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Time for the Stars

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"Time for the Stars" is essentially a retelling of Magellan's catastrophic three-year circumnavigation of the globe. In fact, the fate of "Project Lebensraum," the title of the first systematic attempt to explore the near earth interstellar environment is comparable to that tragic voyage, at least in subjective/proper time, and in percentage of crew and ships lost.

The novel is compelling for its story, the strength of its characters, the remarkable efficiency in which the tale is told, its strong sense of history unfolding, and the impressive integration of its story threads. Moreover, when the science has to be right, it is. It is the best fictional introduction to Relativity theory I know of.

The story covers just over seven decades of tumultuous times. Like Magellan's voyage, the Project occurs on the edge of the transformation of one age to another. And also like Magellan's armada, these relativistic (i.e. high-velocity but slower-than-light) ships, are on their own. In fact, in one way it is even worse: they cannot even come to each other's aid.

Prepare for a rough ride. Despite the frequently humorous and optimistic tone of its narrator, Tom Bartlett, starship Lewis&Clark with its 80% fatalities over four years, is a death ship. It will suffer accidents, diseases, and violent attacks by local residents. As with Magellan's voyage, mutiny is an ever present danger. It will take a miracle, technological or otherwise, to save the survivors.

I cannot recommend this book enough. If you haven't read Time for the Stars, here is your chance. If you have, read it again.

This is another one of those Heinlein 'juveniles' published by Charles Scribners that are no longer marketed as such. They never go out of print because they are such great stories.

Set in the future, Earth is overpopulated. An interstellar expedition is formed in order to identify and survey possible earth-type planets. At the same time, it is successfully demonstrated that telepathy is possible. To the astonishment of the researchers, telepathy is instantaneous and ignores the inverse square law. Distance is not a factor. A top secret project is formed to identify and recruit telepathic pairs for the expedition. Instead of waiting years for the fleet to report back, Earth can get the valuable information in real time.

Enter the Bartlett twins Tom and Pat. They sign up for the project. One will remain on Earth while the other goes with the expedition. However because of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald time contraction, the twin in space will age much slower than for his earthside counterpart.

What's the beauty of this book? It's a very strong character driven story. Tom and Pat are not Damon and Pythias. Tom has always been dominated by his brother in a million subtle ways. The relationships Tom forms with his fellow explorers are complex yet realistic. Heinlein understands the personal dynamics of shipmates from his time in the U.S. Navy.

Heinlein also understands the problems of exploration. The simple fact is exploration is an extremely risky business. Your superior technology may not help if your numbers are few and you're far from home.

I'll end this before I give up much more of the story. You will find it a fast and entertaining read.

"Time for the Stars" by Robert Heinlein is good reading, without any serious issues about the author.

Heinlein always offers some controversial thoughts through his characters, but he is not intrusive about this habit in this book.

While readers today may be more skeptical about telepathy than the folks of fifty years ago, the story is good enough that most people will be willing to suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy the really terrific science fiction. I will say that I have seen twins communicating by their own `secret' language and I understand that the phenomenon is more marked with identical twins. Is that really telepathy? Good question. These days, science is very skeptical about that, but, fifty years ago, science was halfway convinced that telepathy was real.

There are no wars here and no actual militarism, but there are dangerous encounters and crew members die. There is little politics (for Heinlein). However, there is a wonder filled interstellar trip, with lots of 'hard' science fiction. And, there is the development of the major character, Tom.

I do not feel compelled to tell you more than that and to urge you to read it for yourself.

Please note that most of this review is actually on Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. That's because I was unable to post this review on that product page for some reason, maybe because of a system problem, and rather than delete the review, I thought I would post it here under another one of Heinlein's juveniles. So I apologize for that but hope you will enjoy this review too.

However, I would like to make one brief comment about Time for the Stars. The two main characters are interesting in that Heinlein has portrayed a dysfunctional twin pair who, although not close personally, they are mutually telepathic. Usually, twins are close and almost inseparable, but not in the case of these fictional twins. And when one twin dies in real life, often the surviving twin dies shortly thereafter.

Heinlein started out writing juvenile novels, although sometimes the dividing line between juvenile and truly adult works in his oeuvre is not as simple as is commonly thought. There are a number of these that Heinlein fans are familiar with, such as Rocket Ship Galileo, Time for the Stars, The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Starman Jones, The Rolling Stones, Podkayne of Mars, and Citizen of the Galaxy. As my fellow reviewer Dark Genius points out, this is probably the most mature of his juvenile works. But they are still notable for containing some of Heinlein's best fiction and ideas.

For example, in Starman Jones, we are introduced to the concept of the cruel and unjust society. In Heinlein's juvenile novels, they are allowed to exist, but in the later adult novels, they are resisted and overthrown. In Starman Jones, we encounter a society of intelligent but violent and carnivorous horse-like quadrupeds who capture and imprison the exploration team sent down to the planet. In this society, the old and sick are not cared for by their family. Instead, they are brought before the tribal chief where they are judged and put to death rather than allowing them to become a burden.

Although Starman Jones was written almost 60 years ago, unfortunately the quadruped culture is not so different from what modern American society has become, in which old people are considered useless and of no value. Contrast our culture with that with China, where the old people are valued for their experience and wisdom.

Getting back to the present book, in addition to the several points Dark Genius discusses, such as slavery, that make this a more adult novel, there are a number of other themes that are more mature, some of which became standard Heinlein fare in later adult works. These include the pervasive corruption of government officials, the odiousness of most governments in general, and their virtually ubiquitous abuse of power. Heinlein feels that such governments richly deserve to be violently overthrown and destroyed down to their very foundations.

Then there is the self-imposed, almost ritual poverty of Baslim, the beggar; the over-regimentation, authoritarianism, and bloodthirsty cruelty of the dominant society; the importance of education and knowledge as power; the moral and ethical obligation of duty and of an unfree citizen to overthrow unjust authority; and many others.

Another interesting idea is the female as the aggressor in initiating a romantic relationship, which Thorby encounters for the first time in the Sisu trading ship--which is actually how things normally work in both primate and human society. :-) And in Heinlein's books, the female is often the more intelligent and educated of the two partners, as in his story Gulf, Mr. and Mrs. Stone in The Rolling Stones, and in the case of Valentine Michael Smith's parents in Stranger in a Strange Land.

Another way to think about the book is that it is basically a Heinleinian, Sci-Fi version of the rags to riches tale, as you watch Thorby's rise from a poor, ignorant, beggar boy to one of the richest and most powerful men on earth. Overall I think Citizen of the Galaxy counts as one of Heinlein's best novels, whether juvenile or adult.