Customer Reviews

The Door Into Summer (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There have been many science fiction novels written about time travel, but The Door Into Summer is my pick for the greatest among them. It comes remarkably close to conveying the very theory of the subject in layman's terms. I'm not saying Heinlein's arguments are correct, but they darn near make sense. The experiment with the two coins and with the two guinea pigs (just one, actually) is fascinating, and Heinlein's introduction of several paradoxes in the protagonist's actual temporal dislocation lends his science even more believability. Time travel doesn't even enter into the pages of the first half of the novel (not directly, at least), but the whole story is totally engrossing from the very start. Dan is an engineer and a darn good one. His inventions have been designed with the view of easing the housework of women everywhere: Hired Girl cleans floor; Window Willie washes windows, and Flexible Frank, his newest creation, will be able to do just about anything around the house, from changing a diaper to washing dishes. Life seemed to be treating Dan pretty well. Then his fiance and business partner swindle him out of their business, and he decides to take the Long Sleep (cryogenic suspended animation) for thirty years so that he can come back to chastise an ex-fiance who will be thirty years older than he will be. Of course, he won't do it without his best friend Pete, his feisty, ginger ale-loving tomcat and true friend. He sends his remaining shares in the company he created to his partner's young daughter Ricky, his only other friend in the world, trying to make sure that those don't fall into the wrong hands as well. His only mistake is in confronting his traitorous friends one last time. He gets the Long Sleep all right, but he wakes up in 2000 without any money and without Pete. He starts trying to find Ricky and start a new life, but he eventually, prompted by subtle clues to things that will have taken place, works up a plan to journey back in time and change things-of course, he won't really be changing things because they have actually already happened. It's so much easier to time travel when you know everything you will have done before doing it.

I love this novel. It's brilliant the way he works in clues to Dan's future past, and Heinlein's discussion of time travel is enough to make anyone a fanatic about the subject. When I think about time travel, I continue to think of this novel and its simple experimental analogies of coins and guinea pigs. It's mind-boggling yet completely comprehensible. I also love animals, and good old Pete is one of the most memorable feline characters in the universe of fiction. Finally, the concept of the title is well-nigh epiphanous (if I may coin a word). Dan explains how Pete would make him open every door in his house whenever it snowed, convinced that behind one of those doors it will be summer time. Dan describes all of his adventures as his own search for the Door Into Summer. The only possible explanation I can formulate as to why this novel did not win the Hugo for best science fiction novel of 1957 is the fact that Heinlein won the award the previous year for Double Star and could not comfortably be given the award two years in a row. The Door Into Summer is much better than Double Star; in fact, it is much better than all but a handful of science fiction novels ever published.

I rank this among Heinlein's three absolutely magisterial novels (the other two being _Double Star_ and _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_). Such judgments are notoriously subjective and controversial. But I feel safe in saying that any SF reader will find something to enjoy in this marvelous story.

It's part SF, part fairy tale, and part just plain good storytelling. Engineer/inventor Daniel Boone Davis and his feline companion Petronius the Arbiter are two of Heinlein's best-realized characters; the plot here is well-conceived and evenly, swiftly paced.

In case you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you. The setup is that Davis has just been rooked by his best friend and his fiancee, and he's out to do something about it. What happens then is the story itself, so I won't tell you; I'll just say that the time-travel aspect is worked out every bit as neatly as in "By His Bootstraps", and the tale is one of Heinlein's most humane ever. I've read it more times than I can count, and there's a bit near the end that _always_ gets me. (You'll know what I mean when you get there.)

Heinlein wrote this at the peak of his talent. If you haven't read it yet, don't miss it.

At the time he was writing, Heinlein's books were so much better than all the others because he was so much smarter than most other writers. He thought things through first (which many others did too), but then he added an element that many other sf writers didn't (and some STILL don't): humanity.

Dan Davis, an inventor, narrates the story. He's a brilliant inventor and has come up with some pretty amazing gadgets, including Hired Girl, a robot who cleans, sweeps, vacuums, mops, and generally works all day long without supervision. Dan's problems begin mounting when he learns he's been betrayed by his partner. And to add insult to injury, Dan's fiancée is in on the betrayal as well. As if betrayal alone isn't enough, the two conspirators have Dan placed into a 30-year suspended animation. Dan wakes up 30 years later and is focused on one thing: revenge.

Now lots of authors could have taken the above premise and come up with an entertaining story. Heinlein did this and much more. He shows us that change (for individuals and for all humanity) is difficult, but not impossible. The future is full of challenges, but no matter how much technology changes, no matter how much language, currency, and trends change, man's basic instincts and attitudes remain constant.

Heinlein also tackles the implications of time travel better than anyone else from this period. (The book first appeared in 1957.) The problem of time travel is well thought out and logical. (Wish you could say that about every time travel story.) If you haven't read Heinlein, or if all you've read is `Stranger in a Strange Land,' `Starship Troopers,' or `The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' (all great books), treat yourself to a fun, intelligent read from one of the true masters.

I read this more than 30 years ago while in Vietnam. It was, at least temporarily, MY OWN 'Door into Summer' and I can't recall how many times I read it during that year as a means of mentally escaping that Southeast Asian toilet. The story is wonderfully written, the characters well defined and the plot never dulls. I've often felt that a movie, exactly like the book, would be a great success. Unfortunately, this'll never happen. If a movie doesn't have exploding bodies and thousands of guns, tanks and aliens to kill, Hollywood won't think it bankable and never make it. Why??!! A good love story can make a successful movie...we've all seen some excellent examples, i.e. Pretty Woman, etc. Today's digital techonology would make the "future" envisioned by Heinlein exciting and, the movie makers can always fall back on a great story. As for this book? Buy it, read it, treasure it. I promise you'll love it and give it to your kids and (as in my case) grandkids.

Heinlein well deserves his place as one of the true sci-fi masters. Somehow he manages to pack technical detail in (describing it so that it seems obvious) creating characters you just enjoy reading about, and adding a fabulous plot. The Door Into Summer is not a book to cherish, but it's one to really enjoy, especially if you have a cat. A designer is conned by his business partners and ends up going into suspended animation with his tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter. When he wakes up, he enters a world which pulls the reader in, sharing with us his confusion and bewilderment at this new world. Soon, though, he begins to concoct a delicious revenge...but he'll have to learn to travel in time first. The Door into Summer is like all Heinlein novels, funny, quirky, interesting and thought-provoking, which is a rare talent.

Actually I would rate this book a 10... I found this book to be one of Heinlein's best... This story uses time travel which is a concept I find personally interesting and intriguing.. This book also had strongly developed characters which you either loved or hated.. Heinlein tells this story so well I was surprised it did not win a Hugo award unlike his story "A moon is a harsh mistress" which I found not as enjoyable as this book.. If you like science fiction then you are going to love this book.. This book is interesting as it was written in 1957 and time travel was not a concept that was thought of much. The story takes place in the 70's where you meet our main character Daniel Boon Davis, Creator of Hired girl Inc. Daniel is a great inventor but a lousy business man who unfortunately partners up with a man named Miles who you think is Daniel's friend.. Little does Daniel know that Miles is teaming up with Daniel's fiance Belle and together they ruin him financially, spiritually and mentally... They also trick him to go into deep sleep where he will be out of their hair.. Little does Miles and Betty know that Daniel is awakened in the distant future of 2001 where time travel is invented and now possible.. So Daniel goes back to the 1970's and fixes the errors that Belle and Miles have caused him... If you like cats I shouldn't forget to mention Daniel's feline companion Petronius... He was Daniel's cat, partner and co-conspirator that had a helping hand with Daniel vindicating the life that his so called friends ruined..

...there is no question that this would be among them.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read this book in the last 25 years. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times that I've tried to look at this book, with the firm goal of figuring out Heinlein's story construction rather than "reading" it, to discern exactly how he made it _so_ perfect. I've never succeeded, because Heinlein draws me into the story every damned time.

Enough so that it never bothers me that Heinlein's "future history" -- in the 50s, he wrote about events in 1970 and 2000 -- is completely out of sync with our own.

This is the quintessential time-travel SF novel, sure. But it's also a love story. And a story about what friendship means. And it also has a marvelous cat who behaves exactly as a cat should... with the appropriate level of cat-affection on the part of the book's hero. If you're owned by a cat, that should get you to buy this book immediately.

The Door into Summer is, by the way, completely "clean" -- you could give this book to a bright ten-year-old without worries.

Oh, okay, if you must have a short plot synopsis: our hero Dan is an inventor. His fiance and business partner pull a dirty deal on him, and rather than shoot him they put Dan into "deep freeze" to wake up 30 years hence. Only he arrives in 2000 with a grudge, and without his cat. To solve his problems, he has to experiment with time travel in the OTHER direction.

I have a library of over 500 SF/F books. And there are many Heinlein books that I love. There is no question that this is at the very top of the pile.

I recently re-read this wonderful old science fiction classic by Robert Heinlein and was delighted how well it stood up against the inevitable "dating." In fact, the off-kilter forecasts were part of the charm of the experience. Even the trashy paperback cover and the misleading blurb by some hack who had barely read the book (my copy, not the one shown here), are irresistibly reminiscent of the paperback market of those days. Fun!

You see, it was published in 1956, but was set in the then "future" worlds of 1970 and 2000 (yes, there is time-travel involved). It is amazing how the naïve 1950's confidence in technology assumed that by 1970 the world would have smoothly survived a six-week atomic war, and set up goodies like self-driving cars on automated roadways. By 2000, things are even more "advanced." Yet he had no inkling of the impending arrival of computers, which were to change the world in very different ways from those he anticipated.

I've noticed this before with the science fiction writers of the 50's. They were, I think, all relatively young, and shared that vision that twenty years is a LONG time and forty or fifty years ahead was an unimaginable "great gulf of time." They didn't stop to think that the huge changes they envisioned couldn't really be physically possible in that sort of time-frame.

So what is it that remains so enjoyable about the book?

Well, first of all, Heinlein is a really good writer. His narrative flows smoothly, his ear for dialog is good, he crafts a neat plot. He has a truly characteristic "style" - that's not the word - "ethos", perhaps? Let's say that the writer he most strongly calls to mind is Kipling. He is not as elliptical as Rudyard K., but he has the same militaristic, no-nonsense approach to life, war, death and taxes. (The "Starship Troopers" movie made from his book in 1997 only captures the superficial aspects, not the social and political philosophy that underlay his writing.) He likes people who take responsibility for their actions. He has the same oddly old-fashioned view of women: he is romantic but horny; admires their deeper understanding of people; acknowledges their power in relationships, but is often paternalistic. Add a touch of H.G. Wells and you are getting something of the flavor.

Other good things: it has the best portrait of a cat I've ever read (excepting perhaps "The Cat Who Went To Paris".) The protagonist is Dan B. Davis, an engineer/inventor - isn't it fun to read of someone who does all his calculations with a slide-rule! Dan lives in an old Connecticut farmhouse with 11 doors "near the edge of the Manhattan near-miss" and his best friend and partner is Pete the cat. Pete is the source of the book's title. Pete holds his master responsible for "quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else." Pete disapproves of snow, so in winter, " I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment. . . . But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer."

Heinlein (as Dan) notes " . . cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy. . . .Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy." But Pete and he are the best of buddies.

Here's an example of his hit-and-miss forecasting. "The changes in the last thirty years...[1940-1970]. ...had been enough to bug a man's eyes out: two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of communism, the Great Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic power - why, when I was a kid they didn't even have multimorphs." (the last is never explained}.

Dan makes a semi-smart robot called "Hired Girl" which does household cleaning - governed by "tapes" in its memory- they cost him $39 each to make. (Later, in 2000, the reader is meant to be shocked by the incredibly huge price of a decent lunch: $10.) His little company steps up to the big time by renting a electric typewriter "with executive type face and carbon ribbon." (In those days these things were so expensive you might rent them rather than buy).

Another big idea of Dan's is for a drafting machine for engineers. "This gizmo would let them sit down in a big easy chair and tap keys and have the picture unfold on an easel above the keyboard. Depress three keys simultaneously and have a horizontal line appear just where you want it: depress another key and you fillet it in with a vertical line: depress two keys and two more in succession and draw a line at an exact slant." So near, and yet so far - the general-purpose computer was not on the horizon, let alone the interactive screen and the mouse. Does this have a lesson for those who try to extrapolate the future from today's technology? In 2000 he thinks about the possibility of a machine to take dictation, and reckons you could "pack a hundred thousand sound codes into a cubic foot." Heinlein, who died in 1988, must have looked back in later life and smiled at some of these predictions.

An unforgettable writer - one of a kind.

Dan Davis is an engineer in the futuristic world of 1970 (Robert A. Heinlein actually wrote this novel in 1957, so he was writing near-future fiction). After designing a whole line-up of automatons that clean up around the house, Dan goes into business with a friend of his and establishes a company called Hired Girl. His next big project is Flexible Frank, an automaton that can do all the things humans do. Unfortunately, Dan and his business partner have a falling-out over a conniving woman who manages to take lock, stock and barrel everything that's not tied down. After an angry confrontation, Dan is injected with a zombie drug and taken down to be put into Cold Sleep, a cryogenic chamber and awakens 30 years later in the year of 2000. After waking up, Dan finds he loves the world but misses his friends, in particular his cat, Pete, and almost-niece Frederika. The future holds marves Dan has never dreamed of, but it also holds a really strange past for him, one that he doesn't remember and feels certain he never lived through -- until he finds out that time travel exists.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote several books for young adults as well as adults, including STARSHIP TROOPERS, PUPPET MASTERS, HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, and THE ROLLING STONES. He won several awards and is well recognized in the science fiction industry.

As always, a Heinlein story -- especially from the early years -- goes down smooth. Never a missed note. I felt like Dan was one of those guys I've known all my life or would have no problem meeting. The discussion of the possibilities of time travel had come up in several stories during the 1950s, but Heinlein's unraveling of the special problems inherent in being able to do usch a thing are fresh and presented in a way everyone can understand. I liked Dan's cat, Pete, and was actually upset when I figured out the cat was dead in the past. The Heinlein thinking is present on every page, including a scene set on a nude resort.

One thing that kept jarring me throughout the novel was the fact that Dan was going to build a voice-activated typewriter. In the year 2000. But that's forgiveable. No one knew how big a change the PC was going to make. (Take a look at these reviews and the format they're coming to you on!) Even though Heinlein was off on his future history and didn't know how much personal computers were going to change things, his forward thinking in social and economic areas were and are cutting edge. He also stayed true to the science.

THE DOOR INTO SUMMER is a fantastic read for old-time SF readers, but may draw the younger set in as well. Heinlein stays true to the world as he knew it, and puts us face-to-face with the hero, turning Dan into an old friend almost at once. That was one of the best things about Heinlein's early work.

I think this is probably one of Heinlein's most optimistic novels, for once the protagonist isn't wrestling with some great social injustice or attempting to navigate his way through the social complexities of either the present day or some vaguely defined future . . . simply put, it's a book that's fun and one that makes you cheer the good guy for being himself and in the sheer pleasure of watching him come back from left field to pull out a victory using only his wits and ingenuity. Here that man is Dan Davis, a man who loves his cat and loves inventing. He's not too good at business so he has a good friend help him and eventually they hire a beautiful secretary . . . eventually both screw him over royally and get him thrown into "Cold Sleep", where he sleeps for thirty years until the year 2000. The middle section of the book is mostly devoted to showing how different and similar the future world might be, I don't think Heinlein seriously thought he could predict the future (to this date, no SF author has, they're not futurologists) because it's nothing like our world, however it's darn refreshing to see a world where the future is actually better than the present in just about every way . . . too many SF novels have dark depressing futures that their characters just want to escape from. The plotting here is swift, the twists, while you can probably see most of them coming it's fun to see how they're executed (that's ninety percent of the trick sometimes) and the main characters that you're supposed to like are fun, while you can't help but boo the characters you're not supposed to like. Even the cat is fun. Though, am I the only one who finds the relationship between Dan and his friend's stepdaughter Ricky to be just a little bit . . . disturbing? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. All in all not a deeply complex book and not one that will take up most of your time, but it's probably one of everyone's favorite Heinlein's books (if only for the supurbly evocative title) and ranks as one of his most memorable.