The first science fiction novel I ever read was Starman Jones (1953, USA) by Robert A Heinlein. Prior to that, I’d read only Doctor Who novelisations — I had, in fact, collected them, demanded them from family as birthday and Christmas presents, and built up a collection of around 30 books. But in late 1976, during my first term at a new school, a classmate pulled a book out of his desk, one of those old wooden desks with the lift-up lids, and showed me a copy of Starman Jones. It was the 1976 NEL paperback, I remember it clearly.
I borrowed the book from him and read it, marvelling at the skill with which the title character used his slide-rule. I had a slide-rule myself; I had no idea how to use it.
Another boy, in the year below me, introduced me further to science fiction. I forget how that friendship started, but I recall his name was Hopkinson (this is still more than forty years ago), and he lent me novels by EE ‘Doc’ Smith and Isaac Asimov. Now I think about it, they all had Chris Foss covers. Some of them, I still have the same paperback editions today.
Back to Heinlein… I forget what prompted it, but I continued to read him. Perhaps because by this time — the late 1970s and early 1980s — he was in full-on best-seller mode and his books were widely available in UK libraries. And WH Smith. I read the popular titles of the time, and even some of the earlier juvenile titles. But it was a random, incomplete exploration of his oeuvre, driven chiefly by the fact he was a Big Name sf author and I should probably read his books.
Come the twenty-first century, and like every sf fan over a certain age, I had an opinion about Heinlein and his fiction. This is, I hasten to add, a UK opinion, rather than a US opinion, as his legacy is considered differently either side of the Atlantic. The US dominates science fiction; US opinions of science fiction are not universal. US opinions on anything are not universal. This is important. And often forgotten by US commentators on science fiction.
In 2019, Farah Mendlesohn published The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein (2016, UK), a book-length study of Heinlein’s fiction. I find such books fascinating — I am as interested in reading about science fiction as I am reading science fiction. Mendlesohn’s book is an excellent study of its subject and persuaded me to read the Heinlein novels I’d missed all those years ago.
I’m not daft. I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy these novels. They’re very much novels of their time. And while I can partially understand the sensibilities underlying those written in the 1970s and 1980s, and perhaps even those published in the late 1960s… although I maintain Stranger in a Strange Land (1961, USA) owes more to 1940s carnival novels than it does to 1950s sf.
Tunnel in the Sky (1955, USA) is an early Heinlein novel, written back when he was chiefly known for didactic sf aimed at teens, or juveniles as they were then called. It’s not the Heinlein I grew up with it, but it’s the Heinlein fans of the day, US fans of the day, grew up with.
Heinlein’s politics were all over the place, and his career is as much defined by his political beliefs as it is his artistic choices. These days he’s characterised as somewhat right-wing, but he never was, really. Despite Starship Troopers (1959, USA). He was a libertarian, which is, yes, just another flavour of right-wing politics, but in him, and his fiction, it manifested as an emphasis on personal responsibility. If you’re responsible for your actions, then you’re also responsible for their consequences. Sadly, as a political philosophy it relies too much on people behaving rationally. And yet Heinlein was keen to show how a lack of rationality could scupper the best of plans…
In Tunnel in the Sky, groups of teenagers are sent to alien worlds to spend a week learning how to survive in a wilderness. Any society that does this is not a smart society, and it’s best to move swiftly over Heinlein’s reasons for this set-up. As you would expect, in terms of plot, that is, something goes wrong, and the week extends to a couple of years. The teenagers must build a sustainable society on an uninhabited alien world.
It’s unlikely Tunnel in the Sky is in conversation with a famous British novel published the previous year. It is, however, likely both are predicated on the politics and social environment of their writers. Heinlein was teaching his readers independence, and I’m tempted to link this back to Walden (1854, USA) by Henry David Thoreau, because I think pretty much all US fiction of this type links back to it, but Tunnel in the Sky is about individualism and about forming a democratic state along Athenian lines. But that model of democracy, codified in Robert’s Rules of Orders (1876, USA), only works with relatively small groups of people — I’m pretty sure there’s a Rock Hudson rom com which features this in its story, but I forget the title — and even Heinlein discusses the shortcomings of Robert’s Rules of Orders in the novel.
Heinlein’s message changed over time, but it was not difficult to figure it out. In Tunnel in the Sky, it seems to be “rules are good but some rules are bad” and while it makes an attempt at a framework to distinguish between the two, it’s poorly done.
But then, I don’t think Heinlein had a career-long agenda, so to speak. He set out to write exciting adventure stories in a science fiction mode, and he embedded his politics (of the time of writing) in them, but he wasn’t out to convert people, merely make them think about what they thought they knew.
It’s a shame more present-day authors don’t do the same.
