Robert Heinlein Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)
I loathed Stranger in a Strange Land with such force as to inspire the promise that I would never read another Heinlein, but Alec Nevala-Lee's history of Astounding has given me cause to lift this embargo, because I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed those I read before I came to the aforementioned four-hundred pages of egocentric shite. So here we are again.
Rocket Ship Galileo may be among the squarest tales ever told - pipe-smoking scientist helps three rocket crazy young lads to build a spacecraft by which they fly to the moon, with all the science done right, equations and calculations described in detail, and no agricultural language or references to beastly habits. It's almost a variation on the lunar expeditions of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells as they would have been serialised for fifties America by the guy who wrote Biggles, but - as I now remember why the man had such a reputation - Heinlein not only makes it work, but it's positively gripping. He ticks every last box on the John W. Campbell checklist - five page lectures about sub-atomic particles, plot elements hung upon obscure features of trigonometry, lengthy discussions of structural integrity whilst our three smart young lads address everyone as sir and behave unlike teenagers have ever behaved in the real world - and yet Rocket Ship Galileo dazzles, page after page, somehow swanning around like a jaunty insurance salesman with pipe clenched firmly in its wry grin without a predictable sentence or narrative twist in sight.
I still don't know how he came to write Stranger, and there's no way I'm touching anything written later, but I'm glad I got over the hump. I'm already looking forward to the other two I picked up at the same time as this one.
As you've already noted, Heinlein is many authors. The one that existed before coughing up Stranger is not the same one that wrote his later works in any sense except the physical. His earlier work is a pleasure to read, despite being loathed by the Heinlein that came afterward. His later work often tries far, far too hard to be controversial and force the reader to think, even when it fails to offer anything you'd ever want to think about.
ReplyDeleteI know which Heinlein I'm still willing to read, and it isn't the one who was born in 1961, much less navel-gazing weirdo who sprang up in 1980.