The Door into Summer

At the time he was writing, Heinlein's books were so much better than all the others because he was so much smarter than most other writers. He thought things through first (which many others did too), but then he added an element that many other sf writers didn't (and some STILL don't): humanity.
Dan Davis, an inventor, narrates the story. He's a brilliant inventor and has come up with some pretty amazing gadgets, including Hired Girl, a robot who cleans, sweeps, vacuums, mops, and generally works all day long without supervision. Dan's problems begin mounting when he learns he's been betrayed by his partner. And to add insult to injury, Dan's fiancée is in on the betrayal as well. As if betrayal alone isn't enough, the two conspirators have Dan placed into a 30-year suspended animation. Dan wakes up 30 years later and is focused on one thing: revenge.
Now lots of authors could have taken the above premise and come up with an entertaining story. Heinlein did this and much more. He shows us that change (for individuals and for all humanity) is difficult, but not impossible. The future is full of challenges, but no matter how much technology changes, no matter how much language, currency, and trends change, man's basic instincts and attitudes remain constant.
Heinlein also tackles the implications of time travel better than anyone else from this period. (The book first appeared in 1957.) The problem of time travel is well thought out and logical. (Wish you could say that about every time travel story.) If you haven't read Heinlein, or if all you've read is `Stranger in a Strange Land,' `Starship Troopers,' or `The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' (all great books), treat yourself to a fun, intelligent read from one of the true masters.

I rank this among Heinlein's three absolutely magisterial novels (the other two being _Double Star_ and _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_). Such judgments are notoriously subjective and controversial. But I feel safe in saying that any SF reader will find something to enjoy in this marvelous story.
It's part SF, part fairy tale, and part just plain good storytelling. Engineer/inventor Daniel Boone Davis and his feline companion Petronius the Arbiter are two of Heinlein's best-realized characters; the plot here is well-conceived and evenly, swiftly paced.
In case you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you. The setup is that Davis has just been rooked by his best friend and his fiancee, and he's out to do something about it. What happens then is the story itself, so I won't tell you; I'll just say that the time-travel aspect is worked out every bit as neatly as in "By His Bootstraps", and the tale is one of Heinlein's most humane ever. I've read it more times than I can count, and there's a bit near the end that _always_ gets me. (You'll know what I mean when you get there.)
Heinlein wrote this at the peak of his talent. If you haven't read it yet, don't miss it.

Heinlein, unlike most Sci-Fi writers, was a trained engineer. This story shows how well he could explain who engineers are and how they do what they do. Being one myself, it really hits home. In addition, he invents the Roomba (although at a higher level of sophistication), the concept of the CAD systems we all have used since the '80s, and driverless cars. PLUS he really, truly understands cats and cat people. All with his trademarked wit, and a happy ending. Use time travel for his plot, but doesn't beat it to death as he did in Cat Who Walks Through Walls and Time Enough for Love. Never goes into space, either.

I finished the book--it's only a couple of hundred pages. I enjoyed the exploration of the time travel paradox. But to describe it as "one of the best science fiction novels ever written" is to realize why science fiction is so rarely taken seriously as literature.

On the credit side, the plot is passable. The time-traveller paradox is handled thoughtfully and there are no glaring logical inconsistencies. The pacing is slow at the beginning but picks ups about a third of the way into the book. There's also a cat.

Unfortunately, the debit side would have to include the absence or mishandling of everything else one would look for in a book. The terrible characterisations call for particular comment. The narrator is annoyingly egotistical: he seems to think that the world revolves around him--which of course, in this story, it does. To call the supporting characters cardboard cut-outs doesn't do justice to the expressive power of cardboard. The treatment of the two main female characters--one a traitorous, well-developed, vixen and the other a twelve-year-old child--seems especially awkard, even given that the book was written in the 1950s.

Finally, there's the distinctly distasteful whiff of paedophilia in the relationship between the narrator and the daughter of his best friend, the afore-mentioned twelve-year-old child whom the narrator marries at the end of the story.

A mixed bag, this book has some elements to enjoy and many more simply to endure.

...there is no question that this would be among them.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read this book in the last 25 years. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times that I've tried to look at this book, with the firm goal of figuring out Heinlein's story construction rather than "reading" it, to discern exactly how he made it _so_ perfect. I've never succeeded, because Heinlein draws me into the story every damned time.

Enough so that it never bothers me that Heinlein's "future history" -- in the 50s, he wrote about events in 1970 and 2000 -- is completely out of sync with our own.

This is the quintessential time-travel SF novel, sure. But it's also a love story. And a story about what friendship means. And it also has a marvelous cat who behaves exactly as a cat should... with the appropriate level of cat-affection on the part of the book's hero. If you're owned by a cat, that should get you to buy this book immediately.

The Door into Summer is, by the way, completely "clean" -- you could give this book to a bright ten-year-old without worries.

Oh, okay, if you must have a short plot synopsis: our hero Dan is an inventor. His fiance and business partner pull a dirty deal on him, and rather than shoot him they put Dan into "deep freeze" to wake up 30 years hence. Only he arrives in 2000 with a grudge, and without his cat. To solve his problems, he has to experiment with time travel in the OTHER direction.

I have a library of over 500 SF/F books. And there are many Heinlein books that I love. There is no question that this is at the very top of the pile.

Actually I would rate this book a 10... I found this book to be one of Heinlein's best... This story uses time travel which is a concept I find personally interesting and intriguing.. This book also had strongly developed characters which you either loved or hated.. Heinlein tells this story so well I was surprised it did not win a Hugo award unlike his story "A moon is a harsh mistress" which I found not as enjoyable as this book.. If you like science fiction then you are going to love this book.. This book is interesting as it was written in 1957 and time travel was not a concept that was thought of much. The story takes place in the 70's where you meet our main character Daniel Boon Davis, Creator of Hired girl Inc. Daniel is a great inventor but a lousy business man who unfortunately partners up with a man named Miles who you think is Daniel's friend.. Little does Daniel know that Miles is teaming up with Daniel's fiance Belle and together they ruin him financially, spiritually and mentally... They also trick him to go into deep sleep where he will be out of their hair.. Little does Miles and Betty know that Daniel is awakened in the distant future of 2001 where time travel is invented and now possible.. So Daniel goes back to the 1970's and fixes the errors that Belle and Miles have caused him... If you like cats I shouldn't forget to mention Daniel's feline companion Petronius... He was Daniel's cat, partner and co-conspirator that had a helping hand with Daniel vindicating the life that his so called friends ruined..

Dan Davis is an engineer in the futuristic world of 1970 (Robert A. Heinlein actually wrote this novel in 1957, so he was writing near-future fiction). After designing a whole line-up of automatons that clean up around the house, Dan goes into business with a friend of his and establishes a company called Hired Girl. His next big project is Flexible Frank, an automaton that can do all the things humans do. Unfortunately, Dan and his business partner have a falling-out over a conniving woman who manages to take lock, stock and barrel everything that's not tied down. After an angry confrontation, Dan is injected with a zombie drug and taken down to be put into Cold Sleep, a cryogenic chamber and awakens 30 years later in the year of 2000. After waking up, Dan finds he loves the world but misses his friends, in particular his cat, Pete, and almost-niece Frederika. The future holds marves Dan has never dreamed of, but it also holds a really strange past for him, one that he doesn't remember and feels certain he never lived through -- until he finds out that time travel exists.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote several books for young adults as well as adults, including STARSHIP TROOPERS, PUPPET MASTERS, HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, and THE ROLLING STONES. He won several awards and is well recognized in the science fiction industry.

As always, a Heinlein story -- especially from the early years -- goes down smooth. Never a missed note. I felt like Dan was one of those guys I've known all my life or would have no problem meeting. The discussion of the possibilities of time travel had come up in several stories during the 1950s, but Heinlein's unraveling of the special problems inherent in being able to do usch a thing are fresh and presented in a way everyone can understand. I liked Dan's cat, Pete, and was actually upset when I figured out the cat was dead in the past. The Heinlein thinking is present on every page, including a scene set on a nude resort.

One thing that kept jarring me throughout the novel was the fact that Dan was going to build a voice-activated typewriter. In the year 2000. But that's forgiveable. No one knew how big a change the PC was going to make. (Take a look at these reviews and the format they're coming to you on!) Even though Heinlein was off on his future history and didn't know how much personal computers were going to change things, his forward thinking in social and economic areas were and are cutting edge. He also stayed true to the science.

THE DOOR INTO SUMMER is a fantastic read for old-time SF readers, but may draw the younger set in as well. Heinlein stays true to the world as he knew it, and puts us face-to-face with the hero, turning Dan into an old friend almost at once. That was one of the best things about Heinlein's early work.

At least until the group of books he wrote very late in his career, Heinlein tackled the theme of time travel very rarely, but when he did, most notably in "By His Bootstraps" and "...All You Zombies", the results were exemplary. With this book, Heinlein not only deals with time travel in a logically consistent manner, he manages to foresee CAD (computer aided drafting), the equivalent of Velcro for clothing, cryogenics applied as a method people might use to freeze themselves hoping for later medical advances to cure their ills, and the proliferation of robotics down to the household level. This last prediction hasn't come true yet, but it's at least on the horizon. In all, a remarkable set of technological predictions. But these are just side points to an excellent story of love and betrayal, told in first person from the viewpoint of one Daniel Boone Davis, inventor, engineer, and totally naive in the ways of women.

It's this last trait that leads to all the troubles Davis faces, as he falls head-over-heels for the secretary he and his partner hire to help run their new business of making and marketing his Hired Girl robot. Naturally, the 'secretary' is a sharpie out to take the company for all she can get, and she and Davis' partner eventually manage to screw Davis royally, leaving him bitter and willing to take the 'Cold Sleep' treatment for 30 years to get away from the mess. Before going to sleep, however, he decides to talk to his partner one last time. The ensuing scene, with his partner and secretary being attacked by his cat Pete while he is drugged into immobility, is one of the most amusing and endearing 'fights' in all of SF. The 'fight', however valiant, is lost, and Davis ends up taking the cold sleep, to awake in the year 2000.

His impressions and problems for that year, and how he eventually finds a way to travel back to the year 1970 in order to straighten out the problems with his former partner and secretary, form the balance of this fine adventure. Through all of this, Heinlein, most unusually for him, paints an extremely optimistic viewpoint, both for scientific advances and for human nature. Lacking in the heavy philosophy that so often characterizes his later works, it never the less has something important to say about the human condition, best exemplified by this quote: "I had taken a partner once before -- but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn't any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal. In the end."

A fun, fast read, and the characterization of Davis is excellent, a person you get to know and admire for all his block-headed stubbornness. The ending will probably bring tears to your eyes -- hopefully, yes, one of the doors of your house will be a Door into Summer, if you just keep trying doors.

This book probably missed out on a Hugo due to an accident of timing, as the 1957 World Science Fiction Convention was held in London and decided not to give out any Hugos for fiction. Perhaps it will be awarded a 'Retro' Hugo in 2007 - it deserves it.

The Door into Summer is my favorite Heinlein book. I've reread it at least 8 times and I know I'll read it again. Robert Anson Heinlein became popular beyond the sci-fi community with his book Stranger in a Strange Land, his legendary work. Stranger was especially popular among the hippy/acid movement and was popularized through the lyrics of Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane / Starship). Heinlein himself, was confused and somewhat annoyed by the continuous stream of hippies showing up at his door, as this ran counter to his military & very patriotic background. Personally, I don't think he should have been very upset because his original title for Stranger was The Heretic, like the unorthodox people who were knocking on his door and one of their primary concerns was the same as his. Nuclear annihilation.

First published in 1957, a mere four years prior to Stranger, The Door into Summer isn't a treatise nor condemnation of social ignorance. It is less complex. In Door, Heinlein asks what can we do, as individuals on our own, to make our personal lives among the best ever lived. Socially, it's a very optimistic book but that's secondary to the challenges and the quest of the individual. The Door Into Summer proposes that if we do our very best and remain focused on our dream, then we'll be far better off than we were before. Heinlein uses very great theater to express his point, but he couldn't have said it better in any other way.

I see the Door Into Summer as the solid foundation of his masterpiece Time Enough for Love (1973) and it's interesting to note that both books deal with time. I read Stranger in a Strange Land before it became popular among the hippy generation. But as a hippy-type, I was naturally delighted to see Heinlein's thoughts adopted. However I maintain that, if you really want to know Heinlein (and yourself) you have to let go of what's happening around you and take serious stock of what you want to do in life. That no matter the surrounding conditions, you are free if you want to be.

The fact that a cat is involved serves to emphasize that we aren't alone. All of God's beings search for the door. And you know, that's why sooner or later, we all find it. All of us. Including this little monster in the crook of my arm.

WHY A NON-HEINLEIN FAN SOUGHT OUT AND READ A HEINLEIN BOOK:
I'm twenty-three years old. Therefore, I didn't grow up during the time period that Heinlein was at the height of his popularity. The only exposure I had to Heinlein were through film adaptations, such as Red Planet, Starship Troopers, and there might have been a few more, but I didn't know them, didn't care (and, more importantly and to point out: I didn't know that those films were based on novels by this writer named Robert A. Heinlein).

I discovered Heinlein ever since I had the aspirations of writing novels myself; I looked up the greatest science fiction, fantasy and horror authors, and I guiltily bought hundreds and hundreds of dollars' worth of books (this craze began about a year and a half ago and I have an addiction to say the least); I bought books from Robert A. Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, etc. . . . because, as a dedicated, aspiring author, I wanted to be well-read, and not just addicted to the flavor of the month fad-books, like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, Twilight . . . you get the point . . . in other words, I wanted to ascend as a writer (and a reader) beyond other aspiring writers (who pretty much write fan fiction of things that they like to read). But, even though I bought some Robert A. Heinlein books, A Door into Summer ironically wasn't one of them.

I bought A Door into Summer via Amazon because, quite simply, it was mentioned in Stephen King's The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla. As silly as it sounds, I thought to myself, if Eddie Dean liked the book, maybe I'll like it too; so I bought it; and, shamefully, I had just recently gotten around to reading it.

CONCEPTS FROM THE BOOK:
This book can be confusing at times, because it essentially is about the physics of time, which you could see why The Dark Tower series was so influenced by this book (considering its own concepts are about different versions of the United States in different dimensions in different periods of time); most of the time it isn't confusing. There is always a very existential undertone about fate and free will, about whether you do something on a day to day basis because it was meant to be, or because it just happened and there's no way to predict it. To go into further detail about the science fiction elements of the story would infringe on spoilers, ergo I will stop there and move on to other novel aspects.

AUDIENCE:
If what I had just described is confusing to you, then maybe A Door into Summer isn't quite for you; but really, it's not essentially a thinking-man's book (like a Christopher Nolan movie, but in the same vein, to say the least), and it's not really for those readers who need action, action, action (like a Michael Bay movie)--the audience is in some sort of off-beat limbo: that's the best way I can describe it. It's got clever dialogue, a clever (but bland) plot, it's got some strangely pedophiliac (but not really) romance elements; there's no true antagonist, except for time and his own mind; there's no character motive except for revenge.

Because of all these "off-beat" elements, it's hard to suggest this to people. The other day my girlfriend asked me--after I was talking about this book--if she would like it, because the concepts are very interesting (since the novel plays around with two different kinds of time travel, oddly enough). But I told her that she probably wouldn't like the pacing and just the story structure in general; you must understand that young American readers have been raised on a common formula [hero with troubles + villain with conflict A + conflict B (subplot) + likeable allies (Dumbledore, for instance) + plot revelation / twist + resolution of conflict B + conflict A isn't resolved (sequel) or conflict A is resolved with happy ending (any teen fiction book out there) = successful entertainment for young readers]; it's sad but true.

CONCLUSION:
First and foremost, yes, it's outdated the same way film and music is. Sure, The Godfather is a great film, but try making a fourteen-year-old watch it; sure, The Beatles made great music, but their songs just don't sound new anymore. Things become outdated, they get worn out and old, but there's no shame in that. In fact, as a young reader, there can be pleasure.

I liked A Door into Summer because I felt that I learned something that I could put into my "writer's toolbox," per se, and I delved deeper into noteworthy authors that were before my time; but, for those readers who are hooked on flavor of the month fad-books, I cannot entire recommend this book. Yes, I want you to read this book, but I also want you to enjoy it too. This novel has a very unorthodox story structure--like I said, no true villain, not even a dominant, threatening conflict (or at least one that is entirely engaging), but then again, Christopher Nolan's Inception didn't have a true villain either, and that didn't stop it from being anything short of exceptional science fiction. With that being said, a novice weightlifter cannot curl seventy pound dumbbells, can they? They have to work their way up to it. In other words, try reading Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game--if you like that, then maybe you'll like this; then try reading something from the grandfather of science fiction, Asimov, because if you like Asimov, chances are you are more likely to like Heinlein. Or you could read Stephen King's The Dark Tower series (which I've literally read every book Stephen King made references too, and liked most of them). Point being, for fickle readers, if you have a cheese cake and a salad in front of you, they'll likely pick the salad--and A Door into Summer is a salad; it just doesn't have as much appeal as a handsome looking cheesecake (The Hunger Games, let's say) . . . but, if you work your way up to A Door into Summer, then it'll be worth it.

Or you could dive just in and take your chance. That's what A Door into Summer is about, after all.