In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
After World War II was over, Robert A. Heinlein decided to dip his toe into a new market—that of juvenile fiction, in the form of science fiction novels targeted mainly at young boys. This type of adventure had been around for many decades, but Heinlein decided the stories could benefit from the same kind of rigor and scientific accuracy that he and his fellow authors brought to the pages of Astounding. The first book in this series, Rocket Ship Galileo, was an interesting take on the old familiar “boys help a lone scientist” plot of the older tales, which Heinlein wedded to a more realistic approach to the scientific aspects of the story.
I’ve been reading or rereading all of Heinlein’s juveniles during recent years, and am of the opinion that they represent some of his best work. I’ve reviewed three of Heinlein’s juveniles already in this column, and over the coming months, I plan to periodically revisit them until I’ve looked at the whole series.
Rocket Ship Galileo is one of the Heinlein juveniles I had missed in my youth. I skipped it because the premise, a trio of teenagers helping a scientist build an atomic rocket, seemed a bit far-fetched to me—too much like the lurid boy science adventures I had read in my youth, which were almost entirely fantasy wrapped in the most preposterous science possible, books like the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s Great Marvel Series. But last year, I found an audio CD of Rocket Ship Galileo for sale, read by one of my two favorite book narrators, Spider Robinson (the other being Neil Gaiman, but that’s not important right now). As I enjoy listening to audiobooks while building models, I decided it was time for a listen.
I am not the first person from Tor.com to discuss this book, as the inimitable Jo Walton reviewed it a decade ago (her review is here). Elements from Rocket Ship Galileo also inspired the script of the 1950 movie Destination Moon, where Heinlein was credited as one of the scriptwriters (and you can read a review of his novella treatment of Destination Moon here).
About the Author
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) was one of America’s most widely known science fiction authors, frequently referred to as the Dean of Science Fiction. I have often reviewed his work in this column, including Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, “Destination Moon” (contained in the collection Three Times Infinity), The Pursuit of the Pankera/The Number of the Beast, and Glory Road. From 1947 to 1958, he also wrote a series of a dozen juvenile novels for Charles Scribner’s Sons, a firm interested in publishing science fiction novels targeted at young boys. These novels include a wide variety of tales, and contain some of Heinlein’s best work (the books I’ve already reviewed in this column are underlined, with links to the article): Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Have Spacesuit—Will Travel.
Heinlein’s Rocket and My Family’s Nuclear Secret
I’d always known my father was an aerospace engineer who worked in research. But a few years before he died, he told me the specific projects he had worked on involved nuclear power plants. Since the early days of nuclear power, the main application of nuclear power has been to use uranium-fueled reactors to heat water that drive steam turbines, a technology used in nuclear ships, submarines, and shore-based powerplants. My father’s group, though, was looking at more exotic applications. There were ideas for nuclear power plants on spaceships and aircraft, but because of emerging research on the effect of radiation on humans, and the weight of shielding required, these ideas did not prove feasible.
When my father was employed, he was not at liberty to discuss the nature of his job (and he didn’t tell me much even when he did finally talk). In retrospect, however, I should have been able to guess more about what he was doing. Among his shelves of science books there was a whole shelf devoted to nuclear science, including a number of books on the Manhattan Project, which kindled my own interest in nuclear issues.
Buy the Book
Wild Massive
The type of power plant used in Rocket Ship Galileo, which would heat reaction mass to the point where it could push a spaceship into orbit, would have had to be far more efficient than nuclear power plants in common use today. Heinlein’s approach was to use the radioactive element thorium in a fission reactor, heating zinc to a gaseous state as a reaction mass, an approach called a nuclear thermal rocket. While (with various reactors and reaction mass) this propulsion method was used on test stands from the 1950s through the 1970s, it has never been used in flight. In theory, nuclear rockets can be more efficient than chemical rockets, but in practice the need for shielding and the threats of radioactivity made the method unattractive. Heinlein’s proposal to use zinc, a heavier element than hydrogen or water, as a reaction mass would give the rocket more power. But while zinc has a boiling point of 1665 degrees F, well within the range of chemical rocket exhaust temperatures, zinc is a solid below its melting point of 788 degrees F, which poses all sorts of technical challenges for fuel storage that (outside of a fictional story) can’t just be waved away.
Because nuclear thermal rockets do not lend themselves to fine control, Heinlein describes the use of aniline and nitric chemical rockets for maneuvering and landing. The ship does not perch on its tail like the V-2 rockets that inspired so many science fiction stories and illustrations in the post-war era, but instead is designed to land on its belly.
My father is no longer with us, and I found myself wishing I had read this story before his death so we could have discussed the science behind it. I am sure he would have had a lot of ideas and insights, and probably would have ended up reaching for paper along with his favorite multicolored mechanical pencil to do some sketching and graphs to illustrate his points.
Rocket Ship Galileo
Three boys—Ross Jenkins, Art Mueller, and Morrie Abrams—are gathered behind a berm near an amateur rocket test stand. They call themselves the Galileo Club, and this is no ordinary model rocket they are testing. They push it to its limits and it blows up, spraying the area with debris. Nearby, they find a man unconscious with a head wound: Doctor Donald Cargraves, a nuclear engineer and veteran of the Manhattan project, who also happens to be Art’s uncle. They take him to a hospital, and after he is patched up, he asks to see their clubhouse. Impressed by the boys’ use of the scientific method and their math and engineering expertise, Cargraves asks them if they would help him go to the moon. He recently quit his position with a nuclear energy corporation to pursue this dream, which large corporations and the government have decided is too costly. But he has developed a nuclear reactor that could fit in a converted sub-orbital cargo rocket, and thinks that with a few assistants, he could meet the challenge.
As the three boys have just graduated from high school, however, the first challenge is to gain permission from their parents. Cargraves first approaches his sister, Art’s mother. She is a single mother, her husband having died as a result of mistreatment in a concentration camp during World War II. She is frightened, but grudgingly gives her consent. Then Morrie approaches his father. Mr. Abrams has already given Morrie permission to go to technical school instead of joining the family business, and advises against the idea. But he also tells Morrie that he has been an adult since his bar mitzvah, and the decision is his own.
Cargraves then goes to Mr. Jenkins, a successful and wealthy engineer, who offers to partner with Cargraves and hire three engineers instead of the boys. He wants his son to get his engineering degree before he does anything else, especially something as risky as working on an experimental rocket. But eventually Mrs. Jenkins intervenes, and says it is okay for Ross to go, and it becomes apparent that Mr. Jenkins was arguing on behalf of his wife, who initially did not want to sign off on their son’s plans (this is surprising, as most of the wives in Heinlein’s juveniles, no matter how competent, are irritatingly subservient to their husbands).
The team then moves to a secluded outbuilding in the center of a former military artillery range, much of it still not swept for unexploded ordnance, located near the site of a UN military nuclear test site (I would have liked to hear more about how a nuclear-capable UN military would work, but Heinlein apparently decided that was not important to the story). Cargraves and Morrie, who both have pilot licenses, fly in the obsolete sub-orbital cargo rocket they have purchased (crewed rockets are being replaced by automated vessels). This section of the book is rich in details on how spacesuits work, details on nuclear power and radiation threats, information on dosimeters to monitor personal exposure, and other specifics related to the construction and equipping of the craft, which they dub Galileo, after the name of their club.
There are strange incidents and signs of snooping, so they set up alarms and purchase two Army surplus Garand rifles and a revolver to protect themselves. There is a visit from a Civil Aeronautics Board inspector, and then an explosion (the alleged CAB inspector was not who he claimed to be). Cargraves is knocked unconscious, and Ross is temporarily blinded. While Cargraves is out, the boys sign for the thorium that will fuel the reactor, something Cargraves had arranged to receive as a researcher. He is insistent their endeavor is over, as he doesn’t want to risk the boys’ safety any further. But the boys declare him not competent to make decisions until he can recover from his injuries, and by the time he does, he is ready to move ahead again. Cargraves suspects that the injury he received when he first visited the boys was not due to shrapnel from their rocket experiment, but someone attacking him from behind. From this point forward, the local authorities are alerted to possible threats, and the boys establish a continuous armed watch.
The explosion, as it turns out, did not damage any vital systems, at least not beyond repair, and the project moves forward, giving Cargraves plenty of opportunities to explain rocket construction techniques to his eager assistants (and to the readers, of course). And before long, they have taken off for the moon. The trip is relatively uneventful, but offers Cargraves a chance to helpfully describe the ins and outs of rocket navigation and orbital mechanics.
Once Galileo reaches the moon, after a fairly accurate description of the conditions that would be found on the Apollo missions, the boys construct a Quonset hut-type portable building to use as a base while they explore. It is a good thing they have the shelter, because at that point, Heinlein decides to put the science aside to make the proceedings as exciting as possible. Our protagonists have a cryptic radio conversation with someone also on the moon, and soon a small rocket hopper flies overhead and drops bombs that destroy Galileo. It turns out there are unrepentant Nazis on the moon, with nuclear weapons they intend to use to conquer the Earth (I would have put a spoiler alert on that, had it not been shown on the cover and teased on the flyleaf). The Nazi base is built within the ruins of an alien structure, indicating that the moon was inhabited at one time. The only way to return home is to attack that base and capture the Nazi’s own rocket.
In his juveniles, Heinlein never shied away from putting his young protagonists in some grim situations, and this book is no exception. Soon they are trading shots with Nazis, and as they learn more about the Nazi plot, their possession of nuclear weapons, and discover that their rocket was built in Detroit, it becomes clear that Nazi sympathizers are deeply embedded in society back on Earth (solving that problem is something I would have enjoyed reading more about, but Heinlein again decided that wasn’t important right now). And the book, which started out with a pretty workmanlike description of engineering challenges, ends with some highly lurid action that would have been right at home in the old pulps.
Final Thoughts
Rocket Ship Galileo was far more plausible than the juvenile science fiction that preceded it, although the premise of a lone scientist and a group of boys launching successful space missions still stretched credulity. Heinlein packed a lot of scientific detail into the story, and it seems clear he was trying to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers. While this isn’t the strongest of his juvenile novels, it is certainly a solid first step.
I’m sure more than a few of you have read Rocket Ship Galileo, or other works by Heinlein, and have your own thoughts to share. I look forward to hearing them, but do ask you to keep the discussion focused on the books and how they fit into the large scope of science fiction and adventure stories (Heinlein-related threads seem to get off-topic rather easily!).
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
I read Time for the Stars when I was 14 and absolutely loved it (I was a sucker for anything that involved messing with time). Later I also read Between Planets, and enjoyed that one too (though by that point I was an adult and better at thinking critically about gender roles and all that). Rocket Ship Galileo I’d never even heard of, though now I’m thinking I should watch for a copy because it sounds neat!
I think this is the Heinlein juvie I read least when I was growing up (70s-80s, to clarify), well, except for Podkayne of Mars, which I didn’t have access to a copy at the time. I remember it just not being as good as some of the later books — Red Planet, Citizen of the Galaxy and Space Cadet in particular — but it probably warrants a revisit one of these days.
This is just about the only Heinlein which I still haven’t read. (Apparently most people consider it the worst of the Scribner’s juveniles.)
As for a UN with a nuclear armed force, this is essentially the premise of Space Cadet.
By a coincidence, I just read about a NASA project to develop a nuclear spacecraft within the next several years.
I know I read this book, and I remembered the basics of the plot (but not nearly all the details), but I don’t think I ever re-read it after age ~9 as the later books seemed better done. (I was already several books into Norton and Nourse, where this was the first Heinlein I recall reading, but I didn’t read any of them until Heinlein had written all the YAs he would write.)
I found out when a friend was in a lab where a crucible of zinc was overheated that it has another problem: it’s biologically necessary in tiny quantities but seriously toxic in larger quantities. (The antidote was extra calcium, which was easy because he liked milk.) This book came out long before most people were thinking about air pollution — tetraethyl lead in gasoline had its detractors back then but they were an unheard minority, and zinc being a dietary requirement could have glossed over its effects.
Heinlein did more with a nuclear-armed UN later; he didn’t have much space for discussion in this relatively straightforward story, and may have thought politics was a less important detail than technical neepery. He may also have been discouraged from putting anything that even vaguely smelled of Communism in his first book with a new publisher — remember that he finally got fed up with Scribners’ demands.
Surely the two could have been distinguished — cuts vs impact, front vs behind…. Possibly RAH thought that he wouldn’t get scrutinized on this by tech-absorbed boys.
“Rocket Ship Galileo” was the first book of the series that I read when I was about 11 or 12 and constituted my introduction to Heinlein. I was hooked from the start and have been an avid fan ever since. I had severe asthma when I was young and one of the side effects of the medicine I needed was insomnia. So, as a result, I spent many nights absorbed in books and Heinlein’s were some of my favorites. It took me about two years to read all of the juveniles after which I tackled everything else he’d written. From there I was lead to Clarke, Asimov, Anderson, Niven, Farmer, and the rest of the crew. It’s been quite a ride and the revisits still bring fond memories.
One of the first Heinleins I read. I had (maybe still have, on one of the dustier shelves) that paperback with that cover. It was tremendously outdated by the time I read it in the mid 70’s but still fun.
The “Naxis on the Moon” trope was used as recently as 2012 in the movie “Iron Sky”, which wasn’t nearly as good as the trailer, or the idea
Speaking of Nazis on the moon, I seem to remember a story by David Drake, from Analog, I think, where Nazis were discovered on the moon after their defeat, having traveled thereby flying saucers propelled by magnetically induced antigravity drives (there were some German drawings of such craft, and experiments on magnetism during the war, but nothing ever actual produced or successful). Does anyone else remember that story, or a similar story, and have a name for it?
I read all his juvenile fiction books as a kid, starting in the summer before entering 7th grade. The first was CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY. I had not been much of a reader up until that time. It made a difference. It made me a lifelong. I recently discovered that all his juvie sci fi are available as auddiobooks.
I remember reading it. It was a tossup between it and Space Cadet for my least favorite of his juveniles. I far preferred “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”, “Tunnel in the Sky” and, despite the versions and controversy, “Podkayne of Mars”. I found that I preferred the original version. < shrug >
In one of his essays, he talks about the necessity of editors and of the author listening to them. Pity he forgot that when success went to his head.
I would have liked to hear more about how a nuclear-capable UN military would work, but Heinlein apparently decided that was not important to the story
Heinlein is writing at a time (late 40s) when “the UN controls all nuclear weapons” was not just a SF plot idea but an extremely popular policy proposal in the US. It was actually briefly the official policy of the US government! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Plan
as they learn more about the Nazi plot, their possession of nuclear weapons, and discover that their rocket was built in Detroit, it becomes clear that Nazi sympathizers are deeply embedded in society back on Earth
Gosh, kids, can anyone tell me which very famous American isolationist and anti-Semite ran a major industrial enterprise in Detroit in the 1940s?
Interesting choice of main characters, too. We have a kid with a typical WASP name (Jenkins), a German (Mueller) who it’s made very clear is from an anti-Nazi family, and an observant Jewish kid (Abrams) working together. A few years later the recruits in Starship Troopers would be just as carefully chosen – a kid with a Latino name who turns out to be Filipino rather than Argentinian, a WASP (Breckenridge), a Japanese kid (Shujumi), and a German (Meyer, I think?)
@7 Alan Brown – I remember that one as well, and think (judging by the publication date and how old I was when I was regularly reading Analog) that it was 1974’s “Contact!”.
@11 Raskos. Thanks, I bet that is the one. Now to crack open a box of old Analogs for some research!
“I would have liked to hear more about how a nuclear-capable UN military would work,”
We get something of the sort in _Space Cadet_.
In college back in the 70’s everyone knew this book but we never spoke its name.
It was always “Have you read ‘Nazis On The Moon?'”
It seems clear Maurice is intended to be Jewish but I notice Heinlein elects to convey this without ever actually using words like Jew or Jewish. Readers familiar with Jewish customs would understand the significance of certain details while more … let’s go with unworldly… readers would miss the point. This is in keeping with his practice in the other juvies, thus the debate over whether Rod in Tunnel in the Sky is black. I don’t know if the point was to slide the characters past Alice Dalgliesh or bigoted readers whose money he still wanted.
Meanwhile Norton over in her juvies would just come out and flatly state “Oh, yeah, all the white people died in the This is Why Atomic War is a Bad Idea Atomic War and absolutely nobody in this book is white.”
The details of the backyard rocket stuff could have come from Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs, a must-have resource for every young person who feels that they have too many fingers. It’s from 1960, so Heinlein could not have had it in mind.
I seem to remember reading the Heinlein wrote this in part with the idea that it could be the start of a series, with the boys going on to further adventures in later books (like a Stratemeyer series, such as Tom Swift or the Hardy Boys), but, thankfully, that concept was abandoned for each juvenile being a standalone book..
It seems clear Maurice is intended to be Jewish but I notice Heinlein elects to convey this without ever actually using words like Jew or Jewish. Readers familiar with Jewish customs would understand the significance of certain details while more … let’s go with unworldly… readers would miss the point.
Maybe. But I do wonder how many readers, unworldly or otherwise, would read about a boy called Maurice Abrams who “stands up in front of the congregation and makes a speech” saying “Today I am a man” and think “hmm, kid’s probably Episcopalian”.
Heinlein was aiming his books at reasonably intelligent children. He didn’t feel he had to explain concepts like specific impulse; I think he made it fairly clear that Maurice is Jewish. When he wanted to smuggle the fact that Rod Walker in Tunnel in the Sky is black into the story, he did it extremely subtly. There’s not a hint that Johnny Rico is a Filipino until the last pages of Starship Troopers.
@16 I had also read Heinlein wanted to use the same group of boys for his entire juvenile series. I am glad he abandoned that premise, because we got so many diverse ideas from the series as it was finally written. The same boys having science adventures set in the present would have been too limiting, and felt too much like a rehash of the Tom Swift books.
@17: I was confirmed Episcopalian (and walked away from it 2 years later), and never heard of such a custom; FWIW, I haven’t run across anyone who knows what Episcopalians are who mentioned that belief. 7th-graders took classes and were confirmed en masse by a senior authority (IIRC the local bishop, but that was a long time ago). Maybe you’re thinking of some other USian religion?
Also, ISTR that we get more than a hint that Johnny is Filipino earlier; ISTR a mention of Tagalog (a native Filipino language) and a comparison of heroes — he mentions Ramon Magsaysay to someone else’s Simon Bolivar. I don’t think I spotted those at the time, but I first read the book on a trip where I didn’t have any reference materials to check.
@19 chip137, I think you missed ajay’s playful sarcasm there.
And in Starship Troopers, the mentions of Tagalog and I think Magsasay don’t come until the very end of the book — practically the very last page if I remember correctly.
Rather than spotlight minority characters right off the bat (“Hey, fellows, here comes Maurice, our Jewish friend!”), I think Heinlein simply tried, as a writer, to address such aspects in a more subtle and naturalistic way.
As for motivations, rather than making a cynical sneaky greedy grab for the money of bigoted readers, I think Heinlein frequently made deliberate attempts at being a prejudice-busting progressive (for the times). It was his common practice to introduce characters as individual persons first, with which any reader might identify sympathetically, before tagging them with an identity that might excite the prejudices of the less-worldly reader right away.
For a non-juvenile example, as I vaguely remember from my three unsuccessful attempts to finish I Will Fear No Evil, there were two minor male characters (lawyers?) who were introduced as two helpful, likable dudes and later also revealed to be bisexual partners (with tolerant wives). I believe Heinlein’s tactic toward bigots here was, “Aha, these two men are having sex with each other and you found them perfectly likable! Maybe you should think about that a little?” A deliberate attempt at subverting prejudices that would not have worked with a character introduction like, “Hello, we are two bisexual men and later we plan to spend this week bisexualizing with each other!”
It was not as subtle in this adult example, but very much in line with Heinlein’s frequent practice.
Oops. Corrections to my previous posts:
Post 1: Magsasay = Magsaysay
Post 2: week = weekend
“later we plan to spend this week bisexualizing with each other”
I agree that as a tactic to encourage tolerance this line may not be ideal, but it is laugh out loud funny and the only thing stopping me using it myself is that I’m not actually bisexual.
@@@@@ 21 – How can you bisexualize with one another if you’re both men?
@15/@20: In *Tunnel in the Sky* independent of Rod’s race, we get an explicit revelation about 10% of the way into the book that Rod is not Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, but rather follows some new, apparently fairly widespread religion called Monism (I say fairly widespread, because when the kids gather together all the books they have on hand, there are 6 Testaments, 1 Koran, and 2 “Peace of the Flame”). Rod’s not a WASP (shock, horror).
I agree that it’s a good thing Heinlein never tried to write juvenile series books a la the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Though if he had, I’m sure he’d have come up with something better than the Tom Swift series. (The question is whether he could have done better than the Rick Brant books!)
@@@@@ 24: “How can you bisexualize with one another if you’re both men?”
Only possible within the story context that each man was also married to (and presumably sexually active with) a woman. If they weren’t bisexualizing with each other, they’d simply be monosexualizing with their wives at home.
(Autocorrect fought hard against this post.)