Expanded Universe

I remember loving this book in my teens, and I still consider Robert A Heinlein one of my favorite authors, but if you’re not a fan already, I wouldn’t recommend this book to begin with. This contains 27 of Heinlein’s short pieces, of which about half are essays, but it’s not a collection of his best, nor one that say pulls together all his “Future History” stories such as The Past Through Tomorrow, which would make a good introduction. There are a few strong stories here. For a work published in 1940, “Solution Unsatisfactory” is an incredibly prescient story about the dilemmas of the nuclear era. Heinlein at one point says that, "Unless you were already adult in August 1945 it is almost impossible for me to convey show more emotionally to you how most people felt about the A-bomb, how many different ways they felt about it, how nearly totally ignorant 99.9% of our citizens were on the subject.” Nuclear war and its aftermath is a theme that takes up almost the entire first half of this book which is organized chronologically from his first published story from 1939, “Life-Line,” up to the date of publication in 1980.

As someone who decidedly was not an adult in 1945 and reading this well after the year 2000 beyond which Heinlein was skeptical we'd survive, it’s hard to read such essays as “How to Be a Survivor” and not feel I’m reading a paranoid crank. But I loved “Pravda Means Truth” and “Inside Intourist” based on his own travels in the Soviet Union, was saddened by his pleas for a strong space program given what it has dwindled to, and his piece on the decline of education in “The Happy Days Ahead” is, alas, even more relevant today. Most of his essays are thought-provoking and wise--with an emphasis on provoke--as he puts it at the end, he lived to kick sacred cows. If you are politically correct, self-righteous, close-minded and without a sense of humor, this isn’t the book for you. Otherwise, especially if you already love Heinlein, enjoy. show less

“Pico review” written for the SF fanzine OtherRealms (SF review zine by Chuq Von Rospach, Jan. 1991): Expanded Universe is a large collection of stories and articles from the '40's and '50's through 1980. Most of the fiction is in the oldest section, some familiar, some less so - I'm not a Heinlein expert. The second half is nonfiction, predictions and political diatribe. Future predictions made in 1950 are updated twice, once for the 1966 collection and again in 1980. Heinlein sounded surprised in the 1966 revisions that World War III hadn't happened yet and almost disappointed in 1980 that we *still* hadn't been invaded by Russia, he was so sure it was going to happen. I only wish he had lived through 1989, his political show more predictions get farther off base all the time. His economic predictions, however, are spot on (and that was by 1980, before the Reagan deficit years), as are his dismal statements about education in the US. Lest this sound like a political review - all the predictions are stated in SF terms, sometimes as near future fiction, others as "life in the year 2000" type articles. There is a wonderful article from 1979 testimony to a House committee on NASA spinoffs - if only it could be required reading in Congress now. My favorite fiction piece was "Over the Rainbow ...". I had read it before but I still love the punch lines. It is the story of a vice president, added to the ticket only to get votes from certain special interest groups, that unexpectedly (to those who engineered the election anyway) becomes a great president. From the fiction I also especially liked "Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon", one of his Boy Scout juveniles, and "They do it with Mirrors - an Edison Hill Crime Case", a pulp mystery from 1945 that was too risque to print as written at that time (after reading it I still haven't a clue as to why, times have changed a lot since then). show less

What if generations had been living within the confines of a spaceship so huge that it seemed like a world in its own? After a mutiny generations ago, society has de-evolved so much that the current residents have forgotten their origins. It was a really original idea for its time, and a great part of the Future History collection.

Some of the material in here I already knew. There were a few good stories that I hadn't read before. There were a good many opinion pieces that were interesting to read once.

My first real Heinlein book, back in high school. I'd read Menace From Earth and part of The Puppet Masters in grade school, but I didn't pay attention to author names then. A good intro, shows Heinlein on a range of topics. I re-read this sometimes to refresh my memory and to see how my own thinking and attitudes have changed.

If you've read the book 'Past Through Tomorrow' by the same author, you will recognize some of the stories in here. However, some of these stories have been tweaked, and some of the entries in here are actually essays on various things such as the future or politics. Overall this is definitely a good addition to any Heinlein collection.

Short stories and essays presented chronologically. A couple of short stories are hard to find elsewhere, but the best ones can be found in other volumes. The book is filled out with Heinlein's essays, which seem to get more and more out of touch as both he and the twentieth century age.