The Door Into Summer

[Stephen Speicher 0]

Book suggested for rating by Stephen Speicher.

[HeroicLife 0]

Classic Heinlein. I picked up a dated 1959 first edition of this book after someone recommended Heinlein to me. I guess the best compliment I can give it is that after reading the book, I dedicated myself to reading everything Heinlein ever wrote, which is fortunately enough to keep one busy for many years, since Heinlein wrote dozens and dozens of books. I am currently reading Heinlein's very first book, “For us, the Living” which is probably the model for this book, and introduces some of the ideas mentioned therein. Not everything makes sense here, and not all the characters are well developed, but essential Heinlein is here: a guiltless pursuit of happiness and productive activity, and the three essential Heinlein character types: “markers, fakes, and takers.”

[Bill Bucko 0]

This was a favorite of Jim Davidson's, the electrical engineer and inventor who first came up with the idea of tape recording lectures on Objectivism, and who for the first several years in the early 1960s handled distribution of the tapes.

As Jim pointed out, Heinlein was a man of very mixed premises. A member of our group (at Purdue University, late 1960s) read Stranger In a Strange Land and was unpleasantly surprised. "All of Heinlein's bad premises came out in that one," Jim explained.

Well ... all of Heinlein's good premises come out, in Door Into Summer.

Imagine being betrayed ... ruined ... having all your values destroyed ... then being cryogenically frozen to wake up in the future, where you'd have no skills, no career, no friends, no hope ...

Or almost none.

And you heard of an obscure but brilliant scientist, who was working on a time machine. Would you risk your life ... in an attempt to retrieve the past?

A beautiful, moving story!

[Stephen Speicher 0]

Well ... all of Heinlein's good premises come out, in Door Into Summer.

Which is why I suggested this book for rating in the first place. Nothing else Heinlein wrote has quite the same style and sense of life as The Door Into Summer (discovering the meaning of the title is alone worth reading the book). The time travel story has all the cleverness of his By His Bootstraps, and more so. The main characters are delightful people, including the cat. And, what is so rarely mentioned, this is an absolutely beautiful love story. The Door Into Summer is a short book, so it is an easy read, but it is almost guaranteed to help you find your own door into summer.

[PhilO 0]

I recall loving this story. I need to dig out my Heinlein books and re-read it, as well as some of his other work.

Another Heinlein work that I'd recommend - actually, there are so many, but this one comes to mind in this context - is the short story The Menace From Earth. I really enjoyed the context of the (mostly implicit) romantic relationship - the mutual project that brings them together, and the resolution of the titled "menace from earth" to the relationship, set in a typically imaginative future lunar colony.

[Ed from OC 0]

Which is why I suggested this book for rating in the first place. Nothing else Heinlein wrote has quite the same style and sense of life as The Door Into Summer (discovering the meaning of the title is alone worth reading the book). The time travel story has all the cleverness of his By His Bootstraps, and more so. The main characters are delightful people, including the cat. And, what is so rarely mentioned, this is an absolutely beautiful love story.  The Door Into Summer  is a short book, so it is an easy read, but it is almost guaranteed to help you find your own door into summer.

←

That's good to hear. I tried reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which had been recommended to me many times. I could not get into it, I couldn't care too much about the characters, and I was aggravated by his writing style. It was kinda cool to see Ayn Rand's name brought up explicitly in a scene involving a political discussion.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

I have been a Robert Heinlein fan since age 12, and this is my favorite of all his books.

Heinlein's books feature technically competent, intelligent, enterprising, and adventuresome heroes (and heroines!), unusual locales, and challenging ideas and many of them are just plain fun.

In addition, this one stands out for additional reasons. It is early Heinlein, when he did his best work. Most of his novels at that time were written for children and young adults, but this is a book for grown-ups. The best part is that, unlike most of Heinlein's works, it has more than just an interesting story; it has a clever, ingenious plot.

If you want to see intelligent, thinking Good beat dishonest, scheming Evil -- in style -- you will enjoy Door Into Summer.

[Joss Delage 0]

I like this book very much, but then I pretty much like all of Heinlein's books (yes, even Stranger), with the lone exception being I will fear no evil.

People who liked this one might also enjoy Have spacesuit, will travel, which I find has a similar structure, without the romantic aspect (it's one of his novels for young people, but I enjoy it as an adult just the same).