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Avg. Rating: 4.5
A really fun read.
The Door Into Summer really is a fun reading experience. Written in first person narrative, and less than 300 pages, but filled with anxiety provoking prose, and engaging in every way imaginable. There's mystery, danger, science (albeit dated), action, humor, and even romance. And it's about time travel so, at times, everything is happening at once or perhaps twice. For me a very quick read (I didn't want it to end) with an excellent ending.
Archaic now, but delightful
I recently re-read this wonderful old science fiction classic by Robert Heinlein and was delighted how well it stood up against the inevitable "dating." In fact, the off-kilter forecasts were part of the charm of the experience. Even the trashy paperback cover and the misleading blurb by some hack who had barely read the book (my copy, not the one shown here), are irresistibly reminiscent of the paperback market of those days. Fun!
You see, it was published in 1956, but was set in the then "future" worlds of 1970 and 2000 (yes, there is time-travel involved). It is amazing how the naïve 1950's confidence in technology assumed that by 1970 the world would have smoothly survived a six-week atomic war, and set up goodies like self-driving cars on automated roadways. By 2000, things are even more "advanced." Yet he had no inkling of the impending arrival of computers, which were to change the world in very different ways from those he anticipated.
I've noticed this before with the science fiction writers of the 50's. They were, I think, all relatively young, and shared that vision that twenty years is a LONG time and forty or fifty years ahead was an unimaginable "great gulf of time." They didn't stop to think that the huge changes they envisioned couldn't really be physically possible in that sort of time-frame.
So what is it that remains so enjoyable about the book?
Well, first of all, Heinlein is a really good writer. His narrative flows smoothly, his ear for dialog is good, he crafts a neat plot. He has a truly characteristic "style" - that's not the word - "ethos", perhaps? Let's say that the writer he most strongly calls to mind is Kipling. He is not as elliptical as Rudyard K., but he has the same militaristic, no-nonsense approach to life, war, death and taxes. (The "Starship Troopers" movie made from his book in 1997 only captures the superficial aspects, not the social and political philosophy that underlay his writing.) He likes people who take responsibility for their actions. He has the same oddly old-fashioned view of women: he is romantic but horny; admires their deeper understanding of people; acknowledges their power in relationships, but is often paternalistic. Add a touch of H.G. Wells and you are getting something of the flavor.
Other good things: it has the best portrait of a cat I've ever read (excepting perhaps "The Cat Who Went To Paris".) The protagonist is Dan B. Davis, an engineer/inventor - isn't it fun to read of someone who does all his calculations with a slide-rule! Dan lives in an old Connecticut farmhouse with 11 doors "near the edge of the Manhattan near-miss" and his best friend and partner is Pete the cat. Pete is the source of the book's title. Pete holds his master responsible for "quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else." Pete disapproves of snow, so in winter, " I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment. . . . But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer."
Heinlein (as Dan) notes " . . cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy. . . .Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy." But Pete and he are the best of buddies.
Here's an example of his hit-and-miss forecasting. "The changes in the last thirty years...[1940-1970]. ...had been enough to bug a man's eyes out: two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of communism, the Great Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic power - why, when I was a kid they didn't even have multimorphs." (the last is never explained}.
Dan makes a semi-smart robot called "Hired Girl" which does household cleaning - governed by "tapes" in its memory- they cost him $39 each to make. (Later, in 2000, the reader is meant to be shocked by the incredibly huge price of a decent lunch: $10.) His little company steps up to the big time by renting a electric typewriter "with executive type face and carbon ribbon." (In those days these things were so expensive you might rent them rather than buy).
Another big idea of Dan's is for a drafting machine for engineers. "This gizmo would let them sit down in a big easy chair and tap keys and have the picture unfold on an easel above the keyboard. Depress three keys simultaneously and have a horizontal line appear just where you want it: depress another key and you fillet it in with a vertical line: depress two keys and two more in succession and draw a line at an exact slant." So near, and yet so far - the general-purpose computer was not on the horizon, let alone the interactive screen and the mouse. Does this have a lesson for those who try to extrapolate the future from today's technology? In 2000 he thinks about the possibility of a machine to take dictation, and reckons you could "pack a hundred thousand sound codes into a cubic foot." Heinlein, who died in 1988, must have looked back in later life and smiled at some of these predictions.
An unforgettable writer - one of a kind.
If I could have only three books on a desert island...
...there is no question that this would be among them.
I've lost count of the number of times I've read this book in the last 25 years. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times that I've tried to look at this book, with the firm goal of figuring out Heinlein's story construction rather than "reading" it, to discern exactly how he made it _so_ perfect. I've never succeeded, because Heinlein draws me into the story every damned time.
Enough so that it never bothers me that Heinlein's "future history" -- in the 50s, he wrote about events in 1970 and 2000 -- is completely out of sync with our own.
This is the quintessential time-travel SF novel, sure. But it's also a love story. And a story about what friendship means. And it also has a marvelous cat who behaves exactly as a cat should... with the appropriate level of cat-affection on the part of the book's hero. If you're owned by a cat, that should get you to buy this book immediately.
The Door into Summer is, by the way, completely "clean" -- you could give this book to a bright ten-year-old without worries.
Oh, okay, if you must have a short plot synopsis: our hero Dan is an inventor. His fiance and business partner pull a dirty deal on him, and rather than shoot him they put Dan into "deep freeze" to wake up 30 years hence. Only he arrives in 2000 with a grudge, and without his cat. To solve his problems, he has to experiment with time travel in the OTHER direction.
I have a library of over 500 SF/F books. And there are many Heinlein books that I love. There is no question that this is at the very top of the pile.
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