The Door into Summer

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Doorintosum.jpgThe Door into Summer is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1957. Heinlein wrote a story that is in constant motion. It is a hard science fiction novel, with a key fantastic element, and romantic elements.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The novel opens in the year 1970. A mechanical engineer named Daniel Boone Davis has invented a robot capable of doing household chores and more, but his two-timing fiancée seduces his partner into gaining control of the company the three of them own. Bitter about his loss, he chooses "cold sleep" (suspended animation) with his pet cat, hoping to wake up thirty years later to a brighter future. His treacherous partners drug him, discover his plans to go into cold sleep, and arrange things so that they can take over the company and his patents. What he finds upon revival makes him desperate to return to his past.

Perhaps the book's greatest attraction to a 21st century reader is that the future it paints is of years already past. The novel alternates settings between 1970 and 2000, and Heinlein describes each setting with enough detail to make it interesting to see what he got almost right and what he missed. One example: Davis uses a slide rule to design robots.

The protagonist's work on robotics seems to draw heavily on Heinlein's own expertise as an engineer; descriptions of that work give the novel a hard science fiction flavor. At the same time there is a touch of the soft science fiction style as the story focuses on his effort to learn to love and trust other people. Its narrative tone, the protagonist's quest, even the prominent role given to a cat is reminiscent of the work of Kinky Friedman, though it is not crime fiction except in the broadest sense of that category.

The novel's use of time travel and the implications of going back in time explores a classic topic of the genre. Less classic is a minor subplot exploiting time travel as a way around what would otherwise be a pedophilic relationship between the protagonist and his partner's stepdaughter.

There is also a nuclear war in the story. "Also" - because its role in the story is quite marginal, one may say ridiculously so. It happened in the late 1960s, just before the story line opens, it lasted six weeks, Washington D.C. was destroyed, Manhattan got a near-miss which scorched areas well into Connecticut, and there were some hits in other unspecified areas. But it did not leave any lasting trauma, there is for example no mention of massive radiation illness. The US remains a strong, vibrant nation, a new capital is soon created at Denver, survivors from the hot zones head for untouched California and find there a ready welcome. After the first few pages the war is left behind, almost completely forgotten, and the story gets on with the serious matters of the hero's inventions and his unfaithful secretary. Heinlein seems to say that these few millions dead and suffering were (will be, as he was writing about his future) an acceptable price for getting rid of Communism once and for all. (The US won the war, obviously, and the Soviet Union fared much worse - though no details are given.)

[edit]

Cultural connections

"The Door into Summer" is the name of a track on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd., an album by The Monkees.
The concept of a man and his cat being frozen for thirty years is used in the film Austin Powers.

[edit]