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ABSTRACT
This essay examines Heinlein's Young Adult (YA) stories-commonly referred to as his "juveniles"-and argues that Heinlein's "Others" are not defined by race, gender, or planet of origin but by their inability to understand and deal with the changes that inter-planetary travel will bring. (CWS)
KEYWORDS: ethnicity, gender, home planet, race, Robert A. Heinlein, the "Other"
Robert A. Heinlein's science-fiction short stories and novels have elicited more than their share of knee-jerk criticism from critics who either fail to read the works carefully or are unable to separate the author from the characters in the novel. Those who call Heinlein a fascist for Starship Troopers, such as M. Keith Booker, Ann-Marie Thomas, and Jeffrey Cass, or a promoter of free love and drugs for Stranger in a Strange Land, such as New York Times reviewer, Orville Prescott are certainly guilty of confusing the author with the novel.1 Could the same man have written both? Heinlein has suffered even worse misreading at the hands of most of those who comment on his portrayal of women in his novels, especially in the juveniles. However, race, ethnicity, and planet of origin in Heinlein's juveniles have escaped critical notice.
Heinlein published the 12 juveniles, from Rocket Ship Galileo to Have Space Suit-Will Travel, between 1947 and 1958. Starship Troopers, rejected for the juvenile series by Scribner's, was published in 1959 and won science fiction's Hugo Award that year. Podkayne of Mars, which might have appeared as a juvenile had Heinlein continued with Scribner's, was published in 1963. The juveniles, with the possible exception of Podkayne, appeared at a very conservative time in American cultural history and at a very conservative period in the publishing history of science fiction. Rock and roll and the election of John F. Kennedy, among other things, were beginning to change the cultural landscape in the early 1960s, and New Age science fiction would soon change the science-fiction landscape. But none of these currents was moving strongly when Heinlein wrote the juveniles proper and Starship Troopers-or even Podkayne. So, why should critics look for anything but the "same old same old" from a science-fiction writer who had been publishing since 1939 and was considered one of the "good old boys"?
Why, indeed. Because Heinlein...