Customer Reviews

The Rolling Stones

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Anyone new to sci-fi should read the Rolling Stones as one of their first ten books; they won't be disappointed. It's such a marvelous work that any sci-fi buff would feel proud to have it in their collection.

Simply put, this book is high adventure, following a family from the moon to Mars and to the asteroid belts, and beyond. Blending the novelty of a space ride with father-knows-best sensibilities--which at times seem dated but are all the more charming for it--he shows us a strong family full of independent thinkers and people willing to forge their own road.

Fans of "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" (another excellent Heinlein for any primer) will note that the grandmother of the Stone family was Hazel Meade, the hard fighting kid from the Lunar revolution; this book takes place about two and a half generations later. And of course it's obvious that Star Trek's tribbles are literary descendants of Heinlein's flat cats, though I think Heinlein got more mileage with them.

What's really most wonderful about this book, though, is how it touches the imagination. The concept of running an interplanetary shipping business bringing luxury items to asteroid miners and sight-seeing bikes to Mars strikes a chord, as do the little things like home life aboard a space ship and the grandmother's caustic sense of humor. Whether you're a long-time sci-fi reader or new to the genre, don't pass this one up.

The Rolling Stones is one of Heinlein's most lighthearted novels. It was written primarily for young adults, but it's a good read at any age. The book is about a middle class family, living on the moon as the story begins, in a time when middle class families can buy spaceships about as easily as you or I could buy a large recreational vehicle or a small yacht.

Briefly, the story involves a family--a mother and father, their four children (the twins Castor and Pollux, their annoying elder sister and usually underfoot younger brother), and grandmother Hazel Meade Stone. The twins had the idea of buying a spaceship and flying out to the asteroid belt to make their fortune in space mining ventures. Their father rejected this plan, preferring to send them to Earth for a formal university education. But Grandma Hazel prevailed with more ambitious counsel, and the whole family ended up buying a spaceship and becoming an adventurously nomadic collection of rugged individualists. They flew first to Mars, then to the asteroids, then, as the book ends, further onward.

The Rolling Stones is Heinlein's "family values" novel, with the highest virtue held to be loyalty to one's kin. Grandma Hazel Meade lies under oath and practically vamps a Martian judge, at one point, to save her two grandsons from doing hard time as punishment for trying to sidestep Martian import taxes. Earlier in the family's travels, the usually self-oriented Stone twins endorse the idea that the family should return to the moon, rather than go on toward Mars, because their younger brother (Lowell) seemed to be incurably space-sick. Even father Roger Stone's decision to override the computer and force a launch from the moon in the event of a mechanical glitch is explained as loyalty to the family honor, rather than being a petty manifestation of his own egoism.

The quality of the writing in The Rolling Stones is par for Heinlein--which is another way of saying it would be a masterwork for many another writer. If you want Heinlein without the aspiring sexual scenarios and political red flags, then The Rolling Stones is about as good as you're going to get.

Jerry Neil Abbott
(jna@ix.netcom.com

Some of the other reviews mention the great contributions Heinlein made to scifi, but the most important contribution of this book was not pointed out.

Anyone following the space program these days is familiar with the "gravity assist," whereby probes like Galelio make it to Jupiter by swinging around Venus and Earth to boost their speed for the voyage. The Rolling Stones was the first published mention of this technique way back in the early '50's.

Heinlein was a Naval Academy graduate whose chosen field was naval artilery ballistics. It was this background that gave Heinlein such a chillingly accuate eye towards his (soon not to be) fictional creations as the Atom Bomb, long range fire control to sink enemy ships, and more.

A great introduction to Heinlein's Universe, set after "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", this is one of the many books Heinlein wrote for children. Which isn't to say it is a "cutesy" story, but it IS written to catch the imagination and hold it.

I think this book is one of the funniest I have ever read. Unfortunately I read it about twenty years ago in a horrible Italian translation. But now I was able to appreciate the subtle humour, the pseudo-scientific details (I am an engineer), and the intriguing plot. Five stars well deserved!

The Rolling Stones (1952) is the seventh SF novel in the Juvenile series, following Between Planets. Some time in the future, after space travel is commonplace and most of the Solar System has been colonized, a pair of twins named Casper and Pollux decide to buy a spaceship and get even richer hauling freight to the Asteroids. But first they have to convince their father.

In this novel, Cas and Pol are very late for supper. When they broach the subject of buying a spaceship, Roger Stone is very much against the whole idea. His mother Hazel interjects a few choice remarks and the subject becomes a general topic of conversation. By the next morning, Roger has been convinced to look for a spaceship for family excursions.

With a little nudging from Hazel, her son quickly finds a passenger/cargo ship that is affordable and big enough for the whole family. It is love at first sight. Hazel negotiates the sale and Roger signs on the dotted line and affixes his thumbprint. By the time they return home, Edith has notified the leasing office that they will be moving out.

Roger draws up a manning list, with himself as skipper, Casper as first officer & pilot, Meade as second officer & assistant cook, Hazel as chief engineer, Pollux as assistant engineer & relief pilot, Edith as ship's surgeon & cook, and Lowell as supercargo. Roger is certain that, somehow, this list is just not going to work out. Naturally Roger doesn't publish the list since he is not yet ready to admit that the twins are going along.

With two registered engineers in the family, not to mention two budding mechanical geniuses, the ship's refurbishing and overhaul goes apace. Of course, the twins learn the hard way not to argue with the skipper; space law is quite definite about on the rights and responsibilities of the ship captain. Only after that episode are the twins officially allowed to joins the ship's company.

The ship's name is typical of decision making in the Stone family. Everybody agrees to drop the current name -- Cherub -- but no two members can agree on the new name. Hazel accidently comes up with the name when she defines moss as "what rolling stones don't gather" and her son proposes "Rolling Stone" as the new name. The twins object, but are outvoted.

The next crisis is over the destination. The twins want to know where they are going so that they can decide what cargo to take along. Everybody else also wants to know just out of curiosity. Captain Roger selects Mars as the first stop. After failing to fool their dad with the parts and ingredients for a still, the twins choose used bicycles as their cargo.

In this story, the Stones see the ruins and canals of Mars and then set out to the Asteroids. From there, they head out to Titan. After that, who knows where they went?

The Stone family are most unusual. They are all very intelligent and well educated, but the twins are not yet wise. They are all thinkers and readers, looking beyond the obvious. Moreover, they are all strong-willed. Lowell may be the youngest, but who knows what he will be like in another ten or fifteen years. Can he really read minds?

This story is science fiction's response to the ineffectual nonheros of the mainstream literature of the time. All of the author's protaganists are above average intelligence -- usually very much above -- and some of the characters are flatout geniuses. Moreover, these characters are often well educated and know how to use their knowledge.

Bet the author based these characters on people that he knew. Why, then, did the mainstream lose all hope of anyone being effectual? Why do readers nowadays complain that such characters are unrealistic?

Hazel Meade Stone is also a minor character in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), where she does her part in turning back the invading soldiers from Earth. She earned both her Founding Fathers pension and the right to carry her sidearm in that book. One wonders on whom the author based her character?

Another reviewer calls the author a sexist. The author has Hazel point out the sexist bias that led her to leave her job as an engineer at the AEC and make a living dealing blackjack; her son even admits that she probably a better engineer than he is. Moreover, the author bills Edith Stone as a more than average medical doctor. So Meade is interested in boys, but Cas and Pol are also interested in girls; Meade just hasn't yet made up her mind what she wants to do. If you think that the Stones won't support her on any path she wishes to pursue, you better think again.

Heinlein is probably the least sexist of the Golden Age male authors, with several novels featuring female leads. Read Podkayne of Mars (1963) for a sympathetic novel about a competent and effective female character. Other such characters are featured in Friday (1982) and To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987). One suspects that Virginia Heinlein was the main inspiration for many of his female characters.

This may be the best of the Heinlein's Juveniles. It explicitly evokes the inquiring spirit and the restless nature of humanity in his works. It also conveys the close ties, perseverence and imagination of the pioneers that settled the new world and will settle the new worlds in space.

Highly recommended for Heinlein fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of new lands over the mountains or through the deeps of space. For those who have not previously read this series, the initial volume is The Rocketship Galileo.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Castor and Pollux Stone may be the most entertaining twins in sf for the reader, but it's hard to imagine why their parents didn't strangle them at birth to preserve their own sanity. Ever since the adults (Luna Founding Father grandmother Hazel Meade Stone, mother Dr. Edith Stone, and father Roger Stone, engineer, former mayor of Luna City, and screenwriter) let their guard slip long enough to let the twins invent something genuinely useful (the frostproof rebreather valve) these native-born Lunatics have been scheming to repeat the accomplishment-at least the money-making part of it-with the not very well thought-out goal of eluding adult control before they've learned enough caution to keep themselves alive, out of debt, and out of jail. When their latest caper involves an attempt to buy a spaceship and launch their own trade expedition to the asteroid belt, grandmotherly and paternal restlessness morphs the scheme into a family tour of the planets, starting with Mars and possibly stretching to include the rings of Saturn.

Castor and Pollux of course do not let up on their money-making schemes, and figure out that they can buy used bicycles cheap on Luna, fix them up on the way to Mars, and sell them to prospectors there for a fraction of the price of new bikes shipped from Earth's much deeper gravity well, while still making a huge profit.

They do not, of course, ask themselves why no one before them has been smart enough to come up with this idea, and that's a recurring theme as the Unheavenly Twins wreak hilarious havoc across the solar system, with brushes with jail, bankruptcy, and assorted mayhem.

(One very funny episode will seem oddly familiar to anyone whose age and background caused them to encounter the original Star Trek first. However, Heinlein's flat cats predated the tribbles by about fifteen years.)

Great fun.

"The Rolling Stones" is a wonderful coming-of-age novel inside a family space romp. It has a loose-knit plot that mimicks an endless space adventure serial. The best part of the story is the rich set of characters in the Stone family: the red-headed, precocious teenage twins called Castor and Pollux, their older sister Meade, their younger brother Lowell , their grandmother Hazel (who carries a cough-drop dispensing sidearm), their mother Dr. Edith Stone and their father Roger Stone. The twins are the primary focus of the story but only because they get into the most trouble and do the most growing; however, the heart of the story is the family dynamics and some of the most enjoyable scenes occur when they all get into the act. The banter, wit and quips among this highly intelligent group are hilarious. Heinlein weaves this deftly with the hard science he is famous for. The novel instructs us on the details of space travel, navigation vectors, gravity wells and much more. Lastly, this short novella contains some classic gems of wisdom like the three stages of technology, the best way to earn money, who gets rich in a gold rush and what's more important than money. By far, the most well known quote is on the three stages of technology:

"Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the short comings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final proper design therefrom."

In conclusion, this short novel makes you wish you were aboard the ship called the "Rolling Stone" heading out with the Stone family towards adventure in the outer reaches of our solar system! Remember, a rolling stone gathers no moss.

This was the sixth of the `juvenile' novels Heinlein wrote under contract for Scribners. Unlike most of the others in this group, there doesn't seem to be any overriding plot, rather it is more a set of incidents that happen to (or are caused by) the family Stone.

The Stone family would certainly qualify as `different' by most standards: grandmother Hazel Meade Stone, veteran of the lunar colony revolution (see The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) who still packs a gun (even if it only dispenses gum); Roger, engineer father who has turned his talents to writing some rather lurid space operas; Edith the doctor, quiet and reserved, but the backbone of the whole family; Meade the 18 year old daughter who seems to mainly fill the function of mother's helper and object of derision by Castor and Pollux, the 17 year old twin mechanical geniuses who have dreams of becoming the shipping magnates of the solar system; and six year old Lowell, who when not beating Hazel at chess or reading minds is very much a pest.

The story is all about their adventures when they decide to pack up from their Lunar home and jaunt around the solar system in an older, carefully fixed up space ship that they buy from a used-rocket-ship dealer. Parts of their adventures are hilarious: the disaster of the Martian flat cats (the model for the Tribbles of Star Trek fame), the events surrounding the twins being arrested on Mars for tax evasion, the brief looks we are given at the `scripts' that Roger and later Hazel write to help fund their travels. And other parts are quite serious: Edith tackling a virulent disease on a nearby tourist ship and Hazel's problems with a jury-rigged rocket-scooter being used to navigate around the asteroid belt. The various family interactions are nicely shown, and the characterizations of Hazel, Castor and Pollux are full-bodied, making the reader really believe in this odd family.

The science presented here is real. Heinlein was always careful with details in this area, and in this one he presents the facts of orbital mechanics, delta-v requirements, and calculations of best possible orbital transfer trajectories. Each of these items has a direct effect on the story line, and Heinlein makes all this real-world stuff go down easily, an aspect of his works that has inspired countless youngsters to pursue careers in science and engineering. His speculations about various planetary conditions, however, while plausible at the time this was written (1952), have since been shown to not be true, so a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required of today's reader and allowance made for its age. Also causing some believability problems are the very limited `computers' shown, and the possible necessity of doing orbital calculations by hand. This is one area where Heinlein (along with almost everyone else) consistently underestimated not just what was possible with computers, but just how fast progress would proceed, making this book (and several others) seem positively ancient.

The lack of an overriding goal or direction for this book does relegate it to more of a pleasant diversion than a significant book, and there is less personal growth for its main protagonists Castor and Pollux than most of the other juveniles have. While humorous and entertaining, it's not the best of his juveniles.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I have to admit this is just about my favorite Heinlein. It is about a family that does some really cool things together like visit Mars and the asteroid belt. They suffer some mishaps and adventures and have a generally great time. I like to think this will be possible one of these days. Too bad I won't live to see it. Like in the Tom Swift series, the family is able to buy supplies and craft that would put NASA under a strain. This juxtaposition of the impossible with the everyday possible is what makes this book both appealing and typically Heinlein. Although a Heinlein "juvenile" book I seem to enjoy it now as much as when I first read it many many years ago.