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Podkayne of Mars (Digest Size) (Ace Science Fiction)

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Before I actually review this novel, I must clear up a commonly-held misconception: _Podkayne of Mars_ is not a juvenile novel! When I was at the Heinlein Centennial last summer, Dr. Robert James (a leading Heinlein scholar) read the backcover blurb from the first paperback edition, which made this very obvious: juvenile novels are not marketed with phrases such as "the Minx from Mars." Dr. James is evidently irritated with people continually referring to this as a juvenile...

The last unambiguously juvenile novel was _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_. _Starship Troopers_ is supposedly a juvenile, but I really have my doubts. _Podkayne_ is a novel that comes early in the period in which Heinlein was finally writing more or less what he wanted, rather than writing for specific markets.

The entire book is composed of Podkayne's diary, with a couple of secret entries made by her younger brother Clark, in invisible ink. The reason for this is obvious once you have read the book: no spoilers here!

The story is about Podkayne and her younger brother Clark accompanying their Uncle Tom on a trip to Venus and then to Earth (the trip never gets past Venus). There's a lot more here than meets the eye, because Tom is actually on a secret diplomatic mission to the upcoming Three Planets conference, and Poddy and Clark are along just to provide cover.

At first everything seems to be perfectly innocent, but then a stranger gets Clark to smuggle a package on board the spaceliner. Clark is a lot smarter than the stranger gives him credit for; the kid figures out that he's been given an atomic bomb that's been set to go off shortly after they leave Mars. Clark, being a boy genius, finds a way to defuse it. The plot gets thicker from there -- for the most part the story seems like an innocent travelogue of the future, but here and there the reader gets intimations of skulduggery afoot. By the end of the book, the plot has thickened to a perfect and satisfying consistency.

There has been some controversy regarding this book, regarding the ending. The edition I have on my desk in front of me right now is the Baen Books paperback printing of July 1995 (the hardcover was August 1993), which has both Heinlein's original ending as well as the changed ending which appeared in all editions from 1963 until 1993. It's a pretty good story with either ending, but I like Heinlein's original ending better.

Before I end this, I'm going to make a short quote from a letter from Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, his agent, dated Mar. 10, 1962:
"Is _Poddy_ a juvenile? I didn't think of it as such and I suggest that it violates numerous taboos for the juvenile market."

Having said that, I have to say that I highly recommend this book, as I do almost everything that Heinlein wrote. I'm still not sure, after all these years, what it is that Heinlein put into his stories to make them so engaging, readable, and downright fun, but there it is: Heinlein was the greatest of all the science fiction writers so far, and he never wrote a dull tale.

This was the last of the Heinlein `juveniles', the only one written with a female point-of-view character, and the only one not subject to the editorial dictates of a certain prudish editor at Scribners, though it still suffered at the hands of the editor at Putnam (more of which later).

Podkayne (named after a Martain saint, but just "Poddy" to her friends) and her younger amoral genius-level brother Clark get to take a trip to Earth with a side stop at Venus accompanied only by their retired Martian senator uncle Tom, as their parents are unexpectedly having to deal with three newly decanted babies due to a crèche mix-up. Most of the story is a detailing of the events during their journey on the spaceship and the sights, people, and society of Venus, as carefully recorded in Poddy's diary (with occasional inserts by Clark). This method of telling a story is difficult to do effectively, but for the most part it comes across very well in this book.

Poddy is a very likeable, friendly person who is, unfortunately, a little too naïve, a little too cute, a little too much preoccupied with babies, boys, and proving herself to be `just as good as a man' to be quite believable as a (supposedly) highly intelligent but otherwise normal teen-age girl. Clark, on the other hand, is all too believable as a boy with adult knowledge and a child's `me' centered view of the universe. Clark is the prime mover of the events, but for the most part he remains offstage, and we only learn about what he has done as filtered by Poddy's perceptions. Clearly the most interesting character in the book, his actions, mistakes, and emotional development fit well with the thematic line that Heinlein is presenting, on the responsibilities of parenting, an individual's own responsibility for his actions regardless of external factors, on the importance of one's relations and duties to others.

Along the way, Heinlein does his typical excellent job of describing the scientific aspects of space flight and navigation in a manner that consistently remains interesting, comprehensible, and accurate. Also part of the Heinlein territory are his comments on population control, gambling, unfettered capitalism, the art of politics, racial prejudice, the attitudes of the `moneyed' class towards their `inferiors', and prostitution - an item that would never have gotten by his editor at Scribners.

The ending of this book has caused a fair amount of controversy. At the insistence of his publisher, Heinlein was forced to change his original ending to one that was far less traumatic, an `all ends well' type ending, as this was, after all, a 'children's book'. In so doing, however, the thematic line and Clark's development do not reach full closure. This edition of the book has both Heinlein's original ending and the changed ending, along with multiple essays and comments from readers about the pros and cons of each ending. For my money, Heinlein's original ending is considerably better, even though it probably makes the book unsuitable for very young readers, dealing with the consequences of actions, death, and the harshness of the universe towards stupidity, but the average teenager should have not only have no problem with it, I think they will find it more believable, more true to life.

Not his best, but certainly eminently readable and enjoyable by both teens and adults, and still better than ninety percent of all the other material on the racks.

This book was written just before the feminist
movement's 2nd-half-of-20th-century phase got
underway. Heinlein had not yet broken free of
traditional gender roles (as he certainly did
shortly thereafter), although it is perfectly
obvious that he not only values, but always enjoys,
intelligence as a personality trait in women. So
you have to forgive him for certain things in order
to enjoy this book.

I love the playful style of language in which this
book is written -- it is unique among Heinlein's many
books.

When the seemingly amiable and undistinguished old
Mrs. Grew turns out to be in reality a mercenary
terrorist, the protagonist's brilliant but anti-social
younger brother Clark is unsurprised, because once,
when she hadn't known he was watching, he had seen
her cheating at solitaire!! How do you like that!
(A similar insight occurs elsewhere in Heinlein's
fiction, in the short story _Gulf_, when Kettle-Belly
Baldwin says "Evil is essentially stupid.")

After a decade of writing novels for young people (known as juveniles back then -- today we'd call them young adult novels), Robert Heinlein came back to the form for one last shot. "Podkayne of Mars" is a charming story of a young girl's ambition to become the first female starship captain, and her travels to Venus with her uncle and her sociopathic genius of a younger brother. This edition puts together Heinlein's original ending, the rewritten published ending, and a spate of letters from fans arguing over their relative merits. I read the story first as a teenager with the gentler ending; I reread it recently with both endings. Personally, I think either ending works, although I generally think Heinlein knew what he was doing in the first place before editors started demanding cuts. A novel that promotes the idea of the equality of women, as well as a diatribe against racism, "Podkayne" was ahead of its time for 1963 (although the subjects were in the air the previous decade, they weren't in literature for young people at all). The argument at the end of the novel, blaming the mother and father for neglecting their children, has rubbed some people the wrong way; but the idea that one of the parents ought to be home raising the child isn't all that dangerous, is it? After all, a dominant majority of our prison population was raised without a father in the home, while the mother struggled. Good parenting creates good children; bad parenting, Heinlein is arguing, creates bad children. I, for one, don't object to Heinlein's literature carrying philosophical or moral arguments; they help me to think about my own positions, even when I disagree with Heinlein. In my opinion, Heinlein's tendency to have his characters voice strong opinions (which many label preaching), is precisely the reason we're still talking about him. There are many writers of his era who told great stories; there are few we're still bothering to read. "Podkayne of Mars" is a great story, but it's also a great argument: enjoy it on both counts, and feel free to disagree. I think Heinlein wanted it that way.

Robert Heinlein never could get over the charge that he was a misogynist - because he espoused the "different but equal" theory of gender relations, rather than the "exactly the same as each other" interpretation. With this book, on the cusp between Heinlein's mainly juvenile stories and his much deeper adult fiction, we see one of the most obvious examples of Heinlein's "different but equal" characters in the titular Podkayne.

Obviously it's a stretch for a middle-aged man to write a 1st-person account as a 15-year-old (in Earth years!) girl. Podkayne's goal in life is to become an explorer pilot, even though it's a male-dominated profession, even though she will not be educated in the top schools, and even though she is of questionable anscestry (born on the former penal colony of Mars). She gets the chance to see first-hand what space travel is like when her uncle (a senator for the Martian Republic, and ex-transported convict) agrees to take her to Venus and then Earth. A 3-planet conference is taking place on the Moon that he will attend. Unknown to Podkayne at the time of departure: radical elements do not want the Senator to make it to the conference, and others want to use him to push their own agendas contrary to the Senator's beliefs.

If this sounds complex for a "juvenile novel," I think it is. The reason it's classified as such is that the main characters are young (Podkayne and her even younger brother), and the dialogue is relatively simple, even when the ideas are complex. In comparison to, say, Between Planets or Rocket Ship Galileo, the plot is much darker and more subtle. Unfortunately, the plot doesn't really sustain itself - Podkayne is too much of a Pollyanna to really understand her situation, and it's difficult for the reader to take her seriously, especially in the closing 1/3 of the book when her brother takes control.

However, I think an adult reader will still find a lot here worth reading, especially the Heinlein fan. Besides the obvious gender observations that are still relevant today (e.g. that most men cannot bear to date a smarter woman), he adds some class and race undertones that became more important as Heinlein matured as a writer. Finally, the violence of the last part of the book may put off some readers, although if the child has watched a few episodes of "24" or "ER" on TV, they'll have seen worse.

This is the last of the string of 'juvenile' (young adult) novels that Heinlein wrote in the late fifties and early sixties before he began his series of best selling adult noveles (Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress etc). When Heinlein first submitted it to his publisher the ending was deemed too harsh and he was forced to change it.

The story is told, for the most part, by Podkayne Fries, a 16 year old girl, who lives with her family on Mars. Poddy is an intelligent, ambitious young woman whose chief interests are coping with her bratty younger brother Clark, planning her future career as a starship captain and looking forward to a family trip to Earth. The unexpected arrival of triplet younger siblings change her plans, however, and Poddy and Clark find themselves taking the trip with their uncle instead of their parents. Poddy and Clark discover that there is a bit more to their uncle than the kind card playing layabout they thought him to be and find themselves embroiled in interplanetary politics.

As always with Heinlein's work it is the background bits that he just tosses out as much as the main plot that is the appeal. We get a glimpse of Poddy's life on Mars, see what life on an interplantetary luxury liner would be like and experience what an entire colony run Las Vegas style would be like. Heinlein was often criticized, particularly in his earlier works, as being sexist. In this novel he begins to change this, the story is told mostly from a girl's point of view, her mother is the main breadwinner - a highly sought after engineer, and Podkayne has dreams of piloting through space. On the downside Heinlein abandons his feminist stance, Podkayne who began the story as bright and determined by mid novel begins to waver and be overwhelmed by circumstances ultimately surrendering to Heinlein's theme of a woman's place is in the home. RAH would handle female charcters better in later works.

For Heinlein fans this is a pivotal work, in Poddy we see the beginnings of the more independent women characters that will appear in his later novels, in Clark there is more than a passing similarity to a young Lazarus Long, the futility of racism theme that will return in later novels is a major point here. This is a must read for Heinlein fans, and would also be a good place to begin reading his works.

At the risk of becoming unpopular, I'm going to say that I agree with Heinlein's main premise: Children are not happy when they grow up without parents. It's sad, but it's true. I worked in a daycare and I saw many young Clarke's in the making.

I'll also say that I love Heinlein's female characters. They are beautiful, intelligent, and wholesome people who I find very realistic, though they were superwomen just as Heinlein's male charecters were supermen. We cannot all wrassle a grizzly bear, piolet a spaceship, and live 1000 years. Who wants to read about ordinary people?

Podkayne strikes me as being very close to many of the girls I grew up with. I lived in the U.S. Midwest, and we are not a sophisticated lot. Her planet was said (in the book) to be more conservative than modern Earth. Also, why do people assume that you have to be divorced from sexuality to be a whole person? She flirts, and enjoys being female. Why are women forced to chose between being intelligent creatures and sexual creatures? It's a disservice that we do to ourselves. I happen to have a genius plus IQ and measurements of 34-26-34. I like men, I like flirting, and that doesn't make me an airhead. Most of the women who assume I'm stupid usually cannot even solve a quadriatic equation.

I only have one great objection to this book. Uncle Tom lays the blame entirely at the feet of the mother. I'm sorry, but in a relationship like theirs, where she's making three times as much as her husband and his job is in an uncritical field (he's a freekin' historian!) I think he's the one we should be shaking our heads at. Why the h*** didn't he stay home and raise the children?!?!?! What was so important about history that it wouldn't wait until their children were grown?!?!? He was irresponsible, and I say shame on *him* for putting his ambition ahead of the welfare of his children.

Children cannot raise themselves. I wish they could, and no matter how much you spend on child-care they won't put as much work into it as a parent. I know this-My mom ran a daycare and I daily wept for the neglect these children got, and my mom tried desperately to fill the void in their lives.

Maybe it was too radical an idea for Heinlein to wrap his mind around-that in a case like theirs where the man is more empathetic and his job is less critical, that he should stay home and make certain the children are turning into human beings rather than remaining the a-moral animals all small children are. I can forgive Heinlein for making this mistake. I am disgusted at those who can honestly tell me that a life spent in day-care or with no supervision is good for children.

Raising a child is the most important thing to us today, if we value survival of the species. Podkayne might have liked adventure, but she was a warm, empathetic creature, and I cannot imagine her being happy working with numbers and cold space. Many intelligent women and men chose to be nurses over doctors. Have you seen "Meet the Parents"? Doctors don't get the time to really connect with their patients like nurses do.

Heinlein's excellent work, whose title character is a young girl with star pilot ambitions in a solar system where girls just don't do that kind of thing. She and her brother, Clark, an eleven year old amoral supergenius, are being raised by two distracted parents on Mars, but are closer to their Uncle Tom, a (seemingly) retired politician. They wind up in Tom's care on a tour to Venus and Earth. However, Tom seems busy with other things, meeting important people, etc. The kids are left to their own devices. Between the vortex around Tom, and the kids' natural tendencies for mischief, trouble is inevitable.

As has been pointed out in other reviews, this is really Clark's story, his evolution from amoral supergenius to a point where he is starting to care about other beings. There are alternate endings, one was not thought suitable and Heinlein was forced to edit it, now both are in the book. But both endings show Clark starting to care about others than himself. And this is really the point.

Clark is the sort of kid that most of Heinlein's preteen target audience would be just delighted to be. The kids who read Heinlein weren't much interested, at that point in their development, in sports or girls. A rather evil electronics genius who outsmarts adults with impunity, reprograms food robots to serve him unlimited free snacks, and outsmarts a casino, is just what these kids would like to be. While no doubt such a reader would take some interest in Podkayne as necessary to the plot, they would be most interested in Clark's antics.

Yet Clark makes mistakes, through overconfidence in his genius, and those mistakes have consequences for himself and Podkayne, in either ending. He owns up on this to Tom, who "is gentle with" him, as Clark wishes Tom would hit him. Clark realizes, and his readers realize with him, that there is such a thing as adult responsibility for mistakes, that you just have to live with, and that cannot be erased by a spanking. Clark will just have to live with the consequences of his mistakes. From what we can tell, this is a first for Clark, and it seems to change him a bit, giving us hope that Clark will be an adult who is able to exist within society. He is able to care emotionally for Podkayne, and for the small pet she has adopted and protected, Ariel, and who he cares for physically as her surrogate.

This is a coming of age story not for Podkayne, whose personality changes little though the book, but rather for Clark. Doubtlessly, few of the preteen readers realized it at the time, but they probably did in rereading as adults.

Not his best, but still, very, very, good.

Podkayne had always wanted to go to Earth, but I don't think this is how she planned her trip. Podkayne of Mars starts off with Podkayne, her younger brother Clark, and their Uncle Tom taking a trip from Mars to Earth. Podkayne had never left Mars before and was extremely excited to be aboard the Tricorn, a luxury space ship. Podkayne has a dream of becoming a famous space pilot. So she entertained herself by getting to know the crew and learning about the controls and how the ship works. She even helped out when the ship was hit with a radiation storm. But things take a bad turn when Podkayne finds out that Clark was paid to smuggle a bomb onto the ship. Someone wanted to stop the Tricorn from reaching Venus, the one stop they had to make on their way to earth. Clark gladly took the money, but then Clark disassembled the bomb and they got to Venus safely. Podkayne and Clark were excited that the ship would have a long stop on Venus and that there was plenty of time to explore. After a while on Venus, Clark went missing. While people continued to look for him into the next day, Podkayne found a note left by Clark. It said that he had gone to rescue their friend Girdie, a lady that they had met on the Tricorn. Clark had left instructions for Podkayne as to what to do if she found the note. She was to go to a certain news stand and ask for everlites. She was told to ask for two and say that it was dark where she was going. She later found out that this was all a trap, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up in a strange place. She figured that she had been kidnapped. She looked around and saw Mrs. Grew, another one of their friends from the Tricorn. At first she was excited to see her but then Mrs. grew put Podkayne in a chair and did something to the back of her neck so Podkayne couldn't move from the neck down. Podkayne could look around, though, and she saw her Uncle Tom and Clark sitting there too. Uncle Tom was a senator and was gong to represent Mars at the Three Planet Conference. He was the one that people didn't want to get to the Venus. Mrs. Grew was trying to persuade him to represent her ideas at the conference by threatening Podkayne and Clark. Uncle Tom was released to go to the conference but to make sure that Uncle Tom cooperated; Podkayne and Clark were held captive in a room guarded by a carnivorous fairy and her baby. Clark knew that they would be killed once Uncle Tom did what he was supposed to do so he developed a plan to get them out. That night Clark had to kill the fairy and they were able to escape. Clark had kept the bomb that he had smuggled and set it to blow the house up after they left. Their plan was to get out and find Uncle Tom. Once out of the house they split up and Clark got lost. Clark was in the middle of the swamp when he felt the bomb go off. Clark was rescued and then he found out that Podkayne had gone back to the house to save the baby fairy from getting blown up. She got lost and didn't get far enough away from the house. She was caught in the bomb's blast. Podkayne saved the baby fairy but was almost killed herself. She will live but it will take a while for her to recover. Her act of kindness could change her life forever. This book is extremely interesting and funny.

This book has a lot of funny scenes that could only happen in a science fiction book. For example, when the ship was gong through a radiation storm, Podkayne helped out by helping Girdie take care of the babies on board. The babies wouldn't stop crying and Podkayne had nothing else to do so she helped. Just as they got all of the babies calmed down and asleep, the ship went into freefall. All of the babies started crying and to make it worse all of the gravity was gone. Babies started floating out of their cribs. On top of that, the motion made a lot of babies sick so they started throwing up. The vomit just floated around in the air and sometimes hit the people trying to catch the floating babies. She made a mental note that babies don't like free fall. Another funny scene is when Podkayne was being held captive by Mrs. Grew. The only thing that was keeping Podkayne from just walking out was a fairy, who Podkayne called Titania, perched above the door. Podkayne didn't think this was much of a threat because it looked really cute. But when Podkayne got close to the door, Titania attacked her. She found out that fairies can be very vicious because they have sharp teeth and claws, and Podkayne has a cut on her arm to prove it. Another funny thing about this book was a room that Podkayne wandered into while her uncle was taking care of other business in the building. On Mars they have a form of baby care that lets parents sign a six-month withdrawal contract. It's a place where you can send your baby until it is six months old for others to take care of. They figure that the babies don't care who takes care of them for the first few months and it takes a lot of stress off the mother in the early months.

Although Clark is very smart, it is funny to see how many times he gets into trouble through out the book. For example, when Clark was paid to smuggle a bomb onto the ship, he met a guy at the station when they were waiting to check in their bags. He took the bomb and hid it in one of Podkayne's bags. When the check-in guy asks if they had any illegal items they `wanted to declare' no one said anything. Buy when the guy was about to look through the bag that had the bomb in it, Clark distracted them by saying that he had some Happy Dust. This substance was illegal and would turn any Venusman into a murderous monster. Clark had to go through many hours of intense searches and questioning just so they wouldn't find what he really had. Another example is when Clark dyed the faces of two ladies on the Tricorn. They didn't respect the marsmen and thought they were lower class. This upset Podkayne and Clark a lot. So Clark decided to do something about it. He took color pigments from a camera that only shows up if they're in a light. He put that on their towels, so when they rubbed their faces with the towels the color got on them. The whole time they tried to get it off (in the light) it just kept getting darker and darker. One other time that Clark got into trouble was when they were practicing taking cover in the shelter for a radiation storm. Clark was very slow and the last one that they rounded up. The captain of the ship wasn't very happy with this and scolded Clark in front of all the passengers. He said that if Clark wasn't the first one in the shelter when the alarm sounded, that he would spend the rest of the trip confined inside the shelter. The next time the alarm sounded, Clark was the very first person in that shelter.

One interesting thing in this book was that some of the issues that we deal with today, still existed and Podkayne had to deal with them in her time. For example, in the future, it is still harder for girls to do things, simply because they are girls. Podkayne wants to become a famous space pilot when she is older. But this is pretty much a male profession. So even if she's really smart, she would have to do extra work because she is a girl. This makes her rethink her plans a little. Another issue is people still being prejudiced against others. People from other planets don't really respect people from Mars. Mars was originally a penal colony and Podkayne has convicts as her ancestors, but she's never been ashamed of it. So when she overheard a conversation between Mrs. Royer and Mrs. Garcia, she got angry. They said that all marsmen were criminals and that they didn't know how to act around `their betters." Podkayne was upset because she considered herself an equal. Another issue in the book was parents spending too much time at work and not enough with their kids. After the accident with Podkayne and the bomb, Uncle Tom called her parents. He was mad at them. He said that people who won't take care of their children shouldn't have them. He said that with them always going off on work business, between them Podkayne was almost killed. She will get better but no thanks to them. He said he had doubts about Clark, and it might be too late to do anything about him. But they needed to try and hurry.

This is a great book that I would recommend to anyone ages 10 and up.

C. Chapman

This is one of those books with controversy surrounding it so I have to do two reviews of the book. First off, the story of a naive girl with feminist notions and a slightly warped brother is great fun. Podkayne is delightful as she stumbles into adulthood. Her narrative interrupted by notes from her brother is a series of growth and maturity in a modern society with conflicting viewpoints on what women should be. Many times Podkayne in trying to fight against societal limitations ignores her own personal limitations and its that tension that makes for an interesting read.

Now about the ending. The original publication changed Heinlein's ending. Heinlein had to make it palatable for audiences. This book has both endings with the publisher (and many essays by fanboys) saying that they prefer Heinlein's first one to his second one, mostly because Heinlein preferred the first one and hated the very notion of doing a rewrite. However the second ending brings home Heinlein's point quite well and makes it a story instead of a Heinlein sermon.

Considering Heinlein's intention is to say that working mothers neglect their families and create psychopaths and neglected children and that they should be punished as Podkayne's mother is punished, it is good that the sermon was not allowed to be played out in the first one. It is still there in the second ending but it isn't so blatant. Heinlein was a lousy preacher but a great story teller. Besides the first ending would make Podkayne's reappearance as an adult in later Heinlein works impossible.

Either way, read the book for yourself. Decide which ending works for you. I personally think that the original ending is about as useless as "early previously unpublished works", "conceptual sequels based on author's notes", and "poems written when the poet was horrid", but that might not be your opinion.