short?

Robert A. Heinlein's "...And He Built a Crooked House" (novelette, humor, free)

Non-stop action, & non-stop smiles. Moral of the story: if you ever find an architect who will build your 4 dimensional house, make sure it's anchored securely in the accessible dimensions!

Story summary.

Quintus Teal is the main protagonist. A great architect with post modern tastes. During a drinking session with his friend Homer Bailey, he decides to build a 4D house! You get far more space than you can get in accessible dimensions - ideal for crowded places.

Since Homer is anyway going to build a new house, he bullies his friend into signing the contract & pay the advance. Friend is proceeding on a vacation; he will have the magical home ready & will be able to surprise his wife Matilda on return. Whole episode has parallels with Howard Roark's contract for building Stoddard Temple in Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead".

Friend returns. Quintus takes him & his puzzled wife to a tour of their new house. First shock of future owners - it appears far tinier than contracted! Oh - there was an earthquake yesterday night. While the 4D house is earthquake proof, it ended up "folding" to its *normal* shape. Don't worry about what is "folding"; it just makes the house more magical.

From outside, it's just single room on ground floor! Major disappointment for owners, until a fancy staircase appears inside this room & seems to go ... where? Never mind, just go ahead. Ah - you reach the second story (invisible when you entered!) with 6 large & well appointed rooms. There is also another floor with one room - invisible from our normal world.

Much of the story is the party's adventures moving through the home. Because of "folding", even architect cannot predict what will lead to where. To add to complications, there is a further earthquake when they are inside; no damage because it's quake proof, but its geometry is further changed!

For a while, you find Quintus chase his own backside visible some doors ahead, thinking it's a mugger! Try getting out of ground floor room, & end up on a higher floor. One window opens to ocean, another to desert, yet another to probably a place not on earth, ...

Finally, the panicky trio will jump off a first floor window overlooking some forbidding place, only to find there is no house where they landed! They'll find they are some tens or hundreds of miles from the home they were in! Take a lift, eventually reach the site of house - where they originally entered. Only there is no house there now - thanks to quake when they were inside!

Of course, the great architect is still bubbling with the possibilities of new architecture.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1941.
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Rating: A
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Robert Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" (novel): A society of supermen

Main thread of the story is plausible enough, if psychologically extremely uncomfortable: a couple can choose to have the best child they can possibly have by carefully selecting a specific egg/sperm pair over their productive life, rather than an average child they normally have by random egg/sperm combination.

While the story treads on much darker things possible with genetics, I find even the apparently sensible thread extremely troublesome. While Heinlein's advocacy is generally limited to sane things like choosing children less immune to diseases, couples will eventually apply their own (obviously) definition of best. Results, even of a simple application like sex selection, can be extremely dangerous - as is currently happening in the Indian state of Punjab - the worst sex ratio in India, & still worsening.

Since such selection & more is going to be possible in days ahead, we might as well begin getting uncomfortable today - for whatever good it will do!

Even apart from the dark subject, this is not quite a normal Heinlein story. His political & economic views are muddled here, & the story keeps going on many irrelevant tangents.

Main thread of the story reads somewhat like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". I collect the quotes here.

Story summary.
I think the story is set 100 or 200 years in future; I don't remember the dateline - it's provided indirectly. Place is the Capital of a Republic - some future version of some place in the US; and it appears to be part of some larger worldwide political grouping.

Gene selection is common in this society, though you can choose to stay natural. Naturals are the lower caste.

There is a benign government, "Policy Board" at highest level we meet in the story. They maintain the various gene lines; they advise who will mate whom; they choose the best kids; they raise most kids in well run nurseries. Too much wishful thinking, if you ask me.

The economic system has a very substantial communist tilt - something very unlike every Heinlein story I've read to-date.

Hamilton Felix is a man derived from the best genetic stock. His marriage to Longcourt Phyllis is being pushed for by Claude Mordan, a government bureaucrat who will eventually become a good friend. Longcourt is a "fifth cousin" of Hamilton, is also derived from the best stock, & they together have promising gene combinations.

Hamilton is resisting; girl is willing; eventually they will marry & have two kids - Theobald, a boy, & younger Justina. Turns out Theobald is telepathic! But that is a different thread.

This whole arrangement sounded like a very typical Suraj Barajatya film - replace horoscope match with gene compatibility, old friend of the dad that does marriage fixing with government bureaucrat, & minus a lot of color that makes these movies lovable - at least for first viewing.

Then there are villains. Very Hitlerian right-wingers. Want to keep the best genetic stock; breed people to meet government's needs; & kill off the inferiors. There are some ugly scenes, but they don't last long. They are led by McFee Norbert. When the revolution comes, it is quickly crushed.

And that is where the story should have ended. But it continues for half as long again, & this remaining part is very lame. Main thread is about the joys of parenting. A second thread is a governmental project to "enumerate and investigate all of the problems of philosophy", enlarged from originally proposed & simpler "effort to investigate the question of survival after death"! Third thread is the telepathic ability of Theobald.

All through the story, yet another lame thread is also running: life of Hamilton's close friend Monroe-Alpha Clifford (code number 32-847-106 B62!); his divorce with his orthowife Larsen Hazel; his erratic love affair & eventual marriage to Hartnett Marion; & his adventures with revolutionaries.

There is yet another significant thread through the story: a young man named John Smith Darlington was conned (when drunk) in the year 1926 to enter a stasis machine, & he ends up arriving in the time of this story! We see his confusion adjusting to this world. Best part of this thread is a humorous description of the game of US football; see near the end of quotes.

Fact sheet.
Beyond This Horizon, novel, review
First published: Originally published as 2-part serial in Astounding Science Fiction, April/May 1942, under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald
Rating: B

See also.

1. All stories about technology assisted human baby making.
2. This story ranked (by quality) among all stories.

Quotes from Robert Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" (novel)

Here are the quotes I marked in the novel; particularly interesting is the one near end - a humorous description of US game of football.

1. "Easy times for individuals are bad times for the race."
2. "Man is an unspecialized animal. His body, except for its enormous brain case, is primitive. He can't dig; he can't run very fast; he can't fly. But he can eat anything and he can stay alive where a goat would starve, a lizard would fry, a bird freeze. Instead of special adaptations he has general adaptability".
3. "strongest of social motivations, the desire to be appreciated".
4. "scientific research, no matter how pure and useless it may seem, has an annoying habit of paying for itself many times, in the long run, in the form of greatly increased productivity."
5. "police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry".
6. "disobedience was more often a virtue than a sin".
7. "it's perfectly natural that blood relatives should dislike each other."
   

Description of US game of football.
"It's a silly business, at best. Twenty-two men get out on a large open place and battle with their bare hands."

"Why?"

"The excuse is to move a little plastic spheroid from one end of the place to the other."

"What difference does it make which end it's on?"

"None, really - but it's as reasonable as any other game."

"I don't get it," Phyllis decided. "Why should anyone fight unless he wants to kill someone?"

"You have to see it to understand it. It's exciting. I even found myself shouting."
...
"We'll sell permissions to view it physically and then all sorts of lesser rights - direct pickup, recording, and so forth. Smith has a lot of ideas about identifying various combinations with cities and organizations and attaching color symbols to them and songs and things."

Robert Heinlein's "It's Great To Be Back": A couple gets homesick

Only they need to discover that home is not on earth!

Story summary.
Allan MacRae & his wife Josephine have been living in Luna City on moon for a while. They are home sick - they miss unlimited air of earth, the greenery, beaches, familiar vistas, ...

So they move permanently to earth. Only they have been away too long. Gravity is killing. Air is polluted. Snow is messy. Plumber is rude...

One thing finally proves too much: "Intelligence. It costs a lot to send a man to the Moon and more to keep him there. To pay off, he has to be worth a lot. High IQ, good compatibility index, superior education - everything that makes a person pleasant and easy and interesting to have around. We've been spoiled; the ordinary human cussedness that groundhogs take for granted, we now find intolerable, because Loonies are different."

So they finally are going back home - but the home is moon!

Fact sheet.
It's Great To Be Back, short story, review
First published: The Saturday Evening Post, 26 July 1947
Rating: B

Robert Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth": Spaceman extraordinary, & a great poet too

If you have an ear for poetry, you might enjoy it more than me; I just end up skipping poetry. May be a third of this story is poetry - the great poem of spacemen titled The Green Hills of Earth by Rhysling (hero of the story).

Story summary.
Experienced & competent spaceman Rhysling, jetman, second class, is on "a loop trip to the Jovian asteroids in the RS Goshawk" (RS means Rocket Ship). He is also a popular poet.

Inter-planetary traffic is a monopoly of the Harriman's Company, as it is in many other Heinlein stories. "The Goshawk was the first of Harriman's ships to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic powerpiles - or rather the first that did not blow up."

Rhysling notices something wrong in one of the engines before takeoff, but is overruled by Captain Hicks, master of the ship, on advice from Maintenance.

There is an accident on the way. Rhysling loses his eye sight. Plus job. For a while he wanders around various human settlements on Mars. Later hitchhikes trips across various planets - & grows in stature as a lovable poet.

One fine day, he decides to return to earth. He is then at Venus Ellis Isle. He becomes a hitchhiker aboard Falcon, after some drama that involves bulling the young captain showing him the rulebook.

Another engine accident on the way, & Rhysling dies while saving the ship. And dictating what would be the last parts of his great poem, "The Green Hills of Earth".

Trivia.

1. Since 1978, "Science Fiction Poetry Association" has been annually handing out "Rhysling Awards for Best Poems of the Year" in two categories: Short Poem (less than 50 lines), & Long Poem (50 or more lines). It also issues an annual "Rhysling Anthology" comprising of the works nominated for the Award. Award site lists the winners & nominees to date.
   

Fact sheet.
The Green Hills of Earth, short story, review
First published: Saturday Evening Post, 8 February 1947
Rating: B

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score" (1941): Another story where the protagonist acts very valiantly during an accident in space, putting himself in a situation that will result in serious injury.

Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line" (short story, free): Soothsaying can be dangerous business!

This is Heinlein's first published story. Rather thin on science, but very well told & engaging.

Story summary.
Dr Hugo Pinero invents a machine that can determine your date of birth or death by taking measurements of your current body, & by knowing certain details of your physical size (height, weight, thickness) at various times past in your life.

The device considers your physical existence in universe as a geometric sweep through the 4-dimensional space-time, & finds the endpoints of this swept geometry by sending some kind a field through the swept volume in either the direction of past or future, & measuring some parameter of the echo off the other end.

He founds a business, "Sands of Time, Inc", doing death predictions. Insurance industry doesn't like it one bit. Like someone buys a big life policy a week before known death!

Main protagonist on the insurance industry side is one Mr Bidwell, Chairman of the Amalgamated Life Insurance.

Story is of the fight of Pinero to get social recognition as a serious inventor rather than a charlatan; of the Academy of Science acting on behalf of Bidwell to discredit him; a court case brought & lost by Bidwell against Pinero when the later begins being treated as a prophet by society; & ultimately of the murder of Pinero by killers hired by Bidwell.

Influences.

1. "Richter 10" (1996) by Arthur C Clarke & (Late) Mike McQuay. Pinero uses a stunt here to get social recognition - by depositing a good amount of money in a escrow account to be paid to first client for whom the prediction is false. A very similar stunt is used by Lewis Crane in "Richter 10" to gain back the recognition during second Mississippi quake prediction after the first was ruined by enemies who tinkered his field data. In fact, the entire story has a level of similarity - both are essentially about predicting what is currently pretty much unpredictable. Both see the death of the main protagonist in the end.
2. "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) by Ayn Rand. Using influence in an established scientific body by a currently established business to challenge a new player - via a FUD game - is very similar.

Fact sheet.
First published: Astounding Science Fiction, August 1939.
Rating: A
Download full text.
Related: All stories of Robert Heinlein.

Note: Moved here from original location on Aug 6, 2007. Reason.