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Time for the Stars

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A standard illustration of the time-distorting effects predicted by Einstein's relativity equations is the traveling twin problem, where one twin remains on Earth while the other travels at near-light speed to some distant destination. Heinlein takes this textbook concept and adds two other ingredients to the mix: the twins are telepathic, and they are real people, in concocting this nice blend of great adventure and hard science.

Tom and Pat are the twins in question, targeted by the Long Range Foundation as a potential communications pair on the first exploratory star-ships due to their telepathic ability to communicate over any distance at (truly) instantaneous speeds. Which one will go and which will stay forms the initial conflict of this story, and how the decision is made provides a strong base for filling in the character of each, along with some interesting psychological insights into the problems that face close siblings. While still on Earth, this section also allows Heinlein to throw in some of his typical comments about bureaucracies, government meddling, taxes, population control, and the non-democratic nature of families, all deftly folded into and directly contributing to the story line.

Once the starship takes off, we find something of a more traditional adventure story, as we follow Pat on the starship and his meeting with the duties and responsibilities of ship-board life and the unforeseen hazards that the ship encounters at each of the stars it explores. In the meantime, Tom is rapidly aging on Earth, the link between the two becomes very fragile, and eventually Pat manages to establish a new telepathic link with his niece (and later his grand and great-grand niece). All necessary in order to continue the starship mission, for without being able to report the findings of the explorations, there is little point in continuing. As we move further and further out in time and space, we can see Pat grow as person, melded both by these external events and his own musings on the purpose of life and humanity, and it is this very growth that really provides the best portion of the 'entertainment'.

Heinlein fully recognized that positing instantaneous communications (of any nature) was a violation of Einstein's basic theory, and rather than ignore it, he used it as a springboard to a new science that forms the basis for the ending of this book. It also allowed him to neatly finish off the story line of the two twins, but I found the ending not quite satisfying, a little too pat and quickly done (and with some gender-roles that would be considered decidedly non-politically correct today). Still, this is one of the best of his so-called 'juvenile' novels, both due to its great science and very solid characterization, couched in his typical, unforced American prose, and with enough 'meat' on its bones to engross any reader.

Time for the stars

This is a genuine science fiction story, where science has made something possible (interstellar travel, in this case) and the consequences on people is explored. Science fiction isn't often too thoughtful about that side of things, but this book goes some way to redressing that. It's an attractive book, one you'll want to read again. The characters are well developed and have depth, and the storyline is interesting.

And here it is: the Long-range Foundation is an outfit that specialises in long range projects, surprise, surprise. And their latest venture is interstellar exploration and colonisation. But how to maintain contact? Radio is no good, since the signal from a ship which has travelled fifty light years will take fifty years to get back. But, the Long-range Foundation has discovered that twins are often telepathic, the "reception" doesn't fade with distance, and best of all, it is instantaneous! So, leave one behind, put one on the ship, and you have the perfect communication service!

Or do you? Our heroes are Tom and Pat, to young twins who are tested and are discovered to be telepathic. So one goes, the other stays. The real story is ho they get on, where once they were inseparable, now they are divided by distance and time. Worse than that, the laws of relativity means that the earthbound one grows older faster - in the end, one is an old man, while the other has aged only a few years. How do they cope with a terrible wrench like that?

But don't worry! This is not just a thoughtful consideration of a human problem, there's plenty of technology, alien worlds and aliens, tragedy, love even! You get to see earth society develop over fifty years or so, with all the changes that that brings about. This is a very enjoyable and readable book, and one that I would highly recommend.

This book goes to show you the different attitudes prevailing in SF compared between the fifties when this book was written and the ideas today. Today, if someone took the concept of twins being separated by relativistic effects (ie one ages faster than the other . . . go read a physics textbook for the equations) it'd be a massive complex novel detailing the cultural shock and changes, the emotional cost, and mostly have a really downer attitude about it, treating it, for the most part "realistically" whatever that's supposed to mean in science fiction. But that's now and we're talking about then. Here Heinlein takes two vastly different concepts, telepathy between twins and the travelling between the stars in ships moving at barely sub-light speeds. The focus here is on both SF adventure and what it means to leave everything you know and have not only your entire family grow old and die while you age much slower but have the whole world change (Heinlein's future slang is a gas), while you stay the same. It's a fun story, and the main character, the twin that goes, narrates his story somberly but still with a dash of zest in his voice, for all the regret he feels at being left behind, he's having a grand adventure and seeing things that no one else has ever seen. Not that it's all fun and games and a lot of things happen before the mission is over, some good and some bad. Like I said, it's a light story, you won't find anything totally deep here but it's all handled capably, as you'd imagine a master like Heinlein dealing with this . . . but please don't read it as a gender study guide and keep in mind that it was written in the fifties, when women weren't expected to do all that much. Asking permission from your husband for just about everything was the order of the day mostly . . . just don't let it bother you. Other than that, it's good solid fun, though the ending comes totally out of left field (unless I missed something), but it's a great example of the golden age of SF, when anything seemed possible. For those who want a slightly darker take on the same subject . . . go read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and that should knock the depress-o-meter right off the scale. Still a good book though. They're both good. Read them both, now!

This is, in some ways, Heinlein's most ambitious juvenile. Most of his juvies are great, fast-paced, somewhat light-hearted adventure novels, but this one is somewhat more serious. There's enough action to keep anyone interested, to be sure, but the main part of the novel - the meat - rests with psychological extrapolation and pontification. This is the most deeply psychological novel that Heinlein ever wrote, including the supposedly more advanced "adult" novels. The story involves two telepathically linked twins who are separated by a span of light years when one goes off on a space ship and the other must stay behind. Tom, one of the twins, is long used to being manipulated by his brother Pat. This book is, essentially, his coming-of-age story - perhaps it's not as good as Citizen of The Galaxy or Tunnel In The Sky in that sense, but it is still quite good. We see Tom grow up and become a man, having, in the interim, to shuck off the long, dark shadow of his brother and take on the responsibilities of life himself. There isn't as much action in this story as one would normally expect; the heart of the story are the discussions on matters psychological, as well as a lot about relativity, the human mind and epistemology, and such starker matters as the organization of space ships and family politics (we all know Heinlein loved to preach.) This was one of the first books to really show the psychological effects of relativity in practice during long space voyages. We see the twin who goes stay young while the one back home grows old... and what ensues. Ultimately, the slightly difficult - comparatively - subject matter of this book and general lesser reliance on action to RAH's other juvenile books makes this one perhaps not the best one to start with (try Red Planet, Citizen of The Galaxy, or Tunnel In The Sky for that), but one that any Heinlein fan will love.

In this story of telepathic twins, Heinlein does better than usual at balancing characters, logic, sentiment, science, and suspense. Each aspect of the novel is fascinating, from the revelation of the twins' telepathy to their ultimate separation by 63 light years of space and some 80 years time. Heinlein carefully makes future society and star travel seem real, all while making his characters live. I've read this book twice, and again found I could not put it down.

No action whatsoever, but superb craftsmanship. A superb exploration of what it means to be an identical twin, combined with speculations on the nature of time and value of impractical scientific research that somehow all ties together at the end. A little Swiss watch of a novel from a man better known for the rambling self-indulgent books he tended to write from Stranger in a Strange Land onward. Until somebody reissues this book, the full range of Heinlein's spectacular talent won't be understood.

Steve Sailer stevesailer.com

Time for the Stars (1956) is the tenth SF novel in the Juvenile series, following Tunnel in the Sky. It is set in the near future, after the invention of torchships and the discovery of telepathy.

In this novel, Tom and Pat are identical twins. Their father and mother had compromised on their names, so their full names are Thomas Paine Leonardo da Vinci Bartlett and Patrick Henry Michelangelo Bartlett. They were the fourth and fifth children in the family, so their father had to pay taxes for violating the population control laws.

Steve Lucas is their mother's brother. He is a sergeant in the High Marines within the Department of Peace.

In this story, The Long Range Foundation tests Tom and Pat and finds that they are telepathic among themselves. When the LRF offers them a contract as communicators for a trip to the stars, their father and mother are seriously considering the ideal. Then they learns that the voyage will take about a century and go into intractable mode.

Uncle Steve convinces them to leave their parents alone. He explains that the odds are against any of the twelve ships in Project Lebensraum ever returning home, so their mother will probably lose the twin who goes with the ship. Eventually the contract is signed and Pat goes away for training.

Tom is upset because Pat has been selected to go while he remains behind. It seems to Tom that Pat always gets the better part of everything. Then Pat is paralyzed in a skiing accident and Tom gets to go on the interstellar voyage.

The Lewis and Clarke is a torchship equipped and supplied for years of travel, although decades will pass on Earth. They will approach lightspeed in their flight, so relativistic effect wills slow shipboard time. The mission is going to Tau Ceti, a near twin of Sol and only eleven lightyears away. After that they will investigate other planets around further stars.

When Tom goes aboard the Elsie, he encounters his Uncle Steve, now wearing the insignia of a major. Major Lucas is commander of the Ship's Guard. He has known about Project Lebensraum for over a month and had swapped assignments to get on the same ship as Pat. But now they are together on the voyage.

This tale takes Tom, his Uncle Steve and everybody else on the Lewis and Clark into the unknown. They find adventure and sorrow on several strange planets around far suns. Tom and his fellow mindreaders are kept busy reporting back to Earth and adjusting to other partners as the decades pass on Earth.

This story made Einsteinian relativity a real thing within my mind back in my teenage years. The discriptions of time dilation are so vivid that they forced me to understand the reality of the equations. Of course, I had not really been acquainted with the mathematics at the time, but the author brought the concept to life. Since then, I have encountered this idea many times, but this novel was my first and best teachings on the subject.

The story points out by example how science and technology work. Often the technology comes first and science provides explanations for a working device. Sometimes science comes up with something new by accident or error and the technology follows. Many times science looks more closely at something in nature and find new truths. In this novel, telepathy is a new "discovery".

I am reminded of one reason why I like Science Fiction. I have lost count of the number of concepts that were first presented in these works and later became part of everyday life. Naturally, everything did not come true, but many times just being an SF fan reduced the future shock. So one could say, "What, you don't already know about spaceships/robots/atomic bombs/cloning/interplanetary voyages/time travel . . .?"

Highly recommended for Heinlein fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of interstellar voyages, psionic talents and teenage male twins. For those who have not previously read this series, the initial volume is The Rocketship Galileo.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Action-lovers beware, Time for the Stars is the most deeply psychological of Heinlein's young adult novels, and may not be the best choice for those new to Heinlein. It follows the space travels of Tom Bartlett, a young man who (much to his own surprise) shares a telepathic bond with his earth-bound twin brother Pat. Tom is a very realistic character, for Heinlein, a quiet, practical person, who has spent most of his life passively allowing his brother to manipulate him. Tom's gradual comprehension of the nature of their relationship, and his subsequent attempts to develop his own personality, make this an engaging story without getting too intense for younger readers. As might be expected of so psychological a novel, the pace is rather slow and very uneven. Heinlein concentrates primarily on episodes that show Tom's emotional development, rather than the "landfall" scenes which would be the focus of a more traditional "science fiction adventure" novel. The first few chapters give ample opportunity to see Pat in action; he gleefully manipulates his parents, some helpful scientists, a major research foundation, and of course, his brother Tom. Once Tom sets off to explore the galaxy, he has to shake off his dependence on Pat, and become a man in his own right. Fortunately, he gets plenty of help from various members of the crew, including the ship's doctor, and manages to learn from his mistakes. As the expedition runs into its own

difficulties, Tom has to take on more and more responsibility. Only by recognizing the sacrifices others have made for human progress, and resolving to make the best of his own situation,is he able to throw off the dead weight of the past, and find hope for a brighter future. The later chapters seem rather rushed, but Heinlein's endings are not always the strongest part of his novels, and this one at least stands up as well as most. Most importantly, Heinlein loves to pontificate, and as Tom travels the stars in search of himself, Heinlein takes the opportunity to expound on such diverse topics as relativity, communications theory, the principles of space exploration and ship's organization, and the uncertain nature of scientific fact in an ever-changing universe. His ability to make such material fascinating has always been his real genius, and under-playing the action leaves him plenty of room to go with his strength. If you don't especially like reading Heinlein's opinions on scientific and quasi-scientific subjects, you're probably not a particular fan of his, and this novel won't change your mind, but Heinlein's fans should find this a very enjoyable book.

Im not a good review writer but it was a great book.Not to much action but very detailed and exciteing still.It just grabs your interst.

Telling the story of two telepathic twins who are hired to serve as the means of communication between intergalactic starships ( one stays behind, the other leaves in the ship ), this book has all the good stuff of early Heinlein. Lots of his off-handed comments about everything from psychology to relationships, it is also a nice and quite realistic story about the scope of real inter-GALACTIC exploration.