Jellyn’s Collection of Curiosities

Again, this post is going to have spoilers, but I’m not going to bother tucking them away where you have to work to see them. If you really care, move along. There’s some cute little kittens over here.

This is another Heinlein book I got at the library, based solely on its title. I was looking, not for known works or potential quality works, but for quaint, dated works. Well, no, I was looking for a ‘typical’ schoolboy adventure story. Just what enamored those kids who grew up reading this stuff? That’s what I was looking to find out. But there was just so much… well, I had to write a blog entry about it.

The book is copyrighted 1947. I have no idea if it’s a first printing or what, but I can well picture that this book is that old. Someone’s written Heinlein’s middle name on the title page and well.. it looks something like this.

ROBERT A.nson HEINLEIN, 1907-

With a ” under the H for some unknown reason. Well, we know that whoever wrote that either wrote it in before 1988, or were clueless as to when he died. Hail, Wikipedia. Could it have been some librarian with some now-outdated need to inform readers as the author’s full name and birth date? Or some snot-nosed geeky kid from days of yore with no respect for books? Well, at least it’s written in pencil.

At other parts, someone’s marked things up with a pen. Mostly check marks next to the start of paragraphs. I can’t figure why, unless it was some nimrod who had no better idea of how to keep track of his place.

The book is also stained, as you might expect. And it smells, to me, like cigarettes. Rather gross. Someone needs to retroactively put in a no-smoking rule around library books. Anyone with a time machine, get on that.

On second thought, I’m going to cut this here. The entry got long. Spoilers ahoy!

Plot

Okay, now getting down to what this book is about. There’s these three kids, who seem to be about 17, though I’m never quite sure on that. They’re just done with high school and have plans to go to Tech, which is supposedly the name of a good school for scientists, but with a name like Tech, it conjures up to me a 2-year vocational school, but whatever.

They have this club called Galileo, just in case you were wondering where the name came in. They shoot off rockets. But, oh, these are special, smart, wonderful, scientific kids, so they don’t just build rockets and shoot them off. They do it in a scientifically-sound experimental manner. Or something. Lucky for them, they go to a special technical high school that has equipment they can use. Just in case their outfitted chem lab of a club house wasn’t enough. But, alas, it has not air conditioning. By which, it seems to refer to humidity control rather than temperature. But I’m digressing.

One of the boys’ uncle takes an interest in them! He’s a big scientist dude who might win the Nobel Prize any day now. He mostly works with atomic stuff. (See again the copyright date.) He is so floored and stunned and awed by the brains of these three boys and so desperate for help that he recruits them to… *drumroll* go to the moon with him!

You see, he works for a big company, but the big company doesn’t understand his vision of harnessing atomic power to go to the moon. They’d rather make engines out of it. Silly them. So, naturally he reasons that no other company would be interested. Because it might cost like a million dollars to launch a mission to the moon! And where would the money be in that? Despite the fact that there is a prize of 250K for the first team to do it. Like, hello… prize money, endorsement deals, television and movie rights (oh wait.. no tv yet? radio then), merchandizing.. not to mention the MOON ROCKS. Go, scoop up some of them babies, snap some photos, sell the lot on Ebay.. er, well, you know, the museum and university market.

Anyway, so he figures his best shot is to just do it himself. So he buys himself a rocket, which.. seems to just be a jet airplane. He’s going to outfit it himself with his atomic engine. Which, fortunately for him, he’s allowed to buy some radioactive material if he wants. Where he gets the money for all of this, I’m never quite clear. But, because he’s doing this on a shoestring budget, he has to recruit these three kids to help him.

In no time at all, he’s convinced the parents that oh yes, it’s their duty as parents to let the young men risk life and limb building an atomic rocket and taking it to the moon. One father suggests he would put up the money to hire some actual, like, qualified people to help him out for a share of the prize. But, no, it’s too late, Uncle Scientist has already promised the boys they could do it.

It never once occurred to anyone that maybe actual qualified engineers and the like would volunteer.

In these brief scenes with the parents, we learn that one kid is half-German, I think, and another is Jewish. Not that the latter makes any other appearance or matters in the least. And the former is merely conveeeenient.

So, sayonara college, let’s all go help this kook build an atomic rocket and fly to the moon with him.

And that’s just what they do! In no time at all, they’ve built the rocket and outfitted it. After one test, they’re ready to go! Woopeee!

We learn all sorts of new things about the ship once it’s underway. Like there’s a Joe the Robot, who shows up out of nowhere to help fly the thing. Oh, but before you go thinking it’s an actual robot, I must disappoint you. Old Joe isn’t even a computer. I’m not quite sure what he is. He’s the automatic pilot, which might mean he’s just a bit of software. He has these things called ‘cams’, which one may think are cameras, if one is not thinking in the right century. Or one might think it’s some sort of machinery like you find in a car. Maybe it is. I don’t know, but Eniac designed them and they tell Joe the Robot what to do and when to do it. Whether Eniac ever designed any such thing, I don’t know, but I rather doubt it. It was probably busy calculating pi.

So while Joe (why it even needed a name, I do not know) pilots the ship, everyone else is free to muck about. Happily for them, the acceleration has them at nearly 1 G nearly the entire time, so they’re not uncomfortable. So naturally this is the time for Uncle Scientist to give lessons, because he promised the parents that he wouldn’t neglect their education. Amongst other things, it includes a philosophical discussion of how we know the Moon has a Dark Side. (He gave in to emotions and snogged a fellow padawan.) Apparently the Moon could be like a rainbow, which you can’t see from the other side. Tides are just a theory and mathematics is all made up. I’m sure these kids will do great on their entrance exams.

So, la la la, flying to the moon. Oh wait, let’s stop and turn the ship around to look at Earth and snap some photos. (Which, hee, how quaint, they take photos and movies all throughout the book, but never get to see them, because they never get developed until after the book ends.)

Okay, so, they get to the moon! And old Joe is going to crash them! Utoh! So Uncle Scientist takes over, but he chickens out! Oh, I don’t want to land, what am I doing, I brought these kids and I’m going to kill them and wah, I’m old. So the kid pilot takes over and lands them. Whew. Glad that angst was over with quick.

So, now they’ve gotten to the moon, naturally they need to run right outside with space suits. So, they do. All of them. They bounce around on the moon and play with moon dust. Wheee. Oh, but then! One of the kids goes loopy because of lack of oxygen. Revived, he tells tales of a strange piece of metal he found and little bald men and a city. But some of that was the loopyness.

But that metal… ah, you see, there was a great race of Moon people thousands or millions or tens of millions of years ago. But they destroyed themselves with atomic weapons and created a desolate landscape. How shocking. How sad. How tragic. Let’s all avoid that on Earth, shall we?

So they construct a shelter, build a base. It’s airtight and pressurized and they’ve planted some rhubard to replenish their oxygen. But while they’re in this base.. they received a strange communication… is it the Moon people?

No, it sounds like some British guy.

But, no, it’s… (wait for it)… Nazis!!!!!!!

Nazis came to the moon three months ago, set up a base, with regular supply runs and everything. They have atomic missiles to launch at the Earth whenever they feel like it.

So then they fight the Nazis, and the kid who speaks German comes in handy, and eventually they all make it home to Earth.

The end.

Other Stuff

So, naturally the Nazis aren’t treated too well. Get called all sorts of names and they insult democracy whenever they get a chance. Yadda yadda.

There’s also this interesting little line spoken by Uncle Scientist: “Injun not lost–wigwam lost.”

The moon gets referred to several times, by several people, without correction, as a ‘planet’. Poor Pluto. There it is hanging out all spherical and in orbit around the sun with its own satellite and everything while the Moon is busy bribing a famous writer.

Oh yea, the moral of the story: Atomic power is great, only it’s not. Nazis are evil and apparently only 3 months-worth more skilled than a crazy American scientist and 3 kids.

The Writing

Point of view problems all over the place. It’s mostly omniscient and starts out with the three boys, but pretty much as soon as the uncle appears, we jump into his head. It’s very disturbing, not just in a technical sense, but because it’s disturbing in that guy’s head. Fortunately we’re only there occasionally. It’s still trying to be omniscient and failing whenever Heinlein has something to say through this uncle dude.

Some examples (if I can find them):

“These three were doing serious work; most of their schoolmates, even though mechnically minded, would be more interested in needling a stripped-down car up to a hundred miles an hour than in keeping careful notes.”

“These boys he knew; he had only to gaze back through the corridors of his mind to recognize himself.”

“Cargaves (Uncle Scientist) stared. His ‘boys’ were growing up!”

I have no idea who he’s writing for with things like that. I should think any kid reading that would feel patronized. I’m just a bit creeped out.

Oh, did I mention that at one point, Uncle Scientist has to sit his nephew (his 17-year old nephew) on his lap?

Pictures

This book has a couple of illustrations. The ‘boys’ look totally bizarre. They look like full-grown men. Stuffed shirt, almost military-looking guys. Nearly identical. One of them is even wearing a suit while sitting in the clubhouse.

I tried to find one of these pictures online, but with no luck.

Meta

I’m not sure if I’ve read this one before or not. It didn’t seem very familiar, but only vaguely. Mostly I recall the word ‘savvy’ and I get a picture of my college lecture hall corridor when I think of it. So, what I think is that I read other Heinleins or things close enough to it in college. Possible, since I did have a period of raiding the science fiction section in a somewhat historical manner.

Anyway, I’m not marking it (R).

Summary

Oh, jeez, do not read it. Unless you’re doing some sort of comparative study of classic science fiction, moon trips, creepy uncles, or Nazi-fighting literature.

On the up-side, it’s barely sexist. The two Moms act like Moms, but only briefly. Then the only other women are the ships! (Which, Heinlein dude, ‘né’ is masculine, so you screwed up on your French.) It’s mostly sexist by omission.