The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein

My copy of this has a cover price of $.50 - what does that tell you? Actually, it is nowhere near an original copy. It is the 1963 printing. The original copyright for the collection is 1951, and the copyright dates of the individual stories go back to 1941. The book includes an abbreviated version of his "future history" timeline.

As time goes on - it is now fifty years since my copy of the book was printed and over sixty since it first came out - it is interesting to see how he anticipated and failed to anticipate. Heinlein consistently shows a deep contempt for the government and its functionaries, but he assumes somehow that technology and space exploration will be a high priority.

In all fairness, this was before an unmanned probe penetrated the "clouds" of Venus and discovered the completely inhospitable desert there, before men had walked on the face of the moon, and before long range probes made close observations of Mars. It isn't really fair to be amused by tales of the swamps and jungles of Venus.

It was also before women broke loose from "kinder, kuchen, kirche." I think he tried to understand the women's movement and the civil rights movement in later work but simply lacked the imagination in the direction of social structure to see their implications. Although his wife (the second one, I think) was also an engineer, his female characters still tend to be silly and superficial. The few that are not are terrifyingly efficient secretaries and such - in spite of the female radioman in "Delilah and the Spaceriggers." Even though Miss Gloria "Brooksie" McNye is quite good at her job, the point of the story is that since the commander can't legally get her off the space station, he brings on more women -- and a chaplain.

Still, I loved them at the time - and they are still good stories now.