The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread 10: Time for the Stars

[james_davis_nicoll]

In which archaic sexism and racism provide unwelcome distraction from dubious physics: Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein


As ever, corrections will not be dealt with until I get home tonight.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I didn't like the book much as a kid, but didn't realize why. When I reread it as an adult, it looked like it was a weird exception to science fiction because getting out into space was no fun whatsoever.

Offhand, I can't think of any other stories which made space so unappetizing except for Malzberg's astronaut stories. "Scanners Live in Vain" doesn't count because space is incidentally painful-- it's going to be good once the pain problem is solved.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Decades later, _Saturn's Children_ makes space travel sound like shit.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

And that was just interplanetary space. I can't see why the robots would want to colonize anything, except that nearly all of them seemed to despise each other.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the robots had an excuse. "No, it's not really economic - but it turns out a lot of other things are dependant on colonize.dll and nobody's written a decent patch yet."

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Well, that's because it is. We had two generations of romanticizing the business itself plus totally unrealistic depictions of the accommodations the typical traveler would enjoy en route (I'm looking at you, Star Trek.) I suspect that in part space travel looked appealing to a lot of people back then because of background it implied, which was very, very wealthy.