Time for the Stars

"We were going to be a short paragraph in history and a footnote in science books; there wasn't room for us in the news. I decided that even a footnote averaged well and forgot it."

 

Superficially, Time for the Stars is very similar to other "Heinlein juveniles" - stories written early in his career (late '40s/50s) for the young adult market. Headline: plucky small-town lad adventures through space! Like the others however, it was deliberately written to expand science fiction past pulp laser pistol duels, and little beyond the protagonist's improbable age would doom them as "juvenile" - certainly not in a market where James Bond and Star Wars are considered perfectly acceptable grownup entertainment. Time for the Stars in particular expands upon some logical consequences of telepathy and relativistic spaceflight. Remember that drawing your junior high science teacher used to explain relativity to you, of two twins aging differently as one of them flies near the speed of light? This is about that twin.

As with other Heinlein stories, he doesn't miss the opportunity for social commentary, but where to modern writers that would mean #killallmen or #killallwhites or #killallstraights fanaticism Heinlein tempers even his favorite topic of individual freedom with reminders of the grim necessities of shipboard life and unified action in the face of unknown dangers. And, as the opening quote's equanimity indicates, most opportunities for the hero to angst over / bemoan his fate are quickly brought up against the reality check that he entered his career by informed choice and in all fairness doesn't have it that bad. I find it most similar to Starman Jones (albeit rather more chipper and less fixated on shipboard etiquette) in how pointedly it builds up the stereotypical hero's journey only to break it down. In fact its last-chapter musings by a temporally-dilated fish out of water seem like they might've at least partly inspired Stanislaw Lem's Return from the Stars (<--- caution: entirely unresearched speculation.)*

 

Strangely, a recurring theme throughout the novel is the hero's lack of understanding of the true nature of his adventure, whether due to his youth, his low rank or his uncharacteristically average intelligence for a Heinlein hero. The author even emphasizes the irrationality of their proposed mission statement (and by extension, interstellar colonization as a SciFi trope) halfway through: "There are too many people as it is; why encourage new colonies? A mathematician could solve the population problem in jig time - just shoot every other one." Eventually, the book becomes less about the trials and victories of daring explorers (or the "specialness" of their skillsets / superpowers) as about the necessity of maintaining the spirit of exploration so as to prevent humanity from falling into scientific and social stagnation. 

 

 

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* edit 2023/10/18

As Return from the Stars was published five years after Time for the Stars (and only decades later in English) the reverse would appear to be the case. Lem even starts his story basically where Heinlein's wraps up, revisiting the theme of the spirit of exploration.