Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780345413994 ISBN: 0345413997 Label: Del Rey Manufacturer: Del Rey Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 304 Publication Date: June 17, 1997 Publisher: Del Rey Release Date: June 17, 1997 Sales Rank: 570735 Studio: Del Rey
Product Description'Not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world. He remains today as a sort of trademark for all that is finest in American imaginative fiction.' --Stephen King
Once again, the author of Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers displays his genius. The Door in to Summer proves why Robert Heinlein's books have sold more than 50 million copies, winning countless awards, and earning him the title of Grand Master of Science Fiction.
'Heinlein . . . has the ability to see technologies just around the bend. That, combined with his outstanding skill as a writer and engineer-inventor, produces books that are often years ahead of their time.' --Philadelphia Inquirer
'One of the grandmasters of science fiction.' --The Wall Street Journal
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - An interesting window into Heinlein's vision for the year 2001...
The Door Into Summer was first published in 1956. It involves a "futuristic" inventor in 1970 who, for a variety of reasons, is put into "cold sleep" until the year 2000. The plot itself involves love, betrayal, inventiveness, robotics, and time travel.
The interesting thing about this book is Robert Heinlein's view of the future. The year 2000 has conquered gravity, making the propulsion of large objects easy. Gold is very cheap. The Six Weeks War rendered some parts of the world ... Read More
Rating: - Engineer as ideal man
From a personal standpoint I rate it a 5. I recall it fondly from childhood and have enjoyed rereading it multiple times since.
As fiction, a 3. Good story, clean writing, some nice phrases and ideas.
Mostly, it is a period piece now. A view to the gee-whiz feeling of the 50s that honest American engineering -- specifically not science -- could solve any problem.
Rating: - Time Travel, Love Affair, Romance, and an inquisitive Cat
This novel is a blast to read. One that you will remember long after you put it down. I'm talking about years. I wish i could read it again for the first time. It's 2008 as i write this, the book's fifty years old, so i'm reading a book about the future but that future is now our past, which allows the reader to judge how accuate Heinlein was about his science fiction predictions. We humans aren't known for our futurism.
Science fiction writes are certainly better at spotting trends than bankers ... Read More
Rating: - Two different forms of time travel in one story!
"Door into Summer" is excellent, "hard" science fiction. I give it only four stars because Heinlein soon started writing at an incredibly high peak level of writing abilities. I read this novel in the 1950's or 1960's (Hey! You try to remember when you first read each of fifty plus books!) and it has held up very well over more than forty years.
Here, Heinlein suggests his version of CAD/CAM, ten or twenty years before the first CAD program. Not Bad! As for robots, we are running very far ... Read More
Rating: - An entertaining, if short, mid-century SF novella
I am in the process of re-reading many of the SF books I first read in my youth, and The Door Into Summer is among the better ones. It's a short little book: only 154 pages of actual story text, and it reads more like an extended short story than a full-length novel. As others have pointed out, the book is hopelessly outdated in its visions of future technology, but that does not really detract from it all that much. Dan, the main character, is likable, the story is entertaining and moderately suspenseful, and ... Read More
- An interesting window into Heinlein's vision for the year 2001...
- Engineer as ideal man
- Time Travel, Love Affair, Romance, and an inquisitive Cat
