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Happy New Year, everyone.

This is our first book discussion of 2016, the venerable science fiction novel from 1957....


The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein

Originally published in serial form in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (October, November, December 1956)

Started this today. My first question: We already had a small RAH marathon (initiated by Spooky) - what was the motivation to nominate exactly this RAH book?

After some 25% I'd give it 2-3 stars.
Love that cat Pete!

Silly technician looses his garage corporation to greedy woman and former business partner. Quite predictable up to now.

Classic SF doesn't take over very good: Sloppy world-building with implausible anchoring of technology in society. I understand that hibernation was a thing back in the 50s but I didn't like RAH's discussion of managing the legal parts. And a 70% survival chance would be an absolute no-go for me.
Instead of the 70s it is just now that we see some of the technology: autonomous cleaning roboters, half-autonomous cars. It is interesting that it is far more complex to get legal issues cleared than getting the technology working.

Changing nappies is far more complex than self-targeting rockets - alone the problems with gripping with exactly the right amount of force and the right thing is quite a hard problem for any roboter. But at least I can see those qualities coming in the next some 10 years.

I just changed a poopy diaper myself. I would be glad to subcontract that job out to any gizmo with an 80% accuracy range.

Also, this story is making me want to buy a Roomba.

I am almost 1/3 of the way in, and still no time travel/cold sleep. I'm enjoying it, anyway, just because of RAH's verve. He dives into patent legal disputes as if they were light saber duels. I love the way he uses slang, jargon, and innuendo to establish authority. It's like an old blues song or a senior in the high school locker room- "Before you get to my age, you'll fall for a good pair of front-mounted radar domes just like I did."

Andreas wrote: "Started this today. My first question: We already had a small RAH marathon (initiated by Spooky) - what was the motivation to nominate exactly this RAH book?

After some 25% I'd give it 2-3 stars. ..."

I’m to blame. I suggested it. I read a lot of Heinlein when I was younger, but somehow never encountered this one. Maybe it hit me at just the right moment when I finally did a few months ago. I really enjoyed it. Well, most of it.

I loved the ‘door into summer� analogy. It is perfect for the story. We used to have a cat that did the same thing, and we live in Florida! Amiga. Yes, named for the computer. Whenever temps dropped below 40 degrees, Amiga would drag my husband from door to door in the early morning. He was looking for the door into the warm outside.

Silly cat. This was Florida. Wait one day and the temps would start to rise. He didn’t need cryogenics or a time machine to find his door into summer.

I find the story somewhat different from Heinlein's other works. It is more whimsical. I found it entertaining, often humorous. It is a human story. Human and cat.

Mention is made in the story of the H. G. Wells novel The Sleeper Awakes. In that story the sleeper wakes up to learn that he practically owns the world, thanks to compounded interest. And it’s not a good situation. A sizable part of Earth’s population is enslaved to him.

I think Heinlein is turning that around to suggest that one man’s inventions can affect the future for the better. Innovations from one individual can brighten the future.

I pulled it off the shelf and started rereading tonight. Honestly, I don't have any vivid memories of this novel.

Interesting how dates click in the brain. Right on page 2 there was a reference to 1970. It took me a minute to recall that when the story was written, that was two decades in the future, Not the past. :)

are a thing in this novel. I like the concept of who is designed to "read emotions".

I probably read this for the first time around 1970, before computers were a staple in homes. We didn't even have VCRs to program. All I could read about it were of huge machines the size of buildings that people had to qualify for to get time on. Many stories revolved around bad programming tying up the machine for too long or even damaging it. IOW, 'programming' was an arcane science done by strict regimentation, overseen with almost military precision, with decks of punch cards & harsh overlords. Super complex & not for the common man, but I wanted to be one of the people that did it.

For me, this book was one of the things that spurred my interest in science & Thorsen memory tubes were a really neat idea. They made programming far more accessible & seemed to make sense when I first read this. Dan 'taught' the various actions, so they're basically the creation of macros much like what I use in documents & spreadsheets. Now that I actually write macros, they don't read nearly as well - too simplistic & magical. Not really a knock against the book. I can suspend my belief around it easily enough. Or possibly that's 'form a wish fulfillment' around them. It amazes me how easily they can & do go awry.

Does anyone else see a resemblance to the apocryphal stories of folks like Steve Jobs & Bill Gates? The whole basement/garage inventor makes good thing. Off the shelf parts assembled into a new & daring innovation.

A bit of side trivia about "Door Into Summer"...the tale goes that Mr. Heinlein was sitting in their current residence that indeed had a inordinate amount of exits. He was idly noodling on story ideas, watching his wife open door after door for their cat.

"What the devil are you doing?"

"He's looking for the door into summer".

The proverbial light bulb detonated in Heinlein's imagination and in just two weeks the novel was done.

(For people who enjoy the novel, this speed record will impress you. For those not so enamoured with it, you will only nod your head in a "that explains it" manner.)

Like Jim, I first read "Door Into Summer" as a teen in the 70's. It worked very well for me then. The tech wasn't all that out of whack and the dates didn't jar me. I gobbled it up with delight.

I re-read it twice since then and each time the flow of history has buried it deeper. It's not a lengthy novel, so when more and more paragraphs are quaintly archaic rather than exciting future ideas, it doesn't leave much adventure to enjoy.

It still holds a higher spot in my Heinlein rankings than several other titles of his.

I think it would make perfect sense to visit a computer museum alongside reading this novel. As it goes, the inventor of computers, , had his labs some 10 miles from my home and the community founded a museum there - sorry, folks, its all in German. Fascinating stuff!

Andreas wrote: "I think it would make perfect sense to visit a computer museum alongside reading this novel. As it goes, the inventor of computers, Konrad Zuse, had his labs some 10 miles from my home and the comm..."

The oldest computer I've seen is at the space museum at Cape Canaveral, at the About halfway through the video they show the computer. This is what a state-of-the-art 32k computer looked like in the late 1950s. They also have a .

Beyond technology, it is interesting to consider how societal views have changed.

At one point, the story’s villain suggests that Pete should be neutered. Dan will not hear of it because while Pete is getting old, he could still father kittens for another five years. If this story had come along twenty years later, I’m guessing the publisher would have suggested dropping that bit.

Good point, Sarah. What people used to think of as normal for cats was pretty wild. I remember farms with barn cats that were basically feral in the 1960s. Neutering wasn't really considered, although it was possible. I'm not sure that spaying was. Vets might have known how, but I'm sure it was expensive & taking anything to the vet was a big deal, especially on a cash-poor farm. People used to keep their numbers down by drowning entire litters of kittens.

Robert E. Howard wrote an essay about cats on a farm in the early 1900s. It's very short & free here:

Just finished it.
I liked it far less than our previous reads of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, or even Stranger in a Strange Land.

The story wasn't very good with all that implausible back and forth through time and hibernated sleep. RAH rode that SF trope but didn't motivate it well enough; a lot of less riskier and far easier solutions to the protagonist's problems lay on hands. Especially his second hibernation was ridiculous.
Some of his sexual liberation stuff was needlessly included, especially the nudist camp.
As SF, this one didn't transport well into our times - which is a sharp contrast to other works from RAH, e.g. Starship Troopers.
Concerning computer technology, he wasn't at the scientific height of the time of his writing, e.g. he didn't mention high-level programming languages (plan calculus or FORTRAN); magnetic core memory was well established, even the first mass produced computers were available with the IBM 650. Those are only minor facts but fit into the picture. Lots of his extrapolations of technology of the years 1970 (which was 14 years near-SF at that time) and 2000 were funny to read, but really devastating were his social and political predictions of the world's state of 2000. Only thrown-in were facts as "England as a Canadian colony" or constructs like "Greater L.A.", a "6 week war" or a French monarchy. Why, oh why? It would have been very interesting to find out motivations for this settings, but RAH concentrated more on his time travel and hibernation roundtrips. Which I didn't like.

Sorry, only 2 stars - 1 of those for Pete which I found quite funny and realistic as a character but very strange for a SF story.

One of the high tech things that many might miss the significance of now is artificially creating gold cheaply. Back then many people really thought we should be on the gold standard & it was a political nightmare during the 60s. IIRC, there was a big mess with international convertibility & Nixon finally stopped that entirely which stunned everyone, but stopped a lot of political shenanigans & started a lot of free market ones. I think RAH using this was him voicing his opinion.

Andreas' mention of "...facts as "England as a Canadian colony" or constructs like "Greater L.A.", a "6 week war" or a French monarchy. Why, oh why?..." makes me wonder how well this book stands alone. Some, if not all of those events are mentioned in his other books & short stories. Anyway, they didn't strike me as much. They had the feel of being part of his overall future history. Does anyone else remember any more clearly? It's been a while since I've read all of his works.

Andreas wrote: "Just finished it.
I liked it far less than our previous reads of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, or even Stranger in a Strange Land"

I agree that it's not nearly as good as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Agreed, the story has flaws.

And yet I really like it.

Maybe it succeeds better as fantasy than science fiction. Of course it includes science speculation, but the how-it-works is scarcely considered. Dan as inventor is more important than what he invents. This shapes his character, and helps him understand the changes in the future. I liked his attitude after he finds out that his financial situation is not what he expected. He shrugs it off and is ready to get back to inventing.

I was amused by the encounter with the nudists, as this created uncertainty about whether he was in the future or the past.

It might be because that "hero" Dan Davis lacked so much in character, didn't stand out as hero - what I described as "silly technician"; I simply couldn't connect to him. It might also be that touch of hinted sexuality, I don't know.

Campbell once said "Bob can write a better story, with one hand tied behind him, than most people in the field can do with both hands. But Jesus, I wish that son of a gun would take that other hand out of his pocket."

When I checked this book out of the library:

I thought it was going to be about a giant green robot threatening a space vixen. Imagine my surprise!

Andreas wrote: "It might be because that "hero" Dan Davis lacked so much in character, didn't stand out as hero - what I described as "silly technician"; I simply couldn't connect to him. It might also be that tou..."

When I wrote character, I should have written personality. I don't think Dan is supposed to be a hero. If so, I really misread the story.

I saw Dan as a creative human being with some questionable impulses. He wants to invent devices to manage repetitive tasks. That's good. He wants a shortcut to happiness, his door into summer. This is problematic for me.

Or maybe I'm reading something that was never intended into the story?

Sarah wrote: "Andreas wrote: "It might be because that "hero" Dan Davis lacked so much in character, didn't stand out as hero - what I described as "silly technician"; I simply couldn't connect to him. It might ..."

I think Dan Davis was meant to be a hero, or at least RAH's concept of a hero. The only flaws that get attributed to him are too much trust in other people and a lack of business sense. I think the last sentence of the book indicates that looking for a door into summer is more positive than problematic.

And I think the thing we're kind of dancing around is the ickiness of Chapters 11 & 12.

Yes we are, Phil. I was trying to decide whether to do the spoiler tags, or not.

Sarah wrote: "Yes we are, Phil. I was trying to decide whether to do the spoiler tags, or not."

Yeah, I have questions about that in general. I stayed off-thread until I finished the book because I wasn't sure how if people would be posting spoilers or not. Do we have a policy on that?

I'll use the spoiler tags.

(view spoiler)[I believe that when writing about topics such as time travel, cloning, life extension or AI, there should be room to speculate about how such things could affect human relationships.

Yet there is no getting around the fact that the ending is creepy. Considering some of his later books, maybe Heinlein didn't see it that way.

But what about the scene at the girl scout camp? Heinlein goes into great detail to persuade us that this is not as disturbing as it is. So even if he thought this was a happy solution, he had to know that he was on thin ice.

However Heinlein felt about the ending, however Dan felt about his door into summer, I bet many readers feel some degree of discomfort.

While shortcuts with automation may be good, intentionally or not, the reader is made to question the idea of taking shortcuts and easy-outs with one’s life. (hide spoiler)]

Has anyone else read "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let Your Sister Marry One?" by Theodore Sturgeon? Remember that Heinlein & Sturgeon were friends. They even belonged to the same nudist colony.

Here's a pretty good essay on Heinlein which discusses his take on sex in many of his books.

I'm just starting the book and will give my thoughts in a few days. As I said before, I don't think I've ever read anything by Heinlein but I have this little tickle in the back of my brain that maybe that's incorrect. No matter, I know I'm new to this one.

Jim, where was the nudist colony? Hehehe if it was here in Oregon I know where it is/was though never been there, my dad would tell us one was "just up that hill there" when we went my grandparents home and it was supposedly full of artistic individuals.

I don't know what nudist colony, Rose. I did find an interesting bio of him here:

In it the following really caught my attention:
On the surface, many of these complaints seem true. Heinlein's women differ from what we expect of women characters nowadays. Yet it is worth remembering that for roughly three or four decades they were light years ahead what anyone else had imagined for women. Heinlein's fictious women were smart, aggressive, and not ashamed of their sexuality. True, they were generally what Robert Heinlein found appealing in a woman, as opposed to representative of what women thought about themselves. But then Heinlein was fairly disgusted with what most women in the 50s thought about themselves. He thought they should aspire to be more than domestic serfs and housewives.

As for conservative, Heinlein never gave up writing about people with innovative relationships and frank sexuality. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress depicts a matriarchy with multiple mates. In I Will Fear No Evil, a man finds his brain surgically transplanted into a female body and eventually develops romantic relationships with men. Heinlein's personal literary influences had been men like Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Alfred Korzybski (intellectuals dedicated to breaking out of the mental straitjackets imposed by conservative society), as well as the more mystical Peter D. Ouspensky and others. Heinlein was himself a nudist and a believer in self-determination. He relished living his own individualistic, idiosyncratic life -- and allowing others to do the same.

Powder River Rose wrote: "I'm just starting the book and will give my thoughts in a few days. As I said before, I don't think I've ever read anything by Heinlein but I have this little tickle in the back of my brain that ma..."

He was quite a prolific writer & his short stories pop up in all sorts of places. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd read some of them.

Sarah wrote: "I'll use the spoiler tags.

I believe that when writing about topics such as time travel, cloning, life extension or AI, there should be room to speculate about how such things could affect human r..."

As a reader, I have no real issue with a hero taking shortcuts. One person's strategy is another person's cheating.

My issue is more with the creep factor. I deal with it by putting it in a box labeled "Heinlein ickiness." Then I put the box on a shelf next to the Edgar Rice Burroughs eugenics box and the Marion Zimmer Bradley personal issues box. Then I tiptoe out of the room and close the door so I can focus on the things I like.

As mentioned by other posters, I like that this book glorifies ingenuity and the application of science. I also enjoyed RAH's predictions about the future. As with any writer, there were some accurate predictions, such as dictation software and internet-based banking accounts, some silly ones, and some anachronisms. (LOL at nurses still wearing white caps in 2000!)

Andreas wrote: "It would have been very interesting to find out motivations for this settings..."

I think it's fair to say that in 1956 there was a feeling some sort of nuclear exchange was at least as likely as not, as reflected in lots of SF from that era.

I'm not sure what the designation "Great Los Angeles" meant. L.A. has always been a patchwork sprawl of municipalities, created more for water district cooperation than an actual city. I don't think Heinlein hints at how its boundaries might've changed by his vision of 1971. Urban sprawl was a not uncommon theme in SF for that period; though usually it was the entire area from Boston to Washington that merged into one giant super metropolis (since Heinlein dropped some nukes on that,...)

As Jim said, Heinlein used a couple of those "predictions" and other novels.

Andreas wrote: "I think it would make perfect sense to visit a computer museum alongside reading this novel. As it goes, the inventor of computers,..."

The "first computer" designation is dependent on which feature you feel is key to calling something a "computer". I've always been partial to the myself. :)

Dan thinks of inventing an automated drafting machine. Two years after Door into Summer, CalComp introduced their first iconic plotter, which essentially realized that device.

I also enjoyed Dan discussing how his dictation machine would work. Especially since I use Dragon Dictate for most of my writing, I could chuckle over some of his observations (those of you who read my rambling and have scratched your head from time to time at what comes out might also chuckle.)

I found the references to Bell Labs as the pinnacle of corporate scientific invention nostalgic.

I had completely forgotten about the US Gold Reserve Act. Heinlein was quite prescient here, since private ownership of gold by US citizens was permitted again in 1974.

Jim wrote (citing Heinlein biography NNDB): "Heinlein's fictious women were smart, aggressive, and not ashamed of their sexuality. ... He thought they should aspire to be more than domestic serfs and housewives...."

It's hard to see that in this novel. The only smart/aggressive female is Belle, and she's the villainess of the piece. Both Jenny and Ricky seem shallow, subservient, and not really able to understand Dan's attempts at explanation of either his history or his science. John pretty much urges Dan not to bother Jenny's pretty little head about such things.

According to Wikipedia, "The Greater Los Angeles Area is the second-largest urban region in the United States, encompassing five counties in the Southern California, extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County on the east, with Los Angeles County and Orange County in the center."

I didn't give this detail any thought in the novel, having watched Orlando expand outward from a pre-Disney town to a Greater Orlando Area that currently sprawls over five counties.

G33z3r wrote: "It's hard to see that in this novel. The only smart/aggressive female is Belle, and she's the villainess of the piece."

Agreed. No Hazel Stone in this one.

Hazel Stone was just Lazarus Long in drag. Heinlein only had one main character in 2 sexes & 3 stages of life - my opinion, but not unique to me. As someone pointed out though, that was really good for the day. He might not have written great female characters, but at least he usually tried to make them equal to their male counterparts. Not always, as in this book, unfortunately. Belle was a pretty good villain, though.

Jim wrote: "Hazel Stone was just Lazarus Long in drag. Heinlein only had one main character in 2 sexes & 3 stages of life - my opinion, but not unique to me. As someone pointed out though, that was really good..."

Jim, does she appear in anything other than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The Rolling Stones? I really liked her ability to be both maternal and an accomplished engineer in The Rolling Stones. She reminded me most of Mom from Mistress.

Wait. Now I understand.

Heinlein's bibliography can be read as the unabridged version of All You Zombies.

Hazel appears in one of his latter books like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, I believe. It's been a long time since I read anything he wrote after 1970 though, so I'm not the best person to ask.

LOL! That is one way to look at his bibliography. Probably an accurate one, although it was to the detriment of his works as a whole, IMO.
;)

So obviously I'm a sci-fi newbie of sorts or maybe just a Heinlein newbie but I'm not really following this being a sci-fi story. Maybe it's because I'm only at Chapter 3 and Dan is confronting Belle and Miles but this sounds more like, oh I don't know, business venture gone wrong rather than space aliens or even fantasy.

Ok, pounce on me if you must......but am I missing something.

Powder River Rose wrote: "I'm not really following this being a sci-fi story. Maybe it's because I'm only at Chapter 3 and Dan is confronting Belle and Miles but this sounds more like, oh I don't know, business venture gone wrong rather than space aliens..."

Well, there's some truth in that. This is an example of a "near future" sci-fi, and since Heinlein is writing whimsically for much of it, it's not even an especially serious attempt to extrapolate a future.

It does get more scifi-ish after the set up.

It's worth noting that since Heinlein wrote the story in 1956, any of his visions for 1971 are sci-fi-ish. His Handy Maid and Flexible Frank (or whatever they're called) are new inventions not present when Heinlein wrote the story, though they may seem less impressive, or even wrong, today. That's one of the consequences of reading older sci-fi.

And since you've read through chapter 3, you know there's another new technology, cryogenic sleep, for jumping into the future.

There are a lot of flavors of "science-fiction". There's the space travel story, sometimes exploratory and sometimes military, and it's related alien contact or invasion story. But there's also "new invention" type stories that look at how some new science or technology impacts society; or how a new weapon impacts warfare. There's post-apocalyptic sci-fi, where the Earth (or some significant part of it) gets wiped out, and either people are trying to escape or rebuild after the disaster (and the Apocalypse can be anything from meteor strike to a plague.) There are stories about advances in medicine and biology, such as the impact of genetic engineering. There are stories about environmental problems, from pollution to drought to global warming. And there are stories about time travel. In stories about robots or artificial intelligence or cyberpunk. And there are some odd corners such as steampunk, which is mostly about writing sci-fi the way Jules Vern would have, or parallel/alternate dimensions, or alternate history (especially when it introduces different paths for technology .)

And most novels pick several of those to include.

The Door into Summer mixes a couple of these genre (I don't want to spoil anything by being specific.)

Oooooohhhhhh, actually now I understand a bit more. See, I thought the story was written in the 70's (didn't notice) and wasn't cryogenic sleep talked about in that decade or....

The "Maid" reminds me of that little vacuum cleaner out now ummm Rokio or something like that and Flexible Frank sounds interesting too.

G33z3r thank you for the explanation of sci-fi, it's much appreciated and makes so much more sense. I know Arthur C. Clarke better, well only 7 books better but still....;)

I'll keep listening as it's not a bad story, just had me a tad confused.

Powder River Rose wrote: " I know Arthur C. Clarke better, well only 7 books better but still......."

Clarke is an example of a scifi author who is overall more serious than Heinlein (especially this particular Heinlein novel.) Plus, Clarke's best-known novels are all about space (2001+sequels,Rendezvous with Rama+sequels, Songs Of Distant Earth, Earthlight, Fall of Moondust. The Fountains of Paradise takes place on Earth, but it's all about getting into space, and Childhood's End has aliens from space.

Not that Clarke couldn't be both earthbound and whimsical. His short stories "The Nine Billion Names of God" & "Superiority" come to mind.

Time's Eye is also earthbound though it gets jumbled by kindly aliens after Earth collapses. I loved the Rama books when I read them and am looking for them in audio; I haven't read/listened to the others you've mentioned yet.

Dan is a bit of a fool....he's just been injected with the serum. I have to say the narrator, Patrick Lawlor, is good at giving Heinlein's characters their distinct personalities.

I like this. Yes G33zGr, it's full of whimsy and quite entertaining. If this isn't his best work I will look forward to reading more as Heinlein has a very relaxed style that creates an easy atmosphere to become a part of. I guessed it was Dan who married Ricky before Dan knew it was him....hehehhe

I enjoyed the time travel aspect and I suppose that landing in the nudist colony must have something to do with the fact that he was a member of one. I like that he uses real life circumstances, which is also why I didn't really recognize that the book was written in '56 and not the mid-70s. He doesn't seem too far off from that decade...

Oh, it's Hired Girl, Eager Beaver, Flexible Frank, Drafting Dan.... Great names.

I agree this was my first Heinlein novel and I enjoyed it quite a bit and if this isn't his best then I probably have a lot of great catching up to do.

G33z3r wrote: "I pulled it off the shelf and started rereading tonight. Honestly, I don't have any vivid memories of this novel.

Interesting how dates click in the brain. Right on page 2 there was a reference t..."

It was 12-13 years in the future, I believe.