The Past Through Tomorrow - Robert A Heinlein

Read: May 2010 (at age 32)

First time read, but I’ve read most of the stories before.

If you haven’t read it:

This is a collection of short stories and novellas.  Note that the collection was copyright 1967, and the stories were written between 1939 and 1962, with most of them being written in the 40’s.  The world was a different place then.  There was much more emphasis on men making the decisions, and women following and supporting their men.  For his time, I think Heinlein was quite liberal in his thinking – but much of it seems hopelessly antiquated now.

If you like Heinlein’s work, you’ll enjoy this.  If you don’t, you won’t.   As ever, there are a lot of manly men doing manly things, and strong, intelligent women who are incredibly capable on their own submitting to anyone with a penis.  There’s a lot of glorification of military and pseudo-military organizations, as well as glorifying the self-reliant individual.  I enjoy reading about all of these things, so I enjoyed the book.  This is the 44^th book by Heinlein that I’ve read, so there wasn’t much to surprise me in here. 

Comments after the break.  There aren't really any spoilers on this one. 

 

Rating: 4

I liked it.  I'd pass it on to a friend.

My analysis template doesn’t really work for a book of short stories and novellas, so I’ll just point out a few things that I found interesting.

·        Smoking used to play a huge part in society.  Coming from a city where smoking indoors in public spaces is banned, it’s really odd to read about it being so omnipresent.

·        Neat to read the stories in chronological order – it makes Heinlein’s world make a bit more sense.

·        The stories are all pretty much from the Heinlein’s early writings.  They tend not to go too in-depth on to many of the hard issues.

·        Rocket-liners, huh?

·        It’s interesting to date the stories, and compare them to what he must have known when he wrote them.

·        It’s amazing how computers have completely changed society beyond recognition or prediction.  Head-math used to be important.  Now, programming spreadsheets, or working simulation software is.  Instant, reliable communication hadn’t even been thought of.  Things like that.

·        Following up on that, we’ve made a lot of progress toward communication, rather than toward methods of travel, as he seems to have expected.

·        I’m not sure that any anthology should have the right to bill itself as “A Major Event”.