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A review by morgandhu
The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein
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.