Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York : New American Library, [1973?], c1957
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: Dan Davis, an electronics engineer, had finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot that could do almost anything. Wild success was within reach�??and Dan's life was ruined. In a plot to steal his business, his greedy partner and greedier fiancée tricked him into taking the "long sleep"�??suspended animation for thirty years. But when he awoke in the far different world of AD 2000, he made an amazing discovery. And suddenly Dan had the means to travel back in time�??and get his revenge. Once again, grand master Robert Heinlein's genius shines through, illustrating why his books have sold millions of copies and won countless a
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
If you are going to indulge yourself in reading 1950's science fiction, you can't avoid Heinlein. I have previously read four books by him. Two collections of short stories and two novels: [The Puppet Masters] and [Double Star], were both fast moving science fiction tales that relied very much on
The novel was published in 1957, but Heinlein imagines an America in 1970 and again in the year 2000. Our hero Daniel Boone Davis is an engineer and inventor, and a typical character of much 1950's science fiction, he has a great sense of personal liberty and self reliance; an individual who does things his own way, not afraid to kick against corporate authority and not afraid to take risks. He invents a series of household aids that become successful, he is cheated out of the profits of his company by his secretary and his business manager and is tricked by them into taking the big sleep (suspended animation) for a thirty year period. He awakes in 2000 still infused with a need to use his engineering skills, but the world has moved on. He gets a job in an off shoot of the company he started and is intrigued that the original patents for their best selling machines still bear his name. He discovers that time travel has been successfully attempted and tricks his way into going back to 1970 to discover what happened and to collect Pete his cat.
It is an intricate tale of time travel forwards and backwards first by cryogenic suspended animation and then by a time machine, but the story evolves around D B Davis's attempts to put things right back in 1970 and to get the girl he loves. His main motive however is that he wants to continue working with his beloved inventions, but has discovered he much prefers the future 2000, rather than the more dull 1970. Fixing things back in the past while preserving a better future has long been a theme of science fiction writers and while Heinlein spends a little time on theories of time travel, it is really only a plot device. The meat of the book is Davis's attempts to fix things for his own advantage. Heinlein has to invent two scenarios Great Los Angeles in 1970 and Denver the new seat of government of the USA in 2000. He manages this pretty well and the worlds that he describes bear some relation to the worlds that we recognises today. This is such a good story that we can forgive Heinlein almost anything as his tale rushes onwards. It is inventive, funny and full of wonder and it even has a scene in a naturist colony: Heinlein loves the characters in his books to get naked. (although being 1950 he rarely does anything with them).
Last night I started the novel and found I was three quarters of the way through at 1.30 am - what to do? finish or go to bed. The fact that I even thought about finishing it shows what a good page turner it is. 5 stars.
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storytelling rather than characterisation. The Door into Summer is very much of the same vein, but this time there is an excellent story to tell and Pete the cat is the best character. The novel was published in 1957, but Heinlein imagines an America in 1970 and again in the year 2000. Our hero Daniel Boone Davis is an engineer and inventor, and a typical character of much 1950's science fiction, he has a great sense of personal liberty and self reliance; an individual who does things his own way, not afraid to kick against corporate authority and not afraid to take risks. He invents a series of household aids that become successful, he is cheated out of the profits of his company by his secretary and his business manager and is tricked by them into taking the big sleep (suspended animation) for a thirty year period. He awakes in 2000 still infused with a need to use his engineering skills, but the world has moved on. He gets a job in an off shoot of the company he started and is intrigued that the original patents for their best selling machines still bear his name. He discovers that time travel has been successfully attempted and tricks his way into going back to 1970 to discover what happened and to collect Pete his cat.
It is an intricate tale of time travel forwards and backwards first by cryogenic suspended animation and then by a time machine, but the story evolves around D B Davis's attempts to put things right back in 1970 and to get the girl he loves. His main motive however is that he wants to continue working with his beloved inventions, but has discovered he much prefers the future 2000, rather than the more dull 1970. Fixing things back in the past while preserving a better future has long been a theme of science fiction writers and while Heinlein spends a little time on theories of time travel, it is really only a plot device. The meat of the book is Davis's attempts to fix things for his own advantage. Heinlein has to invent two scenarios Great Los Angeles in 1970 and Denver the new seat of government of the USA in 2000. He manages this pretty well and the worlds that he describes bear some relation to the worlds that we recognises today. This is such a good story that we can forgive Heinlein almost anything as his tale rushes onwards. It is inventive, funny and full of wonder and it even has a scene in a naturist colony: Heinlein loves the characters in his books to get naked. (although being 1950 he rarely does anything with them).
Last night I started the novel and found I was three quarters of the way through at 1.30 am - what to do? finish or go to bed. The fact that I even thought about finishing it shows what a good page turner it is. 5 stars.
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LibraryThing member antiquary
This is one of my favorite Heinlein novels, chiefly because it has an almost perfect eucatastrophe. It also has a great cat. Dan Davis, the hero, is an inventor of robots in a 1970 unlike the real one (this was written in 1957, after all) who has just been swindled out of his most promising
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invention by his buddy/partner and his fiance (now his buddy's fiance). He considers taking cold sleep and waking up in 30 years, with his cat along. His ex-finance arranges for him to be in cold sleep without the cat. He wakes up and finds he's lost his money (which should have been expanding) because his insurance company went broke, but in other respects he likes 2000 (a nicer version than the real one) and finds out his ex-partner and ex-fiance didn't in fact profit the way they expected. He arranges to time travel back before his sleep, sets up a separate company (which he knows exists in the future) for his inventions, makes sure his ex-partner and ex-fiance do not have the plans they had cheated him to get, and arranges for a cute 11 year old girl to take cold sleep when she's 21 and wait for him. and gets cold sleep again with his cat. He wakes up in the same future with his cat and the now-mature girl (whom he marries) and his fortune. I have seen reviewers who say the romance is just this side of child molesting, and I can see the point, but it really does not come across that way in the story (as one reviewer admitted). To me, child molesting is creepy because the child is not physically (mot importantly) and arguably mentally ready for sex, but in this case that has been taken care of when she wakes up. And after all, the hero has no control over her -- at 21, she could have decided she didn't want to take cold sleep and wait for him if she had found a better option. Show Less
LibraryThing member uvula_fr_b4
**SOME SPOILERS**
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I didn't like The Door Into Summer as much as I remembered liking it when I first read it in my early-to-middle teens, but it's still one of Heinlein's better ones. It's pretty funny how far off the beam he was on some of his technological
Basically TDIS is a pulp revenge thriller (businessman screwed over by his fiancée and partner who bushwhack him and leave him for dead or as-good-as-dead; businessman wakes up and seeks REVENGE) mashed together with one of RAH's typical "the future's so bright I gotta wear shades!" yarns. The "as-good-as-dead" bit here is cryogneic suspension (and how curious that the words "cryonics" and "cryogenic" are never used in a novel whose major plot point hinges upon it): the hero-narrator, engineer and inventor Daniel Boone Davis, "Dan" for short, gets tossed into the Long Sleep for 30 years, as he'd originally planned but later decided against. (And yes, Heinlein explicitly references H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes, as well as name-checking Charles Fort and Ambrose Bierce, two eccentrics who documented instances of supposed time travelers; RAH may have been a Grand Master of science fiction, but he'll never be accused of being high-falutin' or literary). The revenge bit comes when Dan discovers that time travel is possible in the Year of Our Lord 2000, albeit in a top secret, severely limited way.
As far as I know, this is the only instance where RAH had a time machine proper, as opposed to cryogenic suspension or the time dilation effect concomitant with traveling at near-light speeds; see Time For the Stars. It also has the first notable instance of Heinlein's lifelong fascination with incest and paedophilia (well, Time For the Stars, a "young adult" novel, did come out in 1955, but The Door Into Summer is even more explicit), crossbred with his pronounced Pygmalion complex; here the girl-woman in question is Ricky (Fredericka Virginia Heinicke), and she never graduates from her role as receptacle (in both the figurative and literal senses), and thus never really lives and breathes on the page. The real love story, for my money, is about Dan's tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, Pete for short; portions of Pete's behavior would appear incredible to me (Pete's liking for ginger ale or, better, ginger ale with a dash of bitters; Pete getting the better of two physically capable adults, the main character's erstwhile inamorata and business partner, Belle and Miles [Ricky is Miles' stepdaughter, BTW...]) if I hadn't lived with cats my entire life. Yes, I'm here to tell you, you really don't want a 14-16-lb. kitty good and pissed at you. I remember having a lump in my throat the first time I read TDIS because of the Ricky nonsense, but this time the lump was put there entirely by Pete; the extra half-star of my rating comes from a quite possibly foolish sentimentality about kitties. (The title comes from a lovely, page-long bit of exposition about how Pete would make Dan open every single door if it was winter, in the belief that one of those damn doors would lead to more agreeable weather: a Door Into Summer. Heinlein wraps up the book with a reprise of this bit, but I really got misty-eyed when Pete was kicking ass and taking names.) The whole Ricky bit is more than a little skeevy for me to get warm fuzzies over it now, in all good conscience.
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I didn't like The Door Into Summer as much as I remembered liking it when I first read it in my early-to-middle teens, but it's still one of Heinlein's better ones. It's pretty funny how far off the beam he was on some of his technological
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predictions (no cosmetic or plastic surgery to speak of, just "geriatrics" involving vitamins and clean living; no Internet, no personal computers, no consumer credit industry), and funny/sad how rosy one of his predictions was ("My Country 'Tis of Thee had never succumbed to police-state nonsense, so there was no bureau certain to have a dossier on each citizen...;" p. 87). Basically TDIS is a pulp revenge thriller (businessman screwed over by his fiancée and partner who bushwhack him and leave him for dead or as-good-as-dead; businessman wakes up and seeks REVENGE) mashed together with one of RAH's typical "the future's so bright I gotta wear shades!" yarns. The "as-good-as-dead" bit here is cryogneic suspension (and how curious that the words "cryonics" and "cryogenic" are never used in a novel whose major plot point hinges upon it): the hero-narrator, engineer and inventor Daniel Boone Davis, "Dan" for short, gets tossed into the Long Sleep for 30 years, as he'd originally planned but later decided against. (And yes, Heinlein explicitly references H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes, as well as name-checking Charles Fort and Ambrose Bierce, two eccentrics who documented instances of supposed time travelers; RAH may have been a Grand Master of science fiction, but he'll never be accused of being high-falutin' or literary). The revenge bit comes when Dan discovers that time travel is possible in the Year of Our Lord 2000, albeit in a top secret, severely limited way.
As far as I know, this is the only instance where RAH had a time machine proper, as opposed to cryogenic suspension or the time dilation effect concomitant with traveling at near-light speeds; see Time For the Stars. It also has the first notable instance of Heinlein's lifelong fascination with incest and paedophilia (well, Time For the Stars, a "young adult" novel, did come out in 1955, but The Door Into Summer is even more explicit), crossbred with his pronounced Pygmalion complex; here the girl-woman in question is Ricky (Fredericka Virginia Heinicke), and she never graduates from her role as receptacle (in both the figurative and literal senses), and thus never really lives and breathes on the page. The real love story, for my money, is about Dan's tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, Pete for short; portions of Pete's behavior would appear incredible to me (Pete's liking for ginger ale or, better, ginger ale with a dash of bitters; Pete getting the better of two physically capable adults, the main character's erstwhile inamorata and business partner, Belle and Miles [Ricky is Miles' stepdaughter, BTW...]) if I hadn't lived with cats my entire life. Yes, I'm here to tell you, you really don't want a 14-16-lb. kitty good and pissed at you. I remember having a lump in my throat the first time I read TDIS because of the Ricky nonsense, but this time the lump was put there entirely by Pete; the extra half-star of my rating comes from a quite possibly foolish sentimentality about kitties. (The title comes from a lovely, page-long bit of exposition about how Pete would make Dan open every single door if it was winter, in the belief that one of those damn doors would lead to more agreeable weather: a Door Into Summer. Heinlein wraps up the book with a reprise of this bit, but I really got misty-eyed when Pete was kicking ass and taking names.) The whole Ricky bit is more than a little skeevy for me to get warm fuzzies over it now, in all good conscience.
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LibraryThing member Unreachableshelf
An engineer is swindled out of his business by his partner and his fiancee and decides to put himself into cryogenic sleep for thirty years. He thinks better of it, but is then forced into doing so anyway.
The cover copy overplays the revenge aspect of the story. When the protagonist awakes in the
The "Door into Summer" of the title refers to a description of how the hero's cat forces him to open every door in the house before he goes out in the winter, sure that one of them must lead to better weather. What I remember Heinlein for is usually his ideas, not his imagry, but in this he managed to find one that sticks.
The cover copy overplays the revenge aspect of the story. When the protagonist awakes in the
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year 2000, he spends very little time contemplating revenge. It would be more accurate to say that in trying to make a new place for himself in the world, he discovers a secret which allows him to arrange a second choice at happiness. It is an adventure, pure and simple. I like Heinlein even when he's preachy (sometimes especially when he's preachy), but this is not one of those books, except possibly for a page or two at the end when he is trying to justify time travel. One has a hard time telling if he seriously expects this explanation to be believed or if he is jokingly asking the reader to suspend disbelief for the purposes of the story.The "Door into Summer" of the title refers to a description of how the hero's cat forces him to open every door in the house before he goes out in the winter, sure that one of them must lead to better weather. What I remember Heinlein for is usually his ideas, not his imagry, but in this he managed to find one that sticks.
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LibraryThing member daz
A nerd who builds robots and his cat, a treacherous blonde bombshell a back stabbing business partner, a princess with a heart of gold, cryogenics, time travel, nudists and a happy ending. Quite possibly my favorite novel of all time!
LibraryThing member tpi
Entertaining and fast moving book. A fun look to what year 2000 seemed when looked from 1950s, some hits, mane mishits. Good prediction that there would be new concepts in language, and some things might might be hard to understand for someone who is transported 30 years to future. Irrittating
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subplot which might be considered as a bit pedophilic - hard to believe would be proper in a book written present time. Show Less
LibraryThing member 5hrdrive
I didn't expect that I'd like this so much, but the twists and turns of the last eighty pages are terrific. Some things Heinlein missed: the internet, cell phones, ATM's, the ubiquity of computers, high price of gold, transistors and calculators. Some things he got right: telephone calling cards
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and computer aided design. Considering that he wrote the book in 1957 but it's set in 1970 and 2001, he didn't do so bad. But what sets this book apart isn't the technology, which there's a lot of. It's the story, which is really good. Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
One of my favorite Heinlein novels for fifty years now, though the book's "future" has long ago receded into the past. It's 1970, and electronic wizard Dan Davis has developed (in a West Coast garage!) a functional household robot. But his nasty partner and his even nastier girl friend steal the
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invention and put Dan away in a "cold sleep" facility, where he sleeps away the next 30 years. When he awakes in 2000, he finds that descendants of his invention are everywhere. He assumes he'll never learn why, and never be able to tie up some very important loose ends from his old like, but then -- shazam! -- he finds a way back to the past. I suppose the characters are pretty two dimensional, but I loved them as a child and I still do. The plot is still a winner, and some of the "future history" looks surprisingly prescient. Show Less
LibraryThing member jackkane
Great time travel novel.
LibraryThing member nm.sprin08.A.Palmer
This was a very good book that I encourage others to read and it has a very interesting viewpoint on the study of time travel.
LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
What a fun book! Very nice, and ultimately, a very sweet book. Not hard core sci-fi by any means, but a pleasure to read.
In 1970, Daniel Boone Davis is a very successful engineer, designing things like an automatic cleaning lady called The Hired Girl. He is prosperous and has a business partner and
I really enjoyed The Door Into Summer and can find nothing negative to say about it. Parts were laughable and it is a very quick read. I very much recommend it.
In 1970, Daniel Boone Davis is a very successful engineer, designing things like an automatic cleaning lady called The Hired Girl. He is prosperous and has a business partner and
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a secretary who together make up his company. He also has a cat, Pete (whose real name is Petronius Arbiter. As the story opens, DB Davis has just invented another household or otherwise automaton named Flexible Frank. He is living in LA at the time. Life is good. But it turns out that Miles (the business brains partner) and the secretary (Belle) force him out of the company and steal his stock, his patents and ruin his life as he knows it. Miles decides to take what is called "the long sleep," which is something akin to our notion of cryogenically freezing someone. But a last-minute stop at the home of Miles and Belle, who have secretly married, lands him in big trouble...Belle & Miles drug him & not only do they scare off Pete but screw Miles over even in terms of the safeguarding of his money during the long sleep. Dan wakes up and it's 2000. Everything, including vocabulary has changed over the last 30 years, and Dan finds out that the money he supposedly safeguarded was not good any more. In short, he's broke and must find a job. So he goes back to doing what he does best -- engineering -- and in the process makes some amazing discoveries while trying to find out about the people of his past. I won't go into it here, but suffice it to say, his discoveries have a tremendous effect on his life.I really enjoyed The Door Into Summer and can find nothing negative to say about it. Parts were laughable and it is a very quick read. I very much recommend it.
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LibraryThing member TadAD
Another really good Heinlein novel for young adults.
LibraryThing member jimmaclachlan
I liked most of Heinlein's older stuff. Once he wrote "The Number of the Beast" he started writing too weird for me. This was one of his better ones. It is the first that I recall with a cat in it (he seems to have a reverence for cats) & an inventor who is a pretty smart guy but can still get
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himself into a world of trouble - and then back out again. Fun, quick read. Show Less
LibraryThing member ladybug74
This was such a good book! Some of the technical stuff about how Dan planned and built his robots was over my head, as well as the last couple of pages that went way too deep into time travel after the story was basically already over. Other than this, I loved this book. It was interesting that the
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"future" that Dan traveled into was the years 2000-2001, since this book was written in the 1950's. A few of his guesses about what the future would be like weren't too far off from the truth, though some of it is still a bit far-fetched. Show Less
LibraryThing member kristenn
Read this on my mother's recommendation. She provided little or not plot description and I didn't look at the back, so most of what developed was a surprise. I enjoyed it a lot more until the time travel element kicked in. From there, it became disappointingly predictable, rather rushed, and
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unrealistically easy on the protagonist compared to what he went through in the first half. His folksy manner of narrating also got old fast. And Heinlein just can't do normal male-female relationships to save himself. But I did really enjoy the parts with the cat. Show Less
LibraryThing member cargocontainer
This was my first experience reading Heinlein, and I was pleased by the result. It's a pretty simple tale of betrayal and revenge, with more maturity than such tales tend to have. I'm pretty likely to try some more of his works later on.
LibraryThing member bunwat
This was a re read, I've read this one numerous times. I like early Heinlein. I enjoy his prose a lot, its flexible and colloquial and funny. I think he's a master of seamless exposition, giving you just what you need to know in order to follow the story while still moving the plot along briskly. I
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have a sort of nostalgic fondness for the mid 20th optimism about technology too. Show Less
LibraryThing member jmourgos
I like Robert Heinlein's early stories with their running-monologue narrative style that only he could pull off well. "Door Into Summer" is such a book, originally published in around 1957, it gives an interesting view of the "future" of 1970 and the even more distant "future" of 2000!
"Despite the
I've read a few of Heinlein's early books and this one was the first to delve into time travel. Not really as good as his Methuselah books, still a fun read. Dan Davis is a creative engineer - not much sense when it comes to business nor to love, and gets cheated by both! Bella the secretary turns out to be a shyster - and his business partner Miles is as much a victim as Dan is.
Dan describes the world of 1970, with its recent nuclear war and the capital of the USA in Denver, CO - and he decides to take the Long Sleep - a cryogenic place, run by insurance companies (who else?) and he sleeps for 30 years. And in this mix is Pete the Cat -- finiky and self-serving, as any cat can be!
He is enamored by the year 2000 with its zipperless clothing and "grabbies" (movies). But what interests this reader is how he adapts the environment so well, bends it to solve his current problem of getting his former protégé Ricky (now a grown woman) and is bummed to see she is married - but that's actually not a bad thing, as we find in the last chapters.
The discovery of an experimental time machine (temporal device) saves the day. The how and why I'll leave to Heinlein.
Bottom Line: Enjoyable, sometimes a bit too wordy and self-narrative chatty, but overall a typical Heinlein yarn. Enjoy.
Other Heinlein Collections (there are many!):
Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master
TOMORROW THE STARS. A Science Fiction Anthology. Edited and with an Introduction by Robert A. Heinlein.
Analog Anthology # 2
"Despite the
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crepe-hangers, romanticists and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering." - RAHI've read a few of Heinlein's early books and this one was the first to delve into time travel. Not really as good as his Methuselah books, still a fun read. Dan Davis is a creative engineer - not much sense when it comes to business nor to love, and gets cheated by both! Bella the secretary turns out to be a shyster - and his business partner Miles is as much a victim as Dan is.
Dan describes the world of 1970, with its recent nuclear war and the capital of the USA in Denver, CO - and he decides to take the Long Sleep - a cryogenic place, run by insurance companies (who else?) and he sleeps for 30 years. And in this mix is Pete the Cat -- finiky and self-serving, as any cat can be!
He is enamored by the year 2000 with its zipperless clothing and "grabbies" (movies). But what interests this reader is how he adapts the environment so well, bends it to solve his current problem of getting his former protégé Ricky (now a grown woman) and is bummed to see she is married - but that's actually not a bad thing, as we find in the last chapters.
The discovery of an experimental time machine (temporal device) saves the day. The how and why I'll leave to Heinlein.
Bottom Line: Enjoyable, sometimes a bit too wordy and self-narrative chatty, but overall a typical Heinlein yarn. Enjoy.
Other Heinlein Collections (there are many!):
Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master
TOMORROW THE STARS. A Science Fiction Anthology. Edited and with an Introduction by Robert A. Heinlein.
Analog Anthology # 2
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LibraryThing member GTTexas
I had forgotten just how good Heinlein really was. While there's no Lazarus Long here, it's still something of a "time travel" yarn and almost believable. A really good read!
LibraryThing member sturlington
Light entertainment typical of Heinlein: readable, fun, not terribly impactful. I wish the character had spent more time in the future, which was the most interesting part for me. I thought the end was seriously creepy, though.
LibraryThing member mrtall
Robert Heinlein’s output of novels and stories was so prodigious that it means most of us casual sci-fi fans can always find something he wrote that’s new to us. So it was for me with The Door into Summer, a charming tale that combines cryogenics and time travel. Heinlein’s touch here is
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light; this is a very narrow story focused on a brilliant engineer who finds himself mixed up in a business deal gone wrong, and who then combines resilience, genius, hard work and a bit of luck to see if he can straighten things out. Show Less
LibraryThing member JohnGrant1
In 1970 engineer/inventor Dan Davis is swindled out of his inventions and his company by his fiancee Belle and his long-time buddy and business partner Miles, and determines that he and his loyal cat Pete will take the Long Sleep -- will go into cryogenic storage for thirty years, until the year
In the year 2000 he adapts swiftly and gets himself back onto a reasonable financial footing, but is startled out of any complacency when learning, first, that back in 1970 he invented various devices he knows for sure hadn't yet existed outside his head, and, second, that l'il Ricky, the adopted kid daughter of Miles, seems, on reaching adulthood, to have followed him into the future and been met and married by . . . himself. There can be just one possible explanation! He must have located a cranky old booze-reeking physicist whose prototype time machine was years earlier instantly classified by the military, and must have persuaded said cranky old booze-reeking physicist to send him back to 1970; there he must have swiftly invented the gadgets the Patent Office says he invented, while making plans with still-prepubescent Ricky to coordinate their travels in the Long Sleep and sorting out his investments a bit more securely.
And so, as if by magic . . . oops, no, for this is hard sf, not mere fantasy. And so, as if by cutting-edge technology, it comes to pass.
It's a bit worrying that the most fully rounded and appealing character in all this is the cat. Indeed, all the others are really just names and collections of cliched attributes, with the arguable exception of our narrator, Dan himself. He's the standard Heinlein libertarian hero, full of himself, a straight arrow whose view of the opposite sex consists for the most part in checking for bits that go spung!, yet who's capable, if given a few vacuum tubes and a screwdriver, of knocking together a functional robot in no time flat. As I said, the exception's arguable.
One bit of the book did, I confess, give me the creeps a bit. (I don't remembver it doing so last time I read this, which was likely when I was in my teens. Either my sensibilities have changed or I'd simply forgotten.) On Dan's return to 1970 he has to discuss with the child Ricky how he and she will coordinate their Long Sleeps such that she'll be 21, and thus marriagable, by the time they reunite in 2000. There seemed something oddly pedophile in Dan's motivations here: he's negotiating with a child so that, in a matter of days or weeks by his subjective time, he'll be able to bed her. I'm sure there are other ways of looking at this bit of the plotwork, but to me it read as if he was thrilled to bits at the prospect of it Real Soon Now being all legal and aboveboard. As I say, I found it unsettling.
Overall, though, this was the kind of amiable fast read that these days reminds me why I for the most part gave up reading "Golden Age" sf after my mid-twenties or so. Reading this made an interesting contrast with reading Asimov's roughly contemporaneous The End of Eternity just a couple of weeks ago: the Asimov, for all its typically Asimovian flaws, was a clever, ambitious piece of storytelling that manipulated the reader, and had borne up surprisingly well; the Heinlein, though far more smoothly told, was at the end of the day really rather empty -- merely a very mildly involving adventure with nothing much to say.
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2000, so that he can have the satisfaction of showing a wrinkly old Belle the youthful virile hunk of man she could have had. Or something. First, though, he takes steps to invest the cash and options he's managed to keep back from the conniving pair; and then he thinks that, the night before departure for the future, he might as well go round and confront the two. The encounter goes badly; they drug him and pack him off on the Long Sleep sans Pete and swindled even further.In the year 2000 he adapts swiftly and gets himself back onto a reasonable financial footing, but is startled out of any complacency when learning, first, that back in 1970 he invented various devices he knows for sure hadn't yet existed outside his head, and, second, that l'il Ricky, the adopted kid daughter of Miles, seems, on reaching adulthood, to have followed him into the future and been met and married by . . . himself. There can be just one possible explanation! He must have located a cranky old booze-reeking physicist whose prototype time machine was years earlier instantly classified by the military, and must have persuaded said cranky old booze-reeking physicist to send him back to 1970; there he must have swiftly invented the gadgets the Patent Office says he invented, while making plans with still-prepubescent Ricky to coordinate their travels in the Long Sleep and sorting out his investments a bit more securely.
And so, as if by magic . . . oops, no, for this is hard sf, not mere fantasy. And so, as if by cutting-edge technology, it comes to pass.
It's a bit worrying that the most fully rounded and appealing character in all this is the cat. Indeed, all the others are really just names and collections of cliched attributes, with the arguable exception of our narrator, Dan himself. He's the standard Heinlein libertarian hero, full of himself, a straight arrow whose view of the opposite sex consists for the most part in checking for bits that go spung!, yet who's capable, if given a few vacuum tubes and a screwdriver, of knocking together a functional robot in no time flat. As I said, the exception's arguable.
One bit of the book did, I confess, give me the creeps a bit. (I don't remembver it doing so last time I read this, which was likely when I was in my teens. Either my sensibilities have changed or I'd simply forgotten.) On Dan's return to 1970 he has to discuss with the child Ricky how he and she will coordinate their Long Sleeps such that she'll be 21, and thus marriagable, by the time they reunite in 2000. There seemed something oddly pedophile in Dan's motivations here: he's negotiating with a child so that, in a matter of days or weeks by his subjective time, he'll be able to bed her. I'm sure there are other ways of looking at this bit of the plotwork, but to me it read as if he was thrilled to bits at the prospect of it Real Soon Now being all legal and aboveboard. As I say, I found it unsettling.
Overall, though, this was the kind of amiable fast read that these days reminds me why I for the most part gave up reading "Golden Age" sf after my mid-twenties or so. Reading this made an interesting contrast with reading Asimov's roughly contemporaneous The End of Eternity just a couple of weeks ago: the Asimov, for all its typically Asimovian flaws, was a clever, ambitious piece of storytelling that manipulated the reader, and had borne up surprisingly well; the Heinlein, though far more smoothly told, was at the end of the day really rather empty -- merely a very mildly involving adventure with nothing much to say.
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LibraryThing member RBeffa
These last few years I have been trying to mix in and read (and in some cases re-read) old-fashioned science fiction adventure stories and especially some of Robert Heinlein's books. His so-called "juveniles" are reliably entertaining. The Door into Summer tells a sorta fun story with a big bonus
Most of the time Heinlein runs a story along at a good pace that is easy to read, but that was not the case here. Easy to read, yes, most of the time, but erratic and I found the narrative voice rather annoying. I don't think this is anywhere near the quality of his better stories of the era and it even gets boring in parts such as when he goes on and on for pages about how he is building a household robot out of off the shelf parts, or designing other things. There is also kind of a creepy twist at the end, at least to modern sensibilities. I suspect it was supposed to be cute like "I'm my own grandpa" cute. It probably was 57 years ago. So even though I loved Pete the cat in this book, this story disappointed. The good parts can't make up for the weak sections. Can't recommend this one compared to Heinlein's better books.
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for cat lovers that I am sure I would have enjoyed as a teen-ager, although not so much now. The story is from 1957, telling of the future in 1970 and 2000 and of course things are wildly wrong with predictions, but who cares.Most of the time Heinlein runs a story along at a good pace that is easy to read, but that was not the case here. Easy to read, yes, most of the time, but erratic and I found the narrative voice rather annoying. I don't think this is anywhere near the quality of his better stories of the era and it even gets boring in parts such as when he goes on and on for pages about how he is building a household robot out of off the shelf parts, or designing other things. There is also kind of a creepy twist at the end, at least to modern sensibilities. I suspect it was supposed to be cute like "I'm my own grandpa" cute. It probably was 57 years ago. So even though I loved Pete the cat in this book, this story disappointed. The good parts can't make up for the weak sections. Can't recommend this one compared to Heinlein's better books.
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LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
It had been a very long time since the last time I read this book. It's still fun, and I still love it, but the first time I read it, I was perhaps 10 or 11, at most. It's a different world than Heinlein was writing in, and certainly a different world than he envisioned.
Still, Pete the cat will
Not everything ages well. This book is more fun if you've lived in (or at least understand) the times when it was written. It's one of my favorites.
Still, Pete the cat will
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always have a warm place in my heart, and I'll still continue to search for the door into summer myself. Maybe someday I'll find it...Not everything ages well. This book is more fun if you've lived in (or at least understand) the times when it was written. It's one of my favorites.
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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
Known as one of Heinlein's classics, this adventure is fun and compulsively readable, full of humor and great characters. It is hilariously dated, as the character jumps forward from 1970 to 2000, and Heinlein's vision of 2000 isn't any more accurate than you'd expect, but this is still my favorite
Recommended.
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of the time-travel novels I've wandered through. Heinlein's plots and characters are perfectly balanced, and the narrative is fast-moving without losing any of the character depth that comes with a great story. While the ending of one sub-plot made me cringe a bit, it didn't come near ruining the novel, and I'd recommend this on to any readers curious about Heinlein's work or just looking for a fast-paced good story.Recommended.
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Awards
Locus All-Time Best (Science Fiction Novel — 29 — 1987)
Language
Original publication date
1957
1956
Physical description
159 p.; 18 cm
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Heinlein |