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.
When I was young, Robert Heinlein’s juvenile novels were among my favorites. But I only got my hands on about half of them. Over the past few years, I have been working to find them all, and one of the most recent I was able to read was Red Planet. Imagine my surprise to find that the Martian race that I had first encountered in Stranger in a Strange Land had been created over a decade earlier for Red Planet…
In fact, while the novels are not otherwise connected, I have decided that Stranger in a Strange Land is actually a prequel to Red Planet.
This is the first time I have reviewed a book I’ve not technically read, having listened to it in a full-cast audio format. This format uses the text for the book, but in addition to the narrator, a cast of actors performs the dialogue. There are usually some minor alterations, as the narrator does not have to say, for example, “Tom said swiftly,” when we just heard the actor playing Tom read the line swiftly. It is not quite a radio play, complete with sound effects and music, but the format is an engaging way to experience a story. I did end up buying a copy of the book to refer to as I wrote this review, but still have not read the text in its entirety.
The version I listened to was put together by a company called Full Cast Audio, founded by author Bruce Coville. They had done a number of outstanding adaptations of the Heinlein juveniles, but when I met Coville at a convention a few years ago, he told me the licenses proved too expensive, and they were unable to continue the project. I have not found these adaptations available anywhere in electronic form (I suspect because of that rights issue), but if you poke around, you can find used copies of the CD versions, especially in library editions.
I will also note that Jo Walton previously written about this book for Tor.com, and her review can be found here. I avoided reading her review before doing mine, so you can see where our opinions converged and differed.
About the Author
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) is one of America’s most widely known science fiction authors, often referred to as the Dean of Science Fiction. I have often reviewed his work in this column, including Starship Troopers, Have Spacesuit—Will Travel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy, “Destination Moon” (contained in the collection Three Times Infinity), and The Pursuit of the Pankera/The Number of the Beast. Since I have a lot to cover in this column, rather than repeat biographical information here, I will point you back to those reviews (and note that a discussion of the juvenile series he wrote for Scribner’s is contained in the review of Have Spacesuit—Will Travel).
Heinlein’s Martians
I have long been a fan of Stranger in a Strange Land (written in 1961), and have read it a number of times. And while they never appear on stage during the book, I was always fascinated by the Martians who raise Valentine Michael Smith, teaching him to do things no other humans thought possible. He has psychic powers that include the ability to “disappear” people who threaten him, psychokinesis, and teleportation. He tells of how Mars is ruled by the Old Ones, Martians who have discorporated and no longer inhabit physical bodies. He puts a great deal of importance on sharing water, and makes a ceremony of it. He believes that all people and all things of creation are part of God. And he has the ability to “grok” (which is a word that means not just fully understanding and appreciating someone or something, but a whole lot more).
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The Past Is Red
Smith was born to members of the first Mars expedition, which ended in disaster, and was forgotten during the Third World War. When the second Mars expedition was sent out a couple of decades later, they were shocked to discover a survivor of the first expedition, young Mike Smith, who the Martians had raised, and then directed to return to his own world. Smith, with his potential legal ownership of Mars and his mysterious abilities, poses a threat to the powers that be, and ends up starting a new religion.
Red Planet (written in 1949) takes place perhaps decades later, when humans have begun to colonize Mars. The Martians who built the great canals and live in some of the now-deteriorating cities are seen as a dying race, and do not object when the humans begin to construct atmosphere plants that will transform Mars into a more Earth-like environment. Young Jim Marlowe, because of his kindness to a small Martian creature he calls Willis, befriends the Martians, whose form resembles a large, flexible tree. They often retreat from the world to contemplate, commune with their dead, share water with their friends, and they possess mysterious powers. There is no mention of grokking in Red Planet, and some of the other more religious aspects of Martian philosophy are absent, but nothing contradicts what we learn in Stranger in a Strange Land. And as the humans will discover, the Martians have not so much retreated from the physical world as transcended it, and are anything but a weak and dying race.
Other than Heinlein’s use of the same Martian race, along with a similarly oppressive world government for humanity, there is no clear link between the two books. But it is easy to imagine Mike Smith’s new religion, no matter how powerful its teachings, taking many years, if not decades, to be widely accepted by humanity. And to imagine as well that the human powers-that-be, even years later, might still be underestimating the abilities of the Martian race. So, until someone convinces me otherwise, I now categorize Stranger in a Strange Land as a prequel to Red Planet.
Red Planet
The book is the third juvenile that Heinlein wrote for Scribner’s. The first, Rocket Ship Galileo, was similar to a number of earlier juvenile science fiction novels, with a group of young boys helping an older scientist build a rocket ship (the Great Marvel Series of decades before [one of which I reviewed here] was among many that used this same theme). The second, Space Cadet, was a reimagining, in a science fiction setting, of Heinlein’s experiences at the Naval Academy and as a young naval officer. Red Planet represents a departure from these earlier tales, and in many ways, is a template for many Heinlein stories that will follow, both in juveniles, and books written for older audiences. The adventures of the protagonists are set against a background that in many ways resembles the American Revolution of the 18th century. And this book, like many of Heinlein’s other juveniles, displays a deep pessimism regarding mankind that is rather jarring for a book intended for children. Heinlein consistently portrays governments as inevitably deteriorating into tyranny, and human overpopulation leading inevitably to desperate expansion, war, and societal collapse. It is no wonder he sometimes clashed with his editors at Scribner’s.
Red Planet is set on a Mars that reflects a loose consensus among science fiction writers who used the planet in their stories during the early 20th century: a planet that is cooling and losing its atmosphere, and inhabited by a dying race that has built canals in an attempt to move water around the parched planet. The humans, without any resistance from the few remaining Martians, are building atmosphere plants to make the planet better able to accommodate colonists from an overcrowded Earth.
The book follows the adventures of Jim Marlowe and his buddy Frank Sutton as they leave home to attend boarding school in the human city of Lowell on the Martian equator. The boys are tough characters, used to wearing environmental suits and air masks, and packing sidearms to protect themselves from dangerous Martian predators. Jim brings with him a pet he rescued from some of those Martian predators—a “bouncer,” a spherical creature he has named Willis. Willis has a remarkable ability to reproduce and to remember everything it hears. Jim will be saying goodbye to his family, which includes his father, a leader in the colony; his mother; his pesky younger sister Phyllis; and his infant brother Oliver (this family introduces another frequent feature in Heinlein’s juveniles, a nuclear family conforming to rigid mid-20th century customs that may appear alien to modern readers). One of the people the boys will miss most when they go to boarding school is the old curmudgeonly Doctor MacRae (who readers will also recognize as a mouthpiece for many of Heinlein’s own opinions).
During a break in the journey of the canal boat that is transporting them, the boys explore a Martian city, encountering a Martian named Gekko and sharing water with him, although they do not yet realize the full import of that ceremony. Upon arrival at the boarding school, the boys find that the beloved headmaster of the school has been replaced by a prissy martinet named Mr. Howe. Howe is constantly implementing new and stricter rules, and one of them is to ban pets. When he finds Willis, he confiscates the creature and locks it in his office. He contacts the corrupt colonial administrator, Mr. Beecher, and the two cook up a plan to sell Willis to a zoo back on Earth.
The boys learn of this plan from Willis, whom they rescue from Howe’s office, thanks to its uncanny ability to reproduce sounds. And they also learn that Beecher has plans for the colony, which switches from the southern to northern hemisphere of the planet to avoid the harsh Martian winters. Beecher has plans to leave them where they are to allow more colonists to inhabit the northern hemisphere facility, not appreciating how difficult it will be for the colonists to survive a Martian winter.
With winter around the corner, the boys decide they must escape the school and travel home to give this news to their parents. The canals are beginning to freeze, and they resort to ice skating to make the long trek without being captured by the authorities. This arduous journey is one of the most interesting parts of the books, and is evocatively described by Heinlein (although my having grown up on a northern lake, spending many hours of my youth ice skating, might have something to do with why this section spoke to me so vividly).
The boys and Willis have another encounter with the Martians, who they learn are far stranger, and far more powerful, than anyone had previously imagined. When they arrive at home, the colonists—under the cautious leadership of Jim’s father, and at the urging of the rabble-rousing MacRae—decide to take matters into their own hands, and start the seasonal migration up the canal to the north hemisphere facility. But Beecher and his minions have other ideas, and soon the struggle over the fate of the colony turns into an open revolt, and Jim and Frank are on the front lines of a shooting war. The struggle brings the mysterious Martians out of their self-imposed isolation, with unpredictable consequences.
Heinlein does a good job portraying how a conflict can snowball into a revolution. Some of the characters (especially the background characters) are a bit one-dimensional, and the villains are predictable cads from central casting, but the story feels real and engaging. Jim comes across like an authentic adolescent, stubbornly sure of himself despite constant reminders he doesn’t know everything. And the Martians are delightfully alien, their behavior consistent and believable, but nothing like humans. Compared to the two juvenile books that preceded it, this one feels much more richly imagined, and much more distinctively a work of Heinlein.
Final Thoughts
I wish I had read Red Planet sooner, although I am very glad I finally encountered it. It immediately became one of my favorites among the Heinlein juveniles. The Martian race that the author created for this book went on to play a large role in his subsequent books, most vividly in the more widely known (and more adult-oriented) Stranger in a Strange Land, as discussed. The book introduces many of the overarching themes of freedom, exploration, and self-reliance that form the core of Heinlein’s later work. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.
And now I turn the floor over to you: If you’ve read Red Planet, its prequel Stranger in a Strange Land, or just want to comment on Heinlein’s work in general, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
I believe Heinlein started writing Stranger in a Strange Land in about 1950, so it seems very likely that he may have originally conceived of that Mars as the same Mars depicted in Red Planet. However, in my personal opinion, by the time he returned to the book and finished it (presumably in 1960 or so) his ideas about it had diverged sufficiently that while the resemblances between the two conceptions of Mars that you have described are very real, Stranger is not really intended to feature the same Mars. Also, I don’t think it usefully illuminates our reading of either book to consider them the same Mars, though it is interesting to compare and contrast them.
I don’t have chapter and verse explanations of any disqualifying differences, though, and, like you, I read Stranger first (age 13 — a curious age to read it, I think) and Red Planet second (on a concerted reread/first read of all the juveniles, only a few of which I had read as a teen) in my 30s.
It’s been a very long time — no later than the early 1990s — since I’ve read Heinlein, mostly because of Number of the Beast and Lazarus Long.
I don’t particularly remember this particular Heinlein juvenile, but I do remember his juveniles with some fondness. The same can’t be said of anything post-The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and a few of the non-juveniles before then. I may also be one of the few sf readers who don’t highly prize Stranger in Strange Land.
Red Planet is my favorite Heinlein juvenile, and one of my favorite depictions of Martians. Stranger in a Strange Land kind of lost me as it went on, but Red Planet stayed engaging to the end, IMO.
Red Planet is the first SF book I ever read, when I was in grade school, single digit age. As the author mentions above, this led me to reading Stranger in a Strange Land at *way* too young of an age. ;-)
It was cool reading the review, though. Brought back 50 year old memories.
I think when we read fantasy and science fiction, or view them, we ignore that there is no singular view of Earth history or culture (and that we have lost so much of it in only 10,000 years of recorded history). We are not all part of one static group called “Earthlings” yet we seem determined to think in terms of Martians. Laws of physics don’t change but “history”, biology, politics, culture can all change within a generation. It is how Brian Herbert’s Dune universe could be as true to reality as Frank’s. These could easily be the same Mars described from very different perspectives.
About the only recent review of a Heinlein juvenile that captures some of what I felt when reading Heinlein as a youth in the 50’s. :-)
Reading the juveniles in the 50’s as I grew up, I saw Heinlein as a bit of a renegade. In Star Beast, the main character threatens to legally force his mother to emancipate him. Heinlein was very supportive of youngsters thinking for themselves and striking out on their on. Very much not normal for the time period.
I read Stranger in a Strange Land when it first was published, which was several years after I read Red Planet. I certainly thought at the time that they were the same Mars.
Heinlein indeed began Stranger in a Strange Land in the 50s, finished its first draft, and sent it to his editor, who had a conniption fit about it. The gist was “if we publish this they’ll ride us both out of town on a rail after they tar and feather us, Bob!”.
I am fond of the Heinlein juveniles, particularly Have Space Suit Will Travel and Podkayne of Mars. If you haven’t, read Podkayne, find the discussion about how the publisher and author vehemently disagreed on its original ending (which Heinlein reluctantly changed), and then read the original ending.
I have vivid memories of reading Red Planet (the specific Ace edition pictured above; it was Dad’s copy, although I kind of assimilated all of his Heinlein & a few other things when I moved out) in pretty much a single sitting on the front porch the summer after second grade. I still have very fond memories.
I did always think that Red Planet was set on the same Mars as Stranger in a Strange Land; I thought some of the other juvies had were also in the same setting, but I might be misremembering and/or they might just have all been set in that kind of 1950s consensus future with swampy Venus and arid Mars?
Podkayne also has hints that it fits some decades after Red Planet, particularly the indication that there was an armed revolution — which doesn’t feature in other views of Mars; The Rolling Stones (“flat cats” (the tribble predecessor)) and Double Star (non-humanoid beings focused on kinship and carrying rod-shaped ~blasters) are incompatible not just with the two you mention but with each other. (Double Star‘s interplanetary government doesn’t fit with any other Heinlein that I can think of — I suspect he did the worldbuilding to fit his reworking of The Prisoner of Zenda.) It’s interesting that he started splitting off worlds once he started writing novels; the Future History that fills a substantial volume of shorter works may have bored him or may just not have given room for ideas he was getting increasingly cranky about. OTOH, I consider it a point in his favor that he didn’t try to do the massive retconning that Asimov did; there are descendants of earlier work (Time Enough to Fool Around from bits of the end of Future History, Friday from “Gulf”), but he didn’t tie his stories into pretzels trying to make the separate early works fit together.
I remember liking Red Planet on reading it at somewhere around the age it was aimed for, but have no interest in rereading; ISTR that it lacked subtlety, like a lot of work from that time, such that I wouldn’t recommend it even to young readers today. (ISTR that even the bog-standard nuclear family didn’t require a bratty kid sister.) contra your seeing pessimism, ISTM that individualism against evil collectivism was a strong strain in 1950’s SF and its direct heirs; e.g., Dickson sometimes took this even further. It wasn’t the only strain, but the idea of the solo hero (or hero-plus-sidekick) was common; ISTM that Brunner was having fun with this decades later in The Shockwave Rider.
As it happens, I OWN my original Heinlein “juveniles” and have them yet. MY personal favorites are Star Beast and The Rolling Stones. I always wondered if when the “flat cats” and their reproduction tendencies later showed up in Star Trek how much credit Roddenberry gave Bob Heinlein. Nobody could do humor and irony like Heinlein — witness how Stranger is seen even to this day. Read them!
David Gerrold discusses this in his book about the making of the Trouble With Tribbles.
Heinlein’s libertarian ‘futures’ were to return his sci-fi situations to small-town frontier America, where patriotic, colonial forces win against oppressive imperial forces in a 1776-style fantasy. Like that would happen in a technological colony with sufficient military security. Space colonies, like six out of the eight crewed Apollo lunar landings were all by military test pilots; it was only the last-ever, Apollo 17, where an actual scientist was onboard. Don’t think for a nanosecond that any Mars mission/colony won’t have a *serious* military component, making such a Revolutionary War fantasy such as Red Planet completely implausible.
You want the real stuff? Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Boy howdy, does he get the politics right. Even when they screw up.
Not to say Red Planet wasn’t totally enjoyable, especially Willis, one of the most charming sidekicks ever in SF.
@11 I envy your collection of the juveniles in their original form.
I have read that David Gerrold’s tribbles were similar enough to Heinlein’s flat cats that the producers of Star Trek got concurrence from Heinlein before filming the episode.
@12
“Red Planet” appears to me to have been influenced by Heinlein having familiarity with Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”
First presented at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 the “Turner Thesis” held that the conditions of moving into and settling on an advancing frontier-line released Americans from old, Europe-based customs and mindsets, creating new societies based on individualism and egalitarianism, with a distrust of authority, and with less-formal community efforts to meet challenges.
The Turner Thesis was widely taught in US high schools and colleges well into the 1950’s when it was increasingly challenged and fell out of favor, in no small part to its echoes of Social Darwinism and eugenics–only certain types of “fit” people could and would survive and flourish on the frontier—and of the kind of “blood and soil” nationalism that had led to and been defeated in World War II.
A lot of science fiction of this period involving planetary colonies that develop new and superior societies to the world left behind seems to me to have been influenced by the Turner Thesis as well.
I read “Red Planet” out of the library, I think I was eight. From lete with the drawings in the pages.I
Reading it again (not the first time) a few years ago, it reminded me of Red River in 1869. It’s not a government run colony, a company has been given the monopoly. Hudson’s Bay company controlled in distant England. Both have factors. Most of the people in Red River were related to the fur industry, either participants, or retired. Most of those people had Native relatives. The company controlled, but there was also disagreement. And then when the company hands the territory over to “Canada”, there is Resistance. A (provisional) government formed. A certain level of armed standoff, but mostly negotiation. Three deaths, a series of connected events. Three generations of my family came into Canada in 1870. How could we be traitors when we were a fusion, and had little ties to Canada? Yet in August of 1870, a military force got out to Red River, a lot more violence then.
Heinlein liked to recycle things.
I’m not sure Red Planet is related to Stranger. He just reused some elements. Martians in “Between Planets” are not the same, in “Rolling Stones” some resemblance.
The first time I read Red Planet I was 10 years old, fourth grade 1959. Our fourth grade teacher insisted we do “book reports” and she knew I was greatly interested in astronomy so she picked it as an attempt to get me to read something I’d like. Little did she know I related to Jim Marlowe far more than she realized, school was a I read it at least three times and bought my own copy and that is when I discovered a whole new world in book stores and expanded my reading into the far reaches of Science Fiction. All the classical SF writers but I always came back to Heinlein in the end. And what did all this reading do? Rather simple, Heinlein wrote for people to enjoy expanding their own experiences and enjoy I did.