Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

It was a joke - well, sort of a joke. I told my advisor, also a Heinlein fan, that I needed to take the summer off because I had an entire shelf of Heinlein that needed rereading. Then I decided to try to make it to the end of the month without buying any more books. I have about a dozen "books on paper" and probably that many on my Kindle that I haven't read, but most of those are serious books - literature and non-fiction - that sort of thing. So, I decided the Heinlein might no be a bad idea.

First problem. What order to read them. The early stuff falls into roughly three categories: future history, Lazarus Long, and the Scribner's juveniles. All the websites that I looked at were more the "worshipful fan" type rather than any sort of logic based information - even the wiki. So, I decided to read them in the most logical order that I could manage without effort. I will read them in the order that they are on my shelf - actually, Heinlein takes up nearly two shelves - the order, once upon a time was alphabetical. That was a long time ago. I don't believe it has been completely disrupted since this was the first one - but who knows what I will find ten or fifteen books down the shelf.

It seems that this was the fifth of the juvies, and came out in 1951. It was never one of my favorites, therefore I haven't reread it as faithfully as most of the others and remember far less about it. I reread all of them when I took Jack Williamson's science fiction class (Jack was also a Heinlein fan - and enjoyed my paper). This one and Citizen of the Galaxy never really made it for me. The others I loved.

It isn't bad - it just isn't as good as the others. There's also the "here a miracle occurs" aspect. The tide of war is turned by the application of an alien technology. At least Heinlein, even in his period, was not one of those who always make it clear that it doesn't come any better than humanity.

Some of the "problems" with Heinlein are quite evident even in this juvenile work. He is definitely male chauvinist - although he allows that in the huge laboratory there was a "sprinkling of women" among the fifty or so scientists. He puts young Donald in uniform at the first reasonable opportunity. And our boy takes to it like the proverbial duck, shortly he is referring to himself as a soldier first, even though he is not a citizen of any of the planets, having been born in space, between planets.

The war is clearly patterned on the American Revolution - with the Venus Colony taking the starring role. A good share of the chapter titles are Biblical, which is curious, since the only religion which earns any respect in the book is that of the Venerian dragons. It could be that at the time of writing, Heinlein could make the assumption that most of his readers would recognize and fold into the context of the story the background and setting of the quotations. I'm not sure that would be a reasonable assumption today. I expect that most people are familiar with the phrase: "the handwriting on the wall," but I doubt if many would recognize "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" as the actual text of the handwriting on the wall that is the root of the saying.

I was afraid that the technological glitches would be very distracting. They weren't as bad as I had feared. Bits of it --- for example, as our hero is boarding a rocket ship he has to go through a security screening (I wonder what Heinlein would have made of airport security post 911). That wasn't what made me laugh, though. The screener warns our boy that the machine will fog the film in his camera. In 1951, it would have been difficult to imagine digital imaging techniques. Even in 2003, when I went to Africa, I took film, not just digital.

Heinlein's "preachiness" was fairly low key, although there were episodes which made his opinions very clear. Definitely a more practiced hand than Stabenow's in Second Star, although Stabenow clearly shows that the roots of her SF is in Heinlein.