Roundtable: Heinlein Juveniles Then and Now

Marie Brennan

Like some others, I never heard of Heinlein’s juveniles until I was an adult. And by then I’d already decided that Golden Age SF in general was not to my taste: while I know there are exceptions, both on the level of individual titles and authors’ entire bodies of work, my impression was (and largely still is) that the stuff from that period doesn’t do the things I’m interested in reading. I like good characterization, especially for a diversity of characters; I’m rarely drawn in by stories where the idea is king, especially when the idea is one that has become common furniture for the genre since then.

We shouldn’t “move on” in the sense of chucking those books out completely and never talking about them again; if kids pick them up and enjoy them, or if adults do, then fine. Far be it from me to rain on their fun. But I think the notion that they’re still the perfect gateway into reading science fiction is *deeply* misguided: it rests on the assumption that Heinlein’s work is universal, which it isn’t.

(My context: I was born in 1980, and since I’m more of a fantasy reader than an SF one anyway, my biggest gateway was Diana Wynne Jones. On the SF side, probably Ender’s Game — I know a lot of people in my generation who started there — and the Harper Hall books from Pern. Then Anne McCaffrey’s other work, and so on into adult SF.)

Russell Letson

Absolutely off-the-top-of-my-head, knee-jerk response. (Anatomically challenging and physically uncomfortable.): Why should one “move on” from any effective art? Have we moved on from Durer or Gershwin or Ben Jonson? Audiences, especially over generations, do move on from works or styles, but that’s not the same process that the pop-psychology phrase, with its I’m-so-over-that overtones, implies.

Less top-of-the-heady: I suppose there’s a question being begged in the previous paragraph, to wit, How much of the YA fiction of a previous generation really is enduring or effective art, as distinct from carefully-engineered age-targeted entertainment product? I suppose it’s possible for a book to be so embedded in its own time that a later audience finds it impossible to enter except as an exercise in cultural-historical tourism, in much the same way that we look at antique advertising and wonder that our ancestors could be so gullible or sexist or racist or whatever. (Boing Boing is fond of this kind of thing.)

Some of the books I grew up on were passed down to me by one of my father’s older cousin–they were the ancestors of modern YA from the turn of the 20th century through the Thirties, produced by commercial-fiction factories like the Stratmeyer Syndicate. There were cycling-chums stories, sports stories, aviation adventures, dog stories, and some Bobbsey Twins titles. Actually, these, along with The Sword in the Stone, Tom Sawyer, Johnny Tremain, and a handful of others, were the only kid-targeted books I read past age ten, when I discovered SF via (as it happened) Rocket Ship Galileo. When I was reading through that box of inherited books, I was aware that they described an earlier world (though I was not fully aware of their moral-cultural agendas), but I still enjoyed them, even if none of them came up to the level of the Heinlein (or Andre Norton or T.H. White) or to the kind of magazine/paperback SF (and mysteries and historicals) I was starting to read at the same time. (My reading history is rather like Gary’s–I’m only a year older.)

I also read all the Winston titles our library carried, and I wonder how many of those would look to contemporary kids–I know that the only one I have re-read in adulthood, Vandals of the Void, is Vance-and-water. I haven’t re-read any of the Heinleins for 30-plus years, but I recall that the best of them–Have Space Suit-Will Travel, The Star Beast, Citizen of the Galaxy–wore pretty well, even for a 30-year-old fresh Ph.D. On the other hand, contemporary teenagers are probably more sensitive to what’s cool and what’s not than I am now or even was fifty-plus years ago. (Is the Golden Age of SF not an age but the condition called geek or nerd or grind or brain, depending on how far back we trace it?)

Paul Witcover

By the time I was 12 (1970)–Heinlein juveniles already seemed square, from an era I had difficulty relating to. The writers I devoured then and for some time later were Norton, Keith Laumer, and ERB, especially Pellucidar. For today’s youth, as they say, Heinlein is ancient history. He simply doesn’t matter–nor should he. He’s had his day, planted his flag. All honor, but the world has moved on.

Gardner Dozois

Heinlein has had his day, but Edgar Rice Burroughs hasn’t?

Paul Witcover

Hollywood certainly seems to think so. 😉

Gardner Dozois

By that standard, most of today’s favorite writers haven’t even HAD their day.

Gary K. Wolfe

On the other hand, there are those reports that Have Space Suit–Will Travel is in development for 2013, with a completed script.

Gardner Dozois

Using Hollywood as the standard by which to judge the worth of literature seems like a poor idea to me. That way lies madness.

Stacie Hanes

You beat me to it.

Paul Witcover

Not literature–but the sensibilities of young adults. That way lies profits.

8 thoughts on “Roundtable: Heinlein Juveniles Then and Now

  • October 25, 2011 at 10:25 pm
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    I appreciate this discussion. Heinlein’s “Space Cadet” is the fulcrum on which my life swung—everything I’ve done since is in some way reflective of having found it and read it when I was ten. The Messiah had arrived, so to speak. So I suppose there’s some justification for the notion of “gateway” books.

    But would it work its magic for younger readers? The Heinlein juveniles are old—they’ve been dated by the march of time. They’re not as easy to find as they were in my day. Other books clamor for attention. It’s “their grandparent’s science fiction,” on the other side of the generation gap.

    So I don’t know.

    (By the way, lets give a hand for Marguerite Henry. She wrote a series of juveniles, mostly involving horses. And if I hadn’t read through her stuff and, while looking for more on the school library shelf, I wouldn’t have wandered over a couple of books to where Robert A. Heinlein was shelved.)

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  • October 26, 2011 at 5:39 pm
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    I was born in 1968 and my exposure to science fiction from raiding my uncle’s bookshelf was coupled with Cold War scares and the progress that NASA appeared to be making. So I certainly grew up with the certainty in my head that by the time I was older we would be flying vipers like they did in Battlestar Galactica; that we would be out amongst the stars. I really had no doubts. Until I hit my later teen years and saw the beginnings of NASA’s slow halt to where we are at today.

    I am a big fan of the Heinlein juveniles. I read my first one in my 40’s. My consumption of “golden age” science fiction has almost entirely taken place in this past decade. When I read these books a big part of what I look for and pull out of them is that feeling of nostalgia that reminds me of being a kid and having dreams of space travel. The things that people often complain about: the lack of good science, the predictions that didn’t come true, the inability to predict things like the internet, personal computers, etc. are the things I enjoy in these books. I like seeing what people thought might happen in their future, now our present. I don’t mind when they missed it if the story is entertaining. The whole idea of the story being “dated” is part of its charm and appeal.

    I’ve been enjoying the conversation here but still have A LOT of it to get through. Good stuff. I don’t always agree with the idea of even having the “relevance” conversation, because I don’t often think it is well defined. Science fiction fans often talk about SF needing to be relevant, but the reality is that science fiction is only relevant to science fiction fans in the first place, a group of fans that I would suspect the greater group of fiction fans find aren’t relevant in the first place. And of this smaller group of “fringe” readers, I often think it is funny that “we” argue about which types of SF are relevant and which are not.

    I guess I need a better definition of “relevance”, to which my response still might be, “outside of SF fandom, SF isn’t relevant to anyone, so what purpose does “relevance” serve?”. I say that somewhat facetiously, because I do think all forms of fiction should at the very least have some personal relevance for the person reading the book. But is greater relevance something SF should strive for? I don’t know.

    As for RAH, the only “facts” I can lay claim to is that his juveniles bring a thrill to this 42 year old adult male, and one of my close friends has read several of these to his pre-teen son and teenage daughter over the last couple of years and they really have enjoyed them too. So for us in our small world, Heinlein is very, very relevant.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 10:02 pm
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    Jeff brings up an excellent point. The educational system has a lot to answer for in terms of disenfranchising students from reading. When my son was five, he loved to read. Then he hit a stretch in school where he had to read a book a day and pass a test on it. We were in the process of moving at that time, and I had moved for job reasons while my family had not yet followed. If I had been there, I would have told the school they could fail him if they wanted, but I wasn’t going to require him to participate in an activity that would make him hate reading. Ever since then getting him to read has been a constant frustration.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 10:45 pm
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    You are right, Keith, Jeff Ford’s point is very well taken. There are creative ways to get kids to read, even classics, and if schools would step away from pre-planned lessons and formulas and would instead treat children as individuals I think they would find kids reading a wide range of books, would find more kids develop a passion for reading, and would see an increase in learning, test scores, etc.

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  • October 31, 2011 at 9:59 pm
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    Wow- thought I was the only Heinlein fan still alive- read them in the 50s in elementary school and then into the adults but always loved the juvies best. Favorite was Have Spacesuit Will Travel-

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  • November 3, 2011 at 12:12 am
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    I read most of the RAH juveniles when I was in 7th-8th grade (in the early 70’s, so they were already “dated” by then) and deeply loved them. In any case, RAH still seems relevant if the question of his irrelevance can prompt seven pages of passionate comment…

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  • November 3, 2011 at 12:47 am
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    Thomas – Fair point! There’s something about Heinlein that never fails to spark comment.

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  • November 14, 2011 at 9:07 pm
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    I entered fantastika through parallel streams of both juvenile and adult SF. I tore through the Heinlein juveniles as a high school freshling (1980) even as I was being given Le Guin and Delany by my mentor. I was a voracious reader and re-reader; I re-read Space Cadet so much that it became my nickname because I was always carrying it around. Then, as an isolated, anxious, torn-between-worlds teenager, Heinlein had a lot to offer, as a gateway to other works and ideas if nothing else. Relevant today? Perhaps, but I’m with Jeff Ford on the idea that kids will seek out and find the stuff they need, if we give them the chance and the encouragement.

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