20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Mixed Bag From Heinlein, December 18, 2000
There are no truly bad stories in this collection though the title story features annoying teenagers in an annoying romantic plot. The teenagers annoy with their brilliance, and the plot annoys with its story of the girl narrator discovering, after the introduction of a beautiful Earth woman, that her boy friend is really her boyfriend. Still, you get a travelogue of Luna City, possibly the first example in science fiction of the sport of human-powered flight in low gravity, and another of Heinlein's Future History tales.
Not at all annoying, in fact a downright classic, "By His Bootstraps" is the grandfather of all those time travel stories where the protagonist crosses his own lifepath at different points to make a plot so confusing you need a diagram to sum it up. This one also features alien ruins and a changed humanity 30,000 years in the future.
"The Year of the Jackpot" is a tale about the cyclical nature of all sorts of natural and social phenomena from earthquakes to public nudity to ufo sightings to religious fervor and a whole lot more. Its mathematician hero notes that all the cycles will bottom out at the same time, and he decides to take his girlfriend and head for the hills to await the collapse of civilization. It's a fun story and distinguished by a shortage of the can-do spirit of much of Heinlein's work.
On the minor side are three stories. "Columbus Was a Dope" is a short, ironic tale about the sorts who are driven to explore and those that mock that drive. "Sky Lift" is about a space mission at very high gs to take emergency vaccine to an outpost on Pluto. "Project Nightmare" follows the efforts of a team of American psychics to stop a Soviet blackmail attempt that has concealed nukes in US cities.
The Gulf of California flooding the Imperial Valley after an earthquake is the engaging premise of "Water Is for Washing".
Stylistically, "Goldfish Bowl", one of the strongest and oddest stories in the collection, is typical Heinlein, but the plot and ideas reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft. Investigating the appearance of two permanent waterspouts, two scientists are captured by mysterious entities whose relation to us is not at all comforting.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"An excellent collection of short stories", March 9, 1999
By A Customer
This collection presents itself as a very interesting and wonderful reading indeed. However, I'd like to comment on one brilliant piece: "By His Bootstraps". If you have ever thought or wondered about the paradoxes of the time travel, the nature of time/space and our relationship with it, go and read it. You will find an example of one of the best time travel related reading in the world. Enjoy!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two Great Stories and Several Decent Ones, June 7, 2001
Out of the handful of stories in this book there are two classics that make it a must-read for any Heinlein fan. Most notably is By His Bootstraps, one of Heinlein's most famous shorts, and quite possibly THE definitive fiction on the time travel paradox. This is the grandfather of many subsequent time travel stories and plots, it's told quite cleverly and has a highly complicated plot that must have taken Heinlein quite a while to fathom. It's a must read for any SF fan. The other must-read in this collection is Goldfish Bowl. A story so shocking in it's implications, for Heinlein, that it took him some major convincing to get John W. Campbell, Jr. to publish it in Astounding. It's a notably different take on the way that we usually see aliens treat human beings in science fiction. The rest of the stories in this collection vary from worthwhile but hardly earth-shattering (The Year of the Jackpot, the title story), to inconsequential (Sky Lift, Columbus Was A Dope, Water Is For Washing.) Still, a Heinlein fan should pick this up, though it's not really a book you should start with if you're new to the author.
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