Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), was born in Butler, Missouri, to a German-American family with generations of military service in it. He became one of the most celebrated and influential science fiction writers of the 20th Century. A US Naval Academy graduate with engineering training, he brought to the wild-west-type field of science fiction of the pulp era a rigorous scientific mind and a temperment to question all assumptions of the genre, of society, and of human history and of the human future.
Upon medical discharge from the Navy in 1934, he turned to several pursuits, finally ending up writing with a first short story publication in 1939. Initially, he was one of the stable of writers of the legendary editor of Astounding, John W. Campbell, Jr., but Heinlein was too independent a spirit to follow an editor — he would always rather blaze new trails. Professional and financial security came with an epic series of so-called “juveniles” written for about 10 years from the late Forties to the late Fifties. These transformed themselves into sophisticated cultural critiques from Starship Troopers (1959) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) onwards.
He brought the verbal gymnastics of George Bernard Shaw and the adventurous pace of Rudyard Kipling to a pulp genre struggling for self-confidence and literary legitimacy. Whatever his provocations (and there are many for his readers from all backgrounds), he raised the standard of great speculative fiction. A tip on beginning Heinlein: begin with the early novels, even the excellent juveniles, plunge into those written in the Sixties, and then tackle the big ambitious novels of his late period. Enjoy the ride!
Between Planets
Between Planets
A Sweeping Story of Interplanetary War.
The Grand Master of Science Fiction.
“One of the most influential writers in American literature.” —The New York Times Book Review.
Don Harvey was attending school on Earth when his parents suddenly and urgently called him home to Mars. He had been skeptical about the talk of interplanetary war breaking out if Mars and Venus followed through on their threats to declare independence from Earth, but he was wrong. War broke out, and he was stuck on Venus, with no way of getting home.
Then there was the ring that an old family friend had given him just before he had left Earth. Shortly afterward, the friend had been questioned by Earth’s secret police and had died—from “heart failure,” they claimed. When Earth troops landed on Venus and started looking for Don and that mysterious ring, he realized that he was trapped in the center of a war between worlds that could change the fate of the Solar System forever!