Book Log

[mikekn]

A two-fer today :)

6. The Door into Summer - Robert Heinlein

Finished this during lunch - I only had one chapter to go after last night so I brought it to work. This is an interesting time travel book written in the late fifties and set in 1970 and 2000. His world is far ahead of ours for some tech (robots and cryonics mostly) but behind on social advances. Not a great story overall, but not awful.

7. Storm Front - Jim Butcher *

I've been listening to the audio book of this on the drive to and from work. It is unabridged and read by James Marsters who does a great job. A fun story about the wizard detective Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden that made me look forward to my commute :)

Comments

[dreamingbear.livejournal.com]

I think I need to get that audiobook... thanks!

reading/listening

[riversol.livejournal.com]

The Marsters audiobook does sound cool. Heinlein can be hit or miss depending what phase you hit him in...my favorites are To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Fear No Evil, and Friday.

[laughing-fox.livejournal.com]

I *love* the Dresden Files books! I have all 10, and the comic book prequel. Nice to have a series that can run for a long time and not become repetitive :)

[rjsilverthorn.livejournal.com]

I love Dresden Files and I'm really liking his other series, Codex Alera.

The Door Into Summer

[metageek.livejournal.com]

The Door Into Summer is one of my favorite Heinleins, actually. It's a fun story, the engineer's problems appeal to me, and its craft shows some nice touches. (He introduces the time machine in a way that doesn't entail the timewise Fermi Paradox. The story about the cat and the door into summer turns out to be a light-handed metaphor for the book. The villain, thirty years on, is pitiable rather than evil.)

I could do without the economic rant, though.

Re: The Door Into Summer

[mikekn]

I like the cat & door into summer. I found the relationship with Ricky a little creepy. Overall it just didn't really catch my interest as some of his other stories have.

Re: The Door Into Summer

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I found the relationship with Ricky a little creepy.

There is that.

Re: The Door Into Summer

[metageek.livejournal.com]

OK, I finished rereading it this morning, and, yeah, it's creepy, but there are two points that save it from being exploitative.

The first is that he never has any sexual interest in her when she's a child; the closest he comes is when he sees her at camp, describes how she's grimy and angular, and doesn't look womanly at all, nor as pretty as she had been when younger—and then says she looks adorable. You really do get the impression that he's simply realized that he loves her (agape, not eros), and cold sleep can let them narrow the age gap.

The second is that she has ten years to change her mind—and he doesn't presume that she won't; he says, "if you still want to".

Even without the age gap, though, it still wasn't healthy: I think he was reacting to Belle's betrayal by latching on to a safe woman instead. When he arrived in 2000, he wanted to find Ricky-age-41 and marry her; when that failed, he cooked up this scheme to find Ricky-age-11 and promise to marry Ricky-age-21, provided she takes cold sleep from 1980 to 2000. That last is the flaw in his morality: he could have spared her the risks of cold sleep by changing his own sleep from thirty years to ten, but he didn't think of it. He didn't want what was best for her; he wanted her, adult but youthful, to join him in 2000, and save him the trouble of finding a wife the usual way.