My edition of this book is not one of the ones shown, but there's not much point in adding it. This is the 1981 edition of the Del Rey printing. It's neither a paperback nor a hardback--more of a hybrid bound paperback (maybe that's what people mean when they say 'library binding'. Actual library binding is either those cardboard thingies or the sort of thing you see when journals are sent out to binderies. This has the paperback cover pasted on thick cardboard and covered with plastic).This book starts with the hero slaughtering a rattlesnake, and feeling guilt only because he didn't shoot accurately enough to kill instantly. Not a promising beginning. If his society is set up so that kids are armed with lasers, who use them to recklessly slaughter snakes who happen to venture too close to the trail, it's actually somewhat amazing that there are any rattlesnakes left to slaughter.The planetography is, of course, archaic. The first edition was from 1951. Sputnik wasn't launched until 1957. Heinlein doesn't even hazard a guess as to what color the Earth is from outside. The watery Venus depicted owes more to Burroughs than even to contemporary scientific consensus--as does the desert Mars, but Mars is mostly offstage. The notion of nontidal wetlands is a little (you should pardon the expression) nebulous. The totalitarian Earth depicted is not Orwellian. Orwell's dictators were abstemious and puritanical. The citzens on Earth in this story are sybarites. They don't fear the secret police because most of them have no contact with them. They may vaguely know that such things exist (and that they're absolutely ruthless), but they cling to the bizarre notion that only the evil need fear such abuses. The naive interplanetary waif at the center of the story is almost certainly not the only person who believes this. The fact that the headmaster in the Arizona school (dreadful place, by the way. More than confirms my belief that Arizona is not fit for human habitation.) is shocked at the notion that one of his students might have done business with a 'booklegger'--which gives to wonder what else is censored in this society.There are some odd technical inversions. Where do people on Mars get paper? How did it work out that transporting physical paper is so much cheaper than 'radiograms' (this, by the way, seems to be what the Russians call emails--at least based on what the translators on the Space Station say) that young Don is accustomed to weekly LETTERS from his mother--but gets radiograms only rarely? What sort of economy can afford to send literally hundreds of rockets aloft daily for ordinary inter- (and intra-) continental traffic? How are the rockets powered? How are they reused? What about wastes? Accidents?The notion that humans will necessarily resolve their problems by warfare is obviously rejected outright by the Venerian Dragons. Don's Venerian godfather (a physicist, evidently) intervenes for him several times in troubled times--and makes it plain that it is doing so for family reasons. The cooperation of the dragons with the Venus colonials' revolt is clearly based only on the conincidence that the dragons believe that their path joins with that of the humans--for a while.Those objections aside, however, there are several interesting points raised. The lecturing of a family friend who is co-conspirator with Don's parents is intended to divert suspicions of spies--but it constituted my first introduction to the concept of alternate universes. The technology of the dragons (while badly explained) is interesting. I'd be interested in seeing a diagram of those interlocking ovoids, for example.The notion of moving planets is interesting, if somewhat pointless. Yes, you could move them. The textbook Terraforming makes clear how such things might be done. But it's not easier than alternatives. There are all kinds of balancing to work out. And it'd be pointless to move Neptune, which has no more surface than the other gas giants (well, maybe a little more, since Neptune, being very cold, does have some solid ice. But that'd melt...).It's interesting that though Heinlein was aware of the utility of space stations, he never seemed to think of them as primary habitats for humans and biological communities. He must have known of Tsiolkovsky's speculations (mustn't he?). Yet he never seemed to take them serioulsly. Odd.The education of the hero is very poorly managed. He doesn't seem to have much spirit of intellectual inquiry (he responds to questions, butdoesn't seem to initiate them much). He's surviving--but why? He doesn't seem to have much motive beyond making it to the next day. And what then?The subtitle of Busman's Honeymoon is 'a love story with detective interruptions'. This story is (from many points of view) a scientific story with adventure interruptions. But the scientists involved are (mostly) not doing original research. They're patching together remnants of older scientific traditions. The Renaissance on Earth started out this way--but then turned to original research. One could hope that the same would take place in this case. Because the theories about why the 'First Empire' collapsed are frankly sketchy at best. Breaking the (poorly described) tyranny of the Federation is, in a sense, a red herring in isolation. Given time, it would collapse of itself. But with no real understanding of history, it's too likely that it will be replaced by another systemwide tyranny--equipped with the new technologies, making it even more resistant to overthrow. And without knowing what happened in the past...The crying need is for a better education for ALL citizens of the Solar System...and, if they expand, other places as well. The fact that children can grow up with little knowledge of what's already known, and no real skills in formulating new discoveries, is passed off with limited comment. The narration implies that they can't be expected to be well-versed in any non-elementary field--or at least, any outside their own specialization. Yet the protagonist is the child of highly esteemed scientists--who couldn't be bothered to teach their own child. For example, it's stated that few Venusian colonists learn 'true speech'. Yet Don did not learn this from his own family, but rather from a Venerian dragon, who whimsically took an interest in his tutelage. The love interest (Isobel) evidently has an even worse education. As do too many other Federation citizens. Even the spies (who should at least be educated well enough to figure out how much information can be packed into a small compass) show evidence of very poor education.No real alternative is offered in this book. There's a vague reference to a form of drug-assisted 'cramming', designed to enable people to memorize long passages of information. But since there's no effort to explain what the memorized passages MEAN, it's precisely useless as an educational technique. Which is not what it's used for, of course--but nothing better is offered, either. Both the government spies and the private spies are poorly briefed. Jan Karski would probably not approve.Further, there seems to be no effort to convince the 'Greenies' to refuse to obey immoral orders. If you can sabotage the military response by getting the rank and file to rebel, desert, etc, you have a lot better chance of throwing off tyranny--but there's no evidence of any attempt to do so. The 'ignorant armies clash by night'--and they seem to make no attempt to learn what IS going on. This is not consistent with what generally happens, especially in a guerilla conflict. Later Heinlein books do make some attempt to change the minds of the ordinary people. This one seems content with a general contempt for intellectual exercise, and an assumption that there's only one form such exercises could take, and (bizarrely) also a contempt for those who don't overcome the general negative conditioning, and learn on their own.It's not an explanation for the lack of focus on education that the book is aimed at older children. Surely, of all people, these are the people who MOST need to be taught to value education?
Here’s the latest of my rereads of Heinlein’s works. After Farmer in the Sky Robert then published a decidedly more adult novel, The Puppet Masters. However, he was still with a Scribner’s contract to publish one juvenile novel a year, and so returned to the world of young adult SF with this novel.Things in Heinlein’s own world had moved on a little since his last sojourn to his future Solar System, and this change is partly reflected in this novel. Though a juvenile novel, and one of a series designed for Scouts (a predominantly male teen audience), Heinlein had found a voice through his Destination Moon movie scriptwriting and The Puppet Masters. It is possible that Heinlein was starting to outgrow such a setup.The background to Between Planets is a more sophisticated one. Having travelled to Venus, Mars and Ganymede in previous juveniles and examined the importance of freedom and pioneering characteristics, Between Planets sets up a situation where the main protagonist is between different territories. His loyalties are less black-and-white than in previous novels, because his conscience is also transitory.Like Red Planet, Between Planets is a tale of colonial revolt. Such a situation was to some degree forewarned in Farmer in the Sky, when Bill Lermer was involved in a discussion that suggested that the continued human expansion and colonisation of the Solar System would eventually lead to war. (Chapter 18, pages 154-155.) As William H Patterson points out in his Introduction to Between Planets, “This time he (Heinlein) would turn Space Cadet inside out, he decided: Instead of a young man deliberately preparing for war, this story would be about a young man surprised and overtaken by war.”Here, in Between Planets, we see the culmination of that ‘progress’, with an independent colony (Venus) demanding liberation from the original home planet, each world accusing the other of taking advantage of their status. Of course, not all of this is entirely relevant (at first) to our hero of Between Planets, Don Harvey. Don begins the novel at school on Earth. On his recall to Mars, Don (with a father from Earth and a mother from Venus) finds himself in the middle to a deteriorating situation between the two planets. Whilst visiting a family friend before lift-off, Don is arrested. He is eventually released, but his family friend, Professor Jefferson, dies of heart failure whilst under arrest.Don then travels to an Earth orbiting space station en-transit to Mars. Whilst there, a raid by Venusian colonists takes over the station. Many travellers are returned to Earth, whilst Don claims Venusian citizenship in the hope that from Venus he can then travel to his parents on Mars.Once on Venus, Don finds that, due to the current interplanetary fracas, his Earth-money is worth nothing. Communication with his parents is impossible. He is forced to get a job and try and earn the credit needed to pay for passage to Mars. When the Federation of Earth invades Venus, Don finds himself as an enlisted guerrilla fighter for the Venusians, but with a bigger part to play in events than he realised.On finishing this book, my first thoughts were that this was the most exciting YA Heinlein novel I’ve read so far. It’s an entertaining combination of espionage and thriller, with a Space-Age setting. Whilst some of its information is now sadly out of date (farewell, jungle-swamp Venus!) I was able to still read this without losing my sense of disbelief.The book itself is a strange concoction of old-world imagery combined with future-age optimism, even from the hindsight of 2013. We have this from the first page, when Don is out riding a pony in New Mexico whilst managing communication with what we would now call a mobile phone. The receipt of a ‘radiogram’ could now be seen as an email.This combination of things the reader recognises with things they don’t runs throughout the novel. It is perhaps to be expected with a novel over 60 years old. In the 1950’s, as now, the purpose of Science Fiction was often seen by many at that time to predict the future, and as we know now some ideas work, whereas others don’t.What I did find interesting was relating parts of this to Heinlein’s own background, and his movement in the series to more adult concerns. Between Planets shows a world where the teen-hero is clearly growing older. Whilst Don is initially rather naïve, he finds that he has to grow up fast and get a grip on bigger issues. The school part may be based on his Naval training; as a sign of his growing maturity, Professor Jefferson takes Don to a night club (and possibly strip joint?) on his visit to New Chicago. By the end he is clearly an adult.Heinlein’s view on a World Authority is also interesting here as well. Like in Red Planet and Space Cadet, worldly governments (or at least the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation) don’t seem to be working that well – regimented, even dictatorial, they seem to employ methods that are not the ideal – arresting people to be tortured and such like. “Any government that gets to be too big and too successful gets to be a nuisance”(page 154), one of the characters say. Perhaps the message here is one often given as a result of WW2, that it is up to the people of the future like Don, as part of the new order, to put things right. Space is truly the new frontier, and as such should be unshackled by previous terrestrial confines.We also get those Heinlein-esque touches that are becoming recognisable as I read the series again. Professor Jefferson is another older mentor character that seems to fit the Jubal Halshaw/Lazarus Long template we will see again later. It is here that we are introduced to the key Heinlein idea of ‘paying it forward’ that will become a standard in later years. Between Planets also has an alien character with nearly as much charisma as Red Planet’s Willis, that of Venusian dragon Sir Isaac Newton (who will briefly reappear in The Number of the Beast.) One of the spaceships is named Glory Road, a title to reappear as a novel title a decade later.If any criticism can be made of Between Planets, it is perhaps that most of the ideas here are not new, even in the 1950’s. But the execution of the tale, the plotting and the ideas throughout are what we would now count as typical Heinlein. Although the ending of the novel does rather depend upon one major invention, in most other ways Between Planets is a complete world away from the slam-bang space-operatics of early SF writers like Edmond Hamilton or E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith. Whilst we’re not talking stylistic and literary acrobatics such as in Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man (1951-52) or Algis Budrys’s Rogue Moon (1960), we are reading here solidly written, engaging and entertaining tales, storytelling in as straightforward a manner as possible but with enough depth to go beyond the impossibilities of pulp SF.Between Planets is a book that is more complex than I remembered it to be, yet entertaining enough for the teenage reader. It shows a writer developing his craft further and clearly on an upward trajectory. We are now at the point where Heinlein’s skills in storycraft are reaching universally recognised status. As we enter an era seen as one of SF’s greatest, Between Planets shows that Heinlein deserves to be seen as one of the most entertaining and inspiring SF authors of that time.
What do You think about Between Planets (2015)?
For a $1 book from the charity shop I would have been happy just to read a short book that wasn't terrible. In the end it was a great book that kept me up late reading.This book tells the story of Don, a boy borne between planets and therefore a citizen of all the inhabited planets (Earth, Venus, Mars) but also none of them. Heinlein delivers a well paced story with intrigue, imagination, and innovation that I was not expecting. The world in which the story is set has natural inhabitants of the three worlds, and at the time of writing (1968) would probably have been up to scratch with our current knowledge of the solar system. The differences between Heinlein's fiction and our current knowledge don't make me cringe as a lot of older sci-fi does, rather it makes me wish he were right. The solar system of this book is far more interesting and full of wonder than the one we currently inhabit.
—Paul Hancock
Don Harvey è nato nello spazio, a bordo di un'astronave in caduta libera oltre l'orbita degli asteroidi, da padre terrestre e da madre di cittadinanza venusiana, si ritrova senza patria quando le colonie di Venere decidono di ribellarsi allo sfruttamento della Federazione Terrestre. È la storia della prima guerra cosmica, sullo sfondo di una grande trasformazione del sistema solare, in orbita intorno alla luna si sta costruendo il Cercatore di Orizzonti. La nave interstellare che porterà uomini e donne in un viaggio di centinaia d'anni, generazioni e generazioni su un mondo artificiale, verso altri sistemi stellari; su Marte e su Venere, gli indigeni intelligenti che i terrestri hanno trovato al loro arrivo sui pianeti gemelli ricordano epoche remotissime, nelle quali la Terra, Marte, Venere e i satelliti di Giove facevano parte di un grandioso Impero... Don Harvey, strappato al suoi studi, alla vita che conosceva, dallo scoppio della guerra, sfugge miracolosamente alla distruzione di Circum-Terra, la stazione spaziale che collega la Terra a Luna City e ai pianeti, e finisce su Venere, tra le paludi e le giungle del pianeta nebbioso, braccato da tutti i belligeranti perche, suo malgrado, egli è latore di un messaggio così importante che, da solo, potrebbe cambiare la storia del Sistema Solare.(source: Anobii.com)
—Matteo Pellegrini
Don Harvey is a young man living on a ranch in New Mexico. His parents are scientists living in the human colonies on Mars. He receives an urgent message from them, asking him to come to Mars, immediately. He is stop and see professor Jefferson, a friend of the family, and bring to Mars whatever the Professor gives him. Political tensions are rising between the Earth Federation and the colonies on Venus and Mars. When war inevitably comes, Don's less than clear citizenship (Mom was born on Vanus, Dad was born on Earth, and Don was born on a spaceship between planets) could make things very difficult for him.Carrying a cheap, plastic man's ring (which is all that the professor gave him), Don gets to the orbiting space station to catch a ship to Mars, when it is taken over by rebels. Don is given a choice; go back to Earth, or go to venus. Returning to Earth is not an option, because the Federation security forces have taken an interest in Don (due to his unclear citizenship), the sort of interest no one wants.It helps that Don lived for several years on Venus, so he can speak to the indigenous Venusians (multi-eyed dragons). He can't send a message from Venus to Mars to let his parents know he's alright, and his Federation money is worthless, so he gets a job as a dishwasher in a local Chinese restaurant. One day, the federation invades, and sets most of the town on fire. Don flees, and ends up joining the Venusian army. Weeks later, he finds himself in a palatial mansion, which is also the home of a dragon he met during the trip from Earth. He is facing a man named Phipps, who says he is part of the "organization," and who really wants Don's ring, because of the information carried inside.This is a young adult novel (as the reader may have guessed), and it's pretty good. It's an interesting story, with a noticeable political subtext, and it's worth reading.
—Paul
