Reviews for Time for the Stars

The average rating for Time for the Stars based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-09-04 00:00:00 Tas Tinting The Corsican Brothers go to space. Or at least one of them. First published in 1956, Heinlein's Time for the Stars is one of his Scribner's juvenile books, and one of the better ones, somewhat similar to Starman Jones. The Grandmaster tells the story of the first survey ships going out into deep space to look for suitable planets for humanity to colonize due to overpopulation on Earth. Needing a simultaneous communications system, the powers that be hire on groups of telepathic twins (or triplets) to provide real time coms between the ship and Earth. (Ten years before Ursula K. LeGuin's ansible, which was first described in her 1966 novel Rocannon's World. Central to the narrative is the accepted theory of special relativity, whereby a voyager on a spaceship traveling at close to light speed will experience a different time than a person on Earth. The protagonist aboard the Lewis and Clark remains relatively young while his telepathic twin on Earth grows old. This concept is also explored in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and most notably in Poul Anderson's Tau Zero. Heinlein also explores the concept of faster than light travel and these ideas may have been included in his notes for the novel that would be completed and published after his death by Spider Robinson in Variable Star. A good friend of mine suggested that a reader who favors Heinlein's early / juvenile works over his middle works from the sixties and his later experiments with the tacky and wacky feels this way because that was the reader's first exposure to Heinlein's work. This could be true, as I have always liked his juveniles and these were my first books of his I read. In whichever camp one finds himself, Time for the Stats is one of his better novels. My final point to make on this book is an unusual observation about Heinlein's work in general. According to Goodreads, Time for the Stars is my thirty-second Heinlein book. Bob mentions cannibalism in a lot of his works. Weird, creepy, unusual. By my recollection, I think he has mentioned cannibalism in each of the following works: Orphans of the Sky Stranger in a Strange Land Time for the Stars Farnham's Freehold For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs Methuselah's Children The Cat Who Walks Through Walls The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Starship Troopers

Review # 2 was written on 2011-04-25 00:00:00 Jeff Johnson - Good afternoon, may I talk with Professor Einstein? - Speaking. - Ah, I just wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time sir, this won't take long... - And who are you, young man? - Oh, I'm sorry, I should have said. My name's Bob Heinlein. You wouldn't have heard of me... - On the contrary, I know exactly who you are. I bought a copy of your novel Space Cadet for my godson's eleventh birthday, and he was most complimentary. In fact, he said it was the best thing he'd ever read. The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)