The Green Hills of Earth

Robert A. Heinlein - [The Green Hills of Earth]
This is a collection of science fiction short stories that first saw the light of day in American magazines of the late 1940's, although one of the story's 'And we also walk dogs' has a 1941 vintage. Heinlein's stories in this collection concern themselves mainly with human nature and how this copes with new science and space travel, Heinlein never ventures outside the solar system with the majority of the stories centred around a base/colony on the moon. These were stories written for magazines that would have probably had a young male readership base and to criticise them for their lack of literary merit or for their racism and sexism is perhaps missing the point. The fact that Heinlein show more told stories that examined aspects of human nature rather than concentrating on adventure and fantasy makes these stories worth reading, however attitudes have changed and one would do well to imagine what they might have said to you in the 1940's.

What they do say is an expanding American nation full of confidence and looking to push liberalism to it's furthest limits. The dollar is king and nearly all the stories contain elements of making money. "Delilah and the Space Rigger" is a story about a female worker who gets a job on an all male space station and has to battle the fiercely chauvinistic manager who want to send her back to earth. "Space Jockey" concerns a man who cannot give up the challenge of piloting space craft even at the expense of his marriage. In "the Long Watch' a young atomic bomb engineer tries to thwart a military takeover at an atomic moon base. 'Gentlemen be Seated' is another moon based story about surviving a leaky air-lock. We are still on the moon in "the Black Pits of Luna" which is a rather dramatic title for young boy playing a deadly game of hiding seek on the surface of the moon. The next three stories are the best in my opinion. "It's great to be back" tells of a couple who have spent many years on the moon and can no longer cope with the attitudes of earth people or of it's gravitational pull. "We also Walk Dogs" describes a company called General Services who have grown enormous by servicing rich people who are too old, too stupid or cannot be bothered to do things for themselves and "Ordeal in Space" tells of a space pilot suffering from acrophobia desperately trying to pass his psychological exam to be allowed back into space. 'The Green Hills of Earth' is a curiosity telling a story of a man suffering from radioactive sickness who writes popular songs about his life in space. "Logic of Empire" is the longest story and tells of an indentured slave colony exploiting natural resources on Venus. It's all perfectly fine as one character says because it has always been the case:

" It’s nothing new; it happened in the Old South, it happened again in California, in Mexico, in Australia, in South Africa. Why? Because in any expanding free-enterprise economy which does not have a money system designed to fit its requirements the use of mother-country capital to develop the colony inevitably results in subsistence-level wages at home and slave labor in it's colonies"

In these stories exploitation is the norm, it's the way to get ahead it's the way to make money and space is very much the new frontier. The attitudes to women and people of a different race expressed by the characters in the stories are mostly typical of what you might expect at the time and are not necessarily those of the author, however the future as seen by the author is still a man's world: perhaps a white man's world with 1940's American values and for that he can be criticised. I would imagine that President Trump and his cohorts would feel right at home. The prose is terse with much outdated slang from the late 1940's sounding quite strange and the science part of the fiction is wrapped up pretty quickly so as to not get in the way of the stories. 3.5 stars. show less

This collection is fifty years old and, yes, the tales, with their atomic rockets and homegrown aliens in our own solar system, have dated. But most of the stories are still worth reading with one genuine classic and a couple of near-classics.

The stories are built around two general themes: workaday life in a future where space travel is common and genuine heroism.

On the workaday side is "Delilah and the Space Rigger", a tale about how the only woman on a space construction project affects her hundreds of male co-workers. "Space Jockey" moves a common situation, the strains work can place on a marriage, into the future when a rocket pilot must decide whether to quit his job or possibly leave his wife. In "Gentlemen, Be Seated", a show more moonquake puts some lives at risks in the tunnels under Luna City. It's work of an unusual sort in "'-We Also Walk Dogs'". It shows the inner workings of General Services, a company whose boast, that no job is too large or too small, is put to the test when the laws of physics have to be modified for an alien trade conference.

A couple of other stories are not built around work per se but still feature domestic matters. "The Black Pits of Luna" concerns a tourist from Earth, a small boy, getting lost on the moon's surface. Its juvenile narrator foreshadows the young adult science fiction novels Heinlein later wrote. The ironically titled "It's Great to Be Back" features a family returning to Earth after three years stay on the moon. The old planet doesn't live up to their cherished memories.

It's work of a grim sort in the near-classic "Logic of Empire" about slavery and colonial exploitation on Venus. It doesn't end happily and, by this point in Heinlein's Future History, Prophet Nehemiah Scudder looms on the horizon.

Tales of heroism figure in the rest of the collection's stories. The hero of "Ordeal in Space" has to retire after picking up a debilitating case of acrophobia when he saves a luxury space liner from destruction. He finds a cure in an unlikely place. "The Long Watch" is another almost classic. In it, one man foils a military coup that threatens Earth.

The undisputed classic here is "The Green Hills of Earth", a biography of the blind poet Rhysling. Part Homer, part Robert Burns, and part Rudyard Kipling, he travels through space and to Venus and Mars and recites some pretty good poetry before meeting a tragic end. show less

Substance: Remarkably prescient for 1951, but with the curious mixture of future-tech vision yoked with present-tech limitations (for example, piloting a starship with computers and slide-rules). Ditto the before-his-time social liberality woven through with then-contemporary cultural mores. Each story still contains a generous helping of adventure, philosophy, and character development.
Style: In the seventies the narratives seemed (to a teen) quite sophisticated; In the current decade (to a senior adult) they seem a bit cheesy. But good fun none-the-less.

Re-read 2018-06-01 to 2018-06-07. Review holds up. See comments in review for "The Past Through Tomorrow" copy 1.

You know you are reading an old story when the couple is trying to sleep in a hotel room and the wife says to him, “Honey. I’m cold. May I crawl in with you?” Shades of Rob and Laura Petrie.

There is a good chance that, if you read any author’s collection of stories written in the 40’s, you are going to see writing about women that just doesn’t ring true. (Add to that the fact that science fiction writers – even today – don’t always do a real good job with relationship writing.) And there are a number of times in these stories where Heinlein writes as though women are second class citizens. Now, I will quickly add that I am not bashing Heinlein for this – these stories are a function of their time. However, it still show more brings down the overall quality of this set of stories.

Keep one thing in mind. In spite of my previous comments (and I’m about to tell you something you already know), Heinlein can write. These are well crafted stories, and it includes some of the more memorable ones, including the book’s namesake “The Green Hills of Earth” - the story of the Rhysling, The Blind Singer of the Spaceways, a character so memorable that the Science Fiction Poetry Association named their award after him.

Again, the stories are good, but a number of them are just outdated. If you want to read the best of these (“The Green Hills of Earth”, “Logic of Empire”), it is a better idea to find them in other collections show less

Despite the title, Earth is mostly in the background in this wonderful collection of short stories. It's mostly concerned with everyday life off the planet. Heinlein has taken a lot of mundane situations & put them a head a century or three. People are still people, although they've traded in their cars for spaceships.Some of the stories are a bit dated, such as "Delilah & the Space Rigger" - what happens when a girl shows up to work on a space project with an all boy crew? Heinlein examines the sexual revolution before it actually happened. It's still a fun read.Most of the stories are good, clean fun, with a large element of suspense, such as a boy lost on the moon & his brother the boy scout helps in the search. What does a confirmed show more spacer do when he gets acrophobia? If you've lived on the moon, is it really good to be home again? Where is home?Others are sad & a bit scary. The title story is about Rhysling, a spacer who lost his eye sight to shoddy maintenance & finally bums a ride home. "Logic of the Empire" is chilling, especially if you know any colonial history. The same old ills of an expanding 'civilization' heaped on the indigenous population. show less

The stories were originally published in a variety of magazines between 1941 to 1949. I would expect them to feel incredibly dated, and elements of these stories are laughably outdated; yet for the most part they hold up fairly well as stories. It isn't easy or possible to fit myself back into a teenager in the late 60's to know why this collection caught my interest so much. "The Green Hills of Earth" was a great title. I could not recall at all what these stories were about, not even a favorite one, except that story, The Green Hills one, did have some elements to it that I did indeed remember these 46 or 47 years later.

These stories are really only of interest to someone who likes better than the average early moon and solar system show more exploration stories from that long ago pre-spaceflight time. I'm glad I re-read it even though it no longer packs a punch. When I first read this Armstrong had just walked upon the moon, and that was a marvelous time to be excited about spaceflight. Even then however these stories would have been wildly out of date. show less

A mixed bag, in my opinion. There were several stories that I really enjoyed - particularly "The Long Watch", and "It's Great to be Back". I think I appreciated the Long Watch the most - it fits in with the heroic sacrifice that I enjoy reading about. In this case, Heinlein makes the situation and our hero truly heroic and the rewards are befitting. In "It's Great to be Back", I could tell almost right away what was going to happen - possibly because of my own ex-patriot experience. When you leave, you're like everyone else. But the leaving changes you so that coming back is not always a welcome homecoming. Of course, returning to your ex-pat life isn't exactly like you never left, either.