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markyon's review against another edition
3.0
The Green Hills of Earth is generally regarded as the second collection of Heinlein’s Future History stories, which showed us, in the Golden Age of SF, how Heinlein saw humans expanding beyond Earth into space. It includes love, sibling rivalry, annoying parents and ancient Martians.
After the stories of the first collection (The Man Who Sold the Moon,), we now see the result of Delos D. Harriman’s efforts. Mankind has extended beyond Earth and is now not only building more space-stations but also establishing a permanent base on the Moon.
The stories included here (in order) are:
I’ll look at each one in turn.
We begin with It’s Great to be Back! , being the story of a couple who have spent years on the Moon and are desperate to return to Earth, but find that when they get there that things are not as rosy as they remember them. The ending is a little convenient, but this one portrays the differences between fact and fiction of living on the Moon well. By this stage, a Moonbase is an established feature of this Future History. The story was first published in 1947 in The Saturday Evening Post. Like much of the first Future History collection The Man Who Sold the Moon, it buys into that post-WW2 feeling that the future will be better, if we as a race continue to expand out into Space.
The Green Hills of Earth is the title story and one that is often lauded, telling of the legend of blind balladeer and space rogue, “Noisy” Rhysling. First published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1947, this was the first of Heinlein’s stories to appear there and caused a furore when published. For Heinlein, it was a return to writing after his war effort work curtailed it. Although the germ of the story, about a ‘Blind Singer of the Spaceways’, originates from 1941, he used his experience of working with a blind machinist at the Philadelphia Ship Yards to type the story up in four hours.
However, I must admit that I’ve never really liked this story or really got why others like it so much. (There’s even a Rhysling Award every year.) Perhaps it’s because I’m not a fan of Heinlein’s lyrics / poetry, or perhaps it is that the story, once you’ve got past the main character, is not that engaging.
I get that Rhysling is one in a line of folk singers who tell tales of stories past, to preserve those memories, and that the songs remind people now so long in space that they feel homesick for their original home planet, but otherwise the story leaves me strangely cold. At the time of its first publication, though, in 1947 in The Saturday Evening Post, it was hailed as a triumph. I still read it as an adventure story that could be told about travelling on the sea as much as it is here about travelling through space. Perhaps that is its attraction.
Next we have Logic of Empire, first published in Astounding in 1941, a story of slavery that echoes the history of the British Empire and the darker side of the cotton trade of the Southern USA. As this is science fiction, here the story is transferred to swampy Venus. The story itself is engaging, and I enjoyed it up to the point where the solution to our heroes’ plight was the use of family money to bail him out. The slaves who helped him decide to return to slavery as they don’t feel life would be better afterwards. It is a fair enough story, but seems limited in its purpose. The moral message is not given subtly.
It is the first time that I remember hearing of the prophet Nehemiah Scudder, who in the Future History is the self-proclaimed prophet who becomes President of the USA in 2012 and creates a theocracy leads the world into another Dark Age. (I refrain from further comment here, except to give space to ruminate on the law of coincidences…). Nehemiah will be mentioned in other Future History stories, most notably “If This Goes On” and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
We Also Walk Dogs is one of my favourites in this collection. First published in Astounding in 1941, it’s a story of future commercialism gone rampant – an intergalactic company who are paid to get things done, from walking dogs to interplanetary relations. Here the company is given a particularly unusual problem to solve, but in Heinlein-fashion, they do, buying the services of a grumpy scientist to do so. I must admit that the thought of leaving interplanetary relations to a business felt a little – unusual - and that the scientific solution is a little convenient – oh look, we have an anti-social scientist who can solve your problem just like that – there are some nice Heinlein touches that I recognise in later work, without them becoming too overbearing. Pleasingly, we have a competent female with a primary role (unusual for 1941 but not for RAH) and some, but not too much, of that snappy Heinlein-style dialogue. In the end, it made me think of what could happen in a solar system run by Amazon, or Elon Musk…
The Black Pits of Luna is a story style that we will see again from Heinlein in the future. It was originally written in one sitting of about four hours.
Originally titled “Little Boy Lost”, it is a story written from the viewpoint of a teenager and at first seems not that different from those juvenile novels he was writing at the time. (At the time this was written, Heinlein had just had Space Cadet published, and it is easy to see similarities here.) The teenager has travelled to the Moon with his family, but when his ‘brat’ of a brother goes missing on the Luna surface, we are subject to his hysterical mother and his ineffectual father.
First published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1948, I can see why readers unused to s-f might find this interesting – there’s some interesting description of what it would be like to be on the Moon’s surface – but personally I found the characterisation annoying. The weak mother is an unfortunate stereotype that Heinlein in other stories does well to distance himself from, but non-sf readers may enjoy. Heinlein has done sibling relationships much better elsewhere (see The Menace from Earth and Podkayne of Mars, for example).
Delilah and the Space-Rigger was first published in 1949. It’s a story of what happens when women enter an otherwise all-male working environment, in this case the building of a space-station in Earth orbit. It has dated, but shows its inspiration as the changing role of women in WW2. According to Heinlein scholar William H. Patterson, it was a story written for the Saturday Evening Post that fitted a common theme of how industries get things done, but from the perspective of someone in the support services. (I believe that this was also mentioned under the banner, “We Also Serve.”)
Critics have seen the story as sexist, but perhaps have to remember that the world of the 1940’s was very different from today, and what Heinlein was actually doing here was advocating women as equals in the workplace. It’s Heinlein’s version of WW2 icon ‘Rosie the Riveter” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter ), but set in Space.
Patterson also states that Heinlein was criticised of dumbing down his science fiction for a more general public with this story. It basically takes soap-opera scenarios but puts them in a future setting. They were popular and generated an important response, which to some extent justified Heinlein’s answer that he was basically bringing science fiction to a wider audience.
Onto more typical Heinlein fare now. Gentlemen Be Seated is a story that tells us of how humans, through the Harriman Corporation, are expanding living space on the Moon, and the hazards of such living. First published in 1948 in Argosy Magazine, it’s another story that shows us hard-working men trying to do their best in dangerous circumstances - what Patterson refers to as showing “the fundamental decency of the ordinary Joe“. A story with a lesson – human exploration is dangerous – but one with a certain degree of dark comedy, as the solution to the situation is rather ribald humour. I thought that it was OK, but not one of Heinlein’s best - some of those wise-cracking good-guys that become a Heinlein staple are on show here.
The Long Watch is an unabashed “hero story” that plays to Heinlein’s own beliefs from his naval days – a story of individual sacrifice, for the greater good, against an attempted coup. First published in December 1949 in the American Legion Magazine, a magazine for US military veterans, and it’s clearly a story that would be attractive to their readers.
Lastly, we have two stories I was less impressed with. Ordeal in Space is a lesser tale of a man who struggles on his return to Earth to come to terms with the effects of an accident in space. Think Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and you get the idea. It is well written, but for me the story was ruined by the improbability of finding a kitten on a window ledge thirty-five stories up that had to be rescued. Here’s perhaps the first sign of the Heinlein’s love of cats – it will surface again later in many other works – but it all read as rather inconsequential to me. Strangely, this is one of the later stories in this collection (published 1948) sold to an unusual clientele (Town and County magazine). Perhaps that explains the importance of the cat…
Space-Jockey is another one of those type of “just-doing-my-job” type stories, was first published in 1947. It’s a story that takes a present-day setting - very much reminiscent of the lifestyle and journey of an airline pilot – but extrapolates it to the future, telling us how flying spaceships between Earth and the Moon may become increasingly routine in the future, with some important differences! I liked most of it, though letting an annoying child loose in the cockpit/control room was an obvious step too far.
In short, the collection The Green Hills of Earth continues to show progression - of Mankind into space and also Heinlein as a writer. The stories here show an author increasingly more confident and clearly beginning to think of his stories as part of a grand plan. I'm sure that this will continue with the next volume in this series.
After the stories of the first collection (The Man Who Sold the Moon,), we now see the result of Delos D. Harriman’s efforts. Mankind has extended beyond Earth and is now not only building more space-stations but also establishing a permanent base on the Moon.
The stories included here (in order) are:
- It's Great to Be Back (1947; Heinlein’s thirtieth published story, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, July 1947)
- The Green Hills of Earth (1947; Heinlein’s twenty-seventh published story, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, February 1947)
- Logic of Empire (1941; Heinlein’s eleventh published story, originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1941)
- We Also Walk Dogs (1941; Heinlein’s sixteenth published story, originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1941)
- The Black Pits of Luna (1948; Heinlein’s thirty-third published story, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, January 1948)
- Delilah and the Space-Rigger (1949; Heinlein’s thirty-ninth published story, originally published in The Blue Book Magazine, December 1949)
- Gentlemen Be Seated (1948; Heinlein’s thirty-fourth published story, originally published in Argosy Magazine, May 1948)
- The Long Watch (1949; Heinlein’s fortieth published story, originally published in Beyond Time and Space, a collection edited by August Derleth, May 1950)
- Ordeal in Space (1948; Heinlein’s thirty-fifth published story, originally published in Town & Country Magazine, May 1948) and
- Space-Jockey (1947; Heinlein’s twenty-eighth published story, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, April 1947)
I’ll look at each one in turn.
We begin with It’s Great to be Back! , being the story of a couple who have spent years on the Moon and are desperate to return to Earth, but find that when they get there that things are not as rosy as they remember them. The ending is a little convenient, but this one portrays the differences between fact and fiction of living on the Moon well. By this stage, a Moonbase is an established feature of this Future History. The story was first published in 1947 in The Saturday Evening Post. Like much of the first Future History collection The Man Who Sold the Moon, it buys into that post-WW2 feeling that the future will be better, if we as a race continue to expand out into Space.
The Green Hills of Earth is the title story and one that is often lauded, telling of the legend of blind balladeer and space rogue, “Noisy” Rhysling. First published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1947, this was the first of Heinlein’s stories to appear there and caused a furore when published. For Heinlein, it was a return to writing after his war effort work curtailed it. Although the germ of the story, about a ‘Blind Singer of the Spaceways’, originates from 1941, he used his experience of working with a blind machinist at the Philadelphia Ship Yards to type the story up in four hours.
However, I must admit that I’ve never really liked this story or really got why others like it so much. (There’s even a Rhysling Award every year.) Perhaps it’s because I’m not a fan of Heinlein’s lyrics / poetry, or perhaps it is that the story, once you’ve got past the main character, is not that engaging.
I get that Rhysling is one in a line of folk singers who tell tales of stories past, to preserve those memories, and that the songs remind people now so long in space that they feel homesick for their original home planet, but otherwise the story leaves me strangely cold. At the time of its first publication, though, in 1947 in The Saturday Evening Post, it was hailed as a triumph. I still read it as an adventure story that could be told about travelling on the sea as much as it is here about travelling through space. Perhaps that is its attraction.
Next we have Logic of Empire, first published in Astounding in 1941, a story of slavery that echoes the history of the British Empire and the darker side of the cotton trade of the Southern USA. As this is science fiction, here the story is transferred to swampy Venus. The story itself is engaging, and I enjoyed it up to the point where the solution to our heroes’ plight was the use of family money to bail him out. The slaves who helped him decide to return to slavery as they don’t feel life would be better afterwards. It is a fair enough story, but seems limited in its purpose. The moral message is not given subtly.
It is the first time that I remember hearing of the prophet Nehemiah Scudder, who in the Future History is the self-proclaimed prophet who becomes President of the USA in 2012 and creates a theocracy leads the world into another Dark Age. (I refrain from further comment here, except to give space to ruminate on the law of coincidences…). Nehemiah will be mentioned in other Future History stories, most notably “If This Goes On” and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
We Also Walk Dogs is one of my favourites in this collection. First published in Astounding in 1941, it’s a story of future commercialism gone rampant – an intergalactic company who are paid to get things done, from walking dogs to interplanetary relations. Here the company is given a particularly unusual problem to solve, but in Heinlein-fashion, they do, buying the services of a grumpy scientist to do so. I must admit that the thought of leaving interplanetary relations to a business felt a little – unusual - and that the scientific solution is a little convenient – oh look, we have an anti-social scientist who can solve your problem just like that – there are some nice Heinlein touches that I recognise in later work, without them becoming too overbearing. Pleasingly, we have a competent female with a primary role (unusual for 1941 but not for RAH) and some, but not too much, of that snappy Heinlein-style dialogue. In the end, it made me think of what could happen in a solar system run by Amazon, or Elon Musk…
The Black Pits of Luna is a story style that we will see again from Heinlein in the future. It was originally written in one sitting of about four hours.
Originally titled “Little Boy Lost”, it is a story written from the viewpoint of a teenager and at first seems not that different from those juvenile novels he was writing at the time. (At the time this was written, Heinlein had just had Space Cadet published, and it is easy to see similarities here.) The teenager has travelled to the Moon with his family, but when his ‘brat’ of a brother goes missing on the Luna surface, we are subject to his hysterical mother and his ineffectual father.
First published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1948, I can see why readers unused to s-f might find this interesting – there’s some interesting description of what it would be like to be on the Moon’s surface – but personally I found the characterisation annoying. The weak mother is an unfortunate stereotype that Heinlein in other stories does well to distance himself from, but non-sf readers may enjoy. Heinlein has done sibling relationships much better elsewhere (see The Menace from Earth and Podkayne of Mars, for example).
Delilah and the Space-Rigger was first published in 1949. It’s a story of what happens when women enter an otherwise all-male working environment, in this case the building of a space-station in Earth orbit. It has dated, but shows its inspiration as the changing role of women in WW2. According to Heinlein scholar William H. Patterson, it was a story written for the Saturday Evening Post that fitted a common theme of how industries get things done, but from the perspective of someone in the support services. (I believe that this was also mentioned under the banner, “We Also Serve.”)
Critics have seen the story as sexist, but perhaps have to remember that the world of the 1940’s was very different from today, and what Heinlein was actually doing here was advocating women as equals in the workplace. It’s Heinlein’s version of WW2 icon ‘Rosie the Riveter” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter ), but set in Space.
Patterson also states that Heinlein was criticised of dumbing down his science fiction for a more general public with this story. It basically takes soap-opera scenarios but puts them in a future setting. They were popular and generated an important response, which to some extent justified Heinlein’s answer that he was basically bringing science fiction to a wider audience.
Onto more typical Heinlein fare now. Gentlemen Be Seated is a story that tells us of how humans, through the Harriman Corporation, are expanding living space on the Moon, and the hazards of such living. First published in 1948 in Argosy Magazine, it’s another story that shows us hard-working men trying to do their best in dangerous circumstances - what Patterson refers to as showing “the fundamental decency of the ordinary Joe“. A story with a lesson – human exploration is dangerous – but one with a certain degree of dark comedy, as the solution to the situation is rather ribald humour. I thought that it was OK, but not one of Heinlein’s best - some of those wise-cracking good-guys that become a Heinlein staple are on show here.
The Long Watch is an unabashed “hero story” that plays to Heinlein’s own beliefs from his naval days – a story of individual sacrifice, for the greater good, against an attempted coup. First published in December 1949 in the American Legion Magazine, a magazine for US military veterans, and it’s clearly a story that would be attractive to their readers.
Lastly, we have two stories I was less impressed with. Ordeal in Space is a lesser tale of a man who struggles on his return to Earth to come to terms with the effects of an accident in space. Think Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and you get the idea. It is well written, but for me the story was ruined by the improbability of finding a kitten on a window ledge thirty-five stories up that had to be rescued. Here’s perhaps the first sign of the Heinlein’s love of cats – it will surface again later in many other works – but it all read as rather inconsequential to me. Strangely, this is one of the later stories in this collection (published 1948) sold to an unusual clientele (Town and County magazine). Perhaps that explains the importance of the cat…
Space-Jockey is another one of those type of “just-doing-my-job” type stories, was first published in 1947. It’s a story that takes a present-day setting - very much reminiscent of the lifestyle and journey of an airline pilot – but extrapolates it to the future, telling us how flying spaceships between Earth and the Moon may become increasingly routine in the future, with some important differences! I liked most of it, though letting an annoying child loose in the cockpit/control room was an obvious step too far.
In short, the collection The Green Hills of Earth continues to show progression - of Mankind into space and also Heinlein as a writer. The stories here show an author increasingly more confident and clearly beginning to think of his stories as part of a grand plan. I'm sure that this will continue with the next volume in this series.
davidr's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fun anthology of short stories by Heinlein. All of the stories revolve around colonization of planets in our solar system. The themes are not about the technology, but about contemporary problems and dilemmas that we still have today; indentured service as slavery, prejudice against women in the workplace, young brats given too much freedom and too little discipline, phobias, and more. These contemporary themes help to explain the "staying power" of Heinlein's stories.
sirius_feanor's review against another edition
adventurous
sad
fast-paced
3.0
Some of these stories did not age well. But it's interesting to see how people imagined the Future.
doublefantasy's review against another edition
4.0
the bbc4 extra crew really outdid themselves with this reading! this was fascinating, reminded me a bit of blade runner ngl
chan_fry's review
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
morgandhu's review against another edition
3.0
Another reread. The Green Hills of Earth, ironically enough, contains a great many stories about working and living in space, or on the Moon. Read in order, these stories tell, or at least suggest, the ‘history’ of humanity’s movement into space. There’s “Delilah and the Space Rigger” which tells two stories - one about the construction of the space station that makes travel from Earth to the Moon feasible, and one about the psychological shift from space as frontier and space as living environment. “The Space Jockey continues both themes, the establishment of regular transport to the Moon and the establishment of family life on the Moon. “The Long Watch,” one of Heinlein’s most moving stories, references politics on Earth, but is about the courage of the average man called on to do extraordinary things, and the role of the Moon in making those green hills of Earth same from war. “Gentlemen Be Seated” is set during the construction of Luna City, and, like three of the following stories “The Black Pits of Luna,” “It’s Great to Be Back,” and “Ordeal in Space,” highlights what it take, psychologically, to live in space, away from the relative comfort and safety of Earth.
“We Also Walk Dogs” takes place entirely on Earth, but deals peripherally with the preliminary steps toward the establishment of a solar system government that integrates multiple cultures, human and otherwise. It’s in “The Green Hills of Earth” that Heinlein, in another classic and emotional tale, bridges the contradictions between the drive outward, into the far corners of space, and the memory of Earth that the spacemen carry with them - a memory as idealised as all the other things that the blind poet remembers but can not see. “Logic of Empire” ends the collection on a sombre note, an oppositional piece to the optimistic story if human progress to the stats. It is the dark underbelly of the romance of exploration - the tragedy of exploitation - and brings the reader, shockingly, down to earth with the fear that the errors of earth’s past will all be replayed in space’s future.
“We Also Walk Dogs” takes place entirely on Earth, but deals peripherally with the preliminary steps toward the establishment of a solar system government that integrates multiple cultures, human and otherwise. It’s in “The Green Hills of Earth” that Heinlein, in another classic and emotional tale, bridges the contradictions between the drive outward, into the far corners of space, and the memory of Earth that the spacemen carry with them - a memory as idealised as all the other things that the blind poet remembers but can not see. “Logic of Empire” ends the collection on a sombre note, an oppositional piece to the optimistic story if human progress to the stats. It is the dark underbelly of the romance of exploration - the tragedy of exploitation - and brings the reader, shockingly, down to earth with the fear that the errors of earth’s past will all be replayed in space’s future.
doublefantasy's review
4.0
the bbc4 extra crew really outdid themselves with this reading! this was fascinating, reminded me a bit of blade runner ngl
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