The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein is about my favorite of his juveniles. In some ways it is not a juvenile, since it is really about the Stone family, but the two twins Castor and Pollux are the main stars in my estimation. And they are teenagers.
There are a number of things about this novel that I like. Hazel Meade Stone, the grandmother, is the Hazel Meade from my favorite Heinlein book The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. She is an 11 year old in that book, and 85 plus in this one.
There is not a direct connection, this is not a sequel, but it seems obvious to me. Hazel is on of the founding fathers of The Luna Free State for instance.
This book is part of the Future History of Heinlein. The Moon, and Mars, as described in this book are similar to the planets in others, like Red Planet, another of my favorite juveniles.
The story is a lot of fun. The Stone family, eccentrics all, buy a spaceship and start touring the solar system. Various adventures occur along the way.
Heinlein again gets into his thing about education being important, in particular mathematics.
And that Yankee can-do spirit is pervasive.
Whether or not Americans ever had this particular approach to life may be debatable, but it is an American myth. And one that I think has some basis in fact. And I am sad that in many ways it has disappeared from our culture.
It may be more ‘mature’ or 'realistic' to look at the world in the cynical way we do now, but it’s a shame that we do.
Yes we bumped up against reality in the late 1960’s with Vietnam, The Credibility Gap, and all the events that ended ‘Camelot’ and optimism. But I remember it and wish for its return.
Even in a modified, more useable form. If we think that every time someone proposes a difficult, expensive thing for us to try it will fail, then we never try. People need things bigger than themselves to believe in, and we suffer from a lack of them now.
OK, enough ranting.
One last thing about the story. Towards the end of the novel the Stones pick up as a pet a Martian Flat Cat. On board ship this fuzzy, harmless, loveable creature eats too much as everybody feeds it. So,it starts having babies. And then, its babies have babies. Soon the ship is overloaded with them. They get into everything and are consuming all the families food.
So, they lower the temperature and when they curl up like Martian wildlife does, they get put into the hold.
Sound familiar? I wonder if Gene Roddenberry, or whoever wrote the episode The Trouble With Tribbles on Star Trek ever read this book.
The next Heinlein juvenile I will post on is Have Space Suit, Will Travel. This one has a more juvenile feel to it, so to speak. Even though the main character Clifford is a high school student heading to college, if he can get there, it still seems aimed at a younger audience.
Younger than the one for Between Planets anyway.
Clifford is an apparently average student having a normal life and going to Central High. His father however, is rather eccentric, and as we learn, probably really smart.
When his Dad becomes aware of how lightweight the curriculum at Central is, he lets Clifford know that if he doesn’t make the effort to get educated then he won’t be going anywhere.
This is a recurrent theme in Heinlein’s juveniles. I remember if from one of my favorites The Rolling Stones.
In the 1950’s it was an accepted dogma that education was the path to success. With the GI bill, etc. many returning veterans went to college and did well and then passed that belief on to their boomer children, like me.
It has been called into question more recently. Several sociologists have done research and are not finding the close link between education and higher salaries that apparently used to exist.
But when this book was written it was gospel.
Cliff also is a space nut and wants to go to the moon. So he enters a contest to win such a prize. He doesn’t get first place, but wins a used spacesuit as a consolation prize.
Being in the tradition of American tinkerers and do it yourselfers, he fixes it up and makes it space worthy.
But needing money for college tuition he decides, reluctantly, to sell it. One last walk around the woods pretending to be in space and talking to non-existent fellow spacemen. He calls on his radio and gets an answer! Suddenly an alien spaceship lands at his feet, he is captured, and the adventures begin.
Alien ‘wormfaces’, The Mother Thing, journeys to the Moon, Pluto, a planet orbiting the star Vega, and eventually the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, follow.
It’s a slam-bang adventure story with plenty of danger, and emotion to satisfy any reader.
Yes it’s a bit unbelievable, but that’s the nature of the beast. A completely enjoyable read in my opinion.
The next series of juveniles I want to post about are the ones that almost every SF fan knows about. At least the fans of my age. I know the younger fans still read Heinlein, but I don’t know if the juveniles still get read. I think they are amongst his best works, and really are readable for adults. At least most of them.
Heinlein wrote a number of them and in them you can see why he is a Grand Master of SF. He knows how to write and they are interesting books in many ways.
The first one I will post about is Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein. This is a story of growing up and becoming a man, and of rebellion against authority. In particular authoritarian government.
Those of you who know Heinlein’s politics are not surprised about this. He was a Libertarian by most accounts and it shows in many of his books, including to a lesser degree, in his juveniles.
In this one, Donald Harvey gets caught up in the rebellion of the Venus Colony against the Federation. The Federation is Earth, or the Earth government.
We see how Earth has become repressive, even to its own people. Security, the IBI, is everywhere. Citizen’s rights are routinely violated or ignored. There is a war looming, but apparently this has been developing for a while.
That’s one of the things you will see in Heinlein’s juveniles that you don’t in many of the others. He talks politics. Whether or not you agree with his theories, it’s something that was unusual for 1950’s America.
I grew up a little later on and it was the same. Middle class American kids didn’t think about politics. That only changed in the mid 1960’s with Vietnam and Civil Rights and everything else.
So Heinlein is kind of breaking a taboo here to my thinking. And, unless I am misinterpreting it, he is making a point about McCarthyism, which was in full flower at the time.
Anyway, Don is (unknown to him) caught up as a courier in a conspiracy to change things. Then he becomes a guerrilla fighter in the swamps of Venus. (The old solar system again)
Don is not a misfit or a junior scientist, just an ordinary kid caught up in events. He handles them well and is a hero of sorts.
All in all, a good story well written. One I enjoyed then, and on re-reading.
The prequel to the Tripods trilogy is When The Tripods Came. It is a very well written story of how the Tripods conquer the Earth.
Not through violence, or at least not entirely. The initial attack is repelled successfully by the armed forces of the various nations that are invaded. But the Tripods are subtle.
They begin using subliminal persuasion on broadcast TV programs, and other methods of mind control. This leads to the young being converted into ‘Trippies’ and they begin the illicit distribution of caps.
Slowly but surely the world is taken over, with some fighting here and there.
The story is told through the eyes of Laurie whose family is involved in the initial Tripod attack in England.
They flee to Switzerland eventually where the Tripods are resisted most strongly. Eventually even that country falls and they flee to a remote mountainous part of Switzerland. (The White Mountains) where they start the resistance.
This 4 book series is one of my favorite juvenile SF readings.
One interesting thing that I discovered while looking for the first time in a while at my copy of this prequel. The blurb writer mentions that there was a BBC series called The Tripods and that it also played in the US.
I have never seen or heard of this series. Well, yet another thing I will have to google and look for on Amazon or eBay.
The Pool of Fire is the third book in the Tripods trilogy. In it the humans learn what Will Parker discovered in the previous book. The aliens are sending a ship from their home planet to Earth with a machine for converting the atmosphere on Earth. It will become like the home planet of the Masters, and all other life on Earth will die.
So, a daring plan to assault the three Tripod cities is devised. It involves poisoning the aliens. It is successful in killing the Masters in two, but the attack fails in the third.
This leads to a further attack via a balloon born force.
This book is much more action oriented, and perhaps a bit predictable, but still a good wrap-up of the trilogy.
All in all a good trilogy of juvenile SF. I will cover the prequel in my next post.
The second book in the trilogy is The City of Gold and Lead. In it Will Parker and his friends leave the safety of the White Mountains to enter The Games held in Germany. The winners of these competitions will get the ‘honor’ of serving the Masters, The Tripods, in their city.
This means living with them under their much higher gravity. But for the capped it’s an honor.
For Will and his fellow rebels, it’s a chance to find out more about the city and its inhabitants. Perhaps a way to free Earth and the Human Race.
So Will undertakes the dangerous journey. He is still uncapped and if discovered, all will be lost. But, he is chosen and enters the city with others.
A series of adventures and Will escapes again. As he and his companions go, they vow to return to destroy the masters.
This book did suffer a little from being the middle book of a trilogy. You know that the story is not going to end. But the life of the masters inside the city is interestingly alien, and it still a good read.
To me it’s a little hard to fit this series into any particular category other than juvenile adventure SF. Will is not a scientist, and not really a misfit. He is a hero which is an obvious draw for young people reading the story. He is fighting against tremendous odds against a vastly superior foe. So he is an interesting character.
The books of this trilogy are a success. And John Christopher has written other series for juveniles including a fantasy magic one that I read one book of The Sword Trilogy. He and this Tripod series does seem to be ignored by a lot of SF fans. Maybe because the science in it is mostly in the hands of the aliens and the humans are primitive.
But in the concluding book of the trilogy the earthmen make use of their inferior technology in interesting ways. Next post.
Another juvenile series I enjoyed was the Tripods series by John Christopher. I believe originally this was a trilogy, but it has expanded to 4 with the addition of a prequel.
The first book in the trilogy is where I will start. It’s The White Mountains.
Aliens, The Tripods, have invaded and conquered the Earth some time ago. Limited numbers of humans survived the destruction and killing. They now live as virtual slaves of the Tripods as the aliens go about their mysterious business.
Mainly the Tripds live in 3 cities where conditions of gravity, and so forth are closer to the Tripods requirements.
Humans do not question their situation, they are under the control of the Tripods and accept their lives.
But this is maintained by everyone being ‘capped’. A metal device is fitted to your head and the Tripods can then control you.
Will Parker is about to undergo the ceremony of being capped since he has come of age. Youngsters are not capped until old enough.
So he still can have rebellious thoughts. But not for long.
Will becomes aware of the resistance to the Tripods and after various adventures decides to journey to The White Mountains where the resistance is apparently located.
I thought this was a real good story when I read it way back when. I have re-read it since. A nice twist on alien invasions with young people, because of the lack of caps, being the lead in the resistance. And some interesting writing about the society of humans living under the Tripods. A pastoral society, one that does not question the domination of the aliens. Reminds me of feudal society.
Next in the trilogy The City of Gold and Lead. In my next post.
