C. W. Sullivan III

Robert A. Heinlein, according to acclaimed Heinlein critic Alexei Panshin, had three phases in his writing career. To oversimplify, the three periods were his introductory, pre-World War II period, in which he established himself; the period from about 1946 to about 1960 when he was the dominant Science Fiction writer, and the period from 1960 until the end (after he wrote Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land) when he was a sour old survivalist sex fiend.

Although not all of the show more writings of his middle period were the juvenile books he wrote for Scribner's, they constituted the largest fraction of his writings, and probably resulted in the most sales. They also introduced a lot of readers both to Heinlein and to science fiction -- one suspects that a lot of them stuck to him in his curmudgeon years because of the juveniles.

This book takes those juvenile novels (plus Starship Troopers, the book that Scribner's refused to publish as a juvenile, and Podkayne of Mars, a sort of last juvenile even though it was written after the end of the middle period) and looks at the internal references. I'm not sure "cultural dictionary" is the right word for the result -- more of a "motif dictionary." If a person or place is mentioned in one of the juveniles, and not explained, it's likely to find an explanation in this book, whether it be a person such as "Patrick Henry" or a mythological motif like Götterdämmerung or an allusion, straight or twisted, such as "My Strength Is as the Strength of Ten Because My Heart Is Pure." The entries are concise, generally accurate, and occasionally quite insightful; rarely are they deep. And for the most part there are no sources specified, so you don't have much basis for further reference.

Conclusion: This isn't a book of deep criticism of the Heinlein Juveniles. Nor will it give you much insight into the progress Heinlein made (from rather patchy works like Rocket Ship Galileo to the excellent Have Space Suit — Will Travel to the conflagration that was Starship Troopers). Nor is this an in-depth reference. Had I been an editor, I'm not sure I would have bought it -- you could pick up a lot of this stuff from references like Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. But since it was published, I'm glad I have it. I read the whole thing; you might instead prefer to open to a random entry, see if you can identify which book it's from, and see if Sullivan's explanation teaches you something. show less

Read shortly after Donna R. White's excellent A Century of Welsh Myth in Children's Literature, C.W. Sullivan's work struck me as an expansion of that work, despite being published nine years earlier. This is owing, no doubt, to the fact that Sullivan examines the fantasy genre as a whole, while White confines herself to children's literature. However that may be, there is a great deal of overlap between the two, and each of them devote a significant amount of attention to Lloyd Alexander, show more Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, and Kenneth Morris. Sullivan also examines Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion series, as well as other adult contributions to the field.

Unlike White, who was primarily concerned with the adaptation of Welsh myth for a particular audience (that of children), Sullivan uses a more thematic approach in examining the topic. Particular emphasis is placed on the traditional Welsh cycle of tales, the Mabinogi, and the various ways in which it has been adapted to a new genre. One of many books I have read in my research into the connections between fantasy literature and traditional folklore, Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy should be read in conjunction with White's work, mentioned above, and Kath Filmer-Davies' Fantasy Fiction & Welsh Myth. show less