But just because it's his, it has enough interesting stuff in it that I reread it once in a _very_ long while. Not, then, one of the Master's finest works. Few of us actual working parents out here really need his advice on the subject fewer still deserve to be blamed by his surly moralism.) (How many kids did Heinlein raise? If you guessed 'zero', you are exactly right.

But geez, the heavy-handed stump-sermonizing is just impossible to take with a straight face. The plot's okay, and Clark really doesn't strike me as all that terrible a kid (he certainly isn't any worse than young Woodie Smith). Not that there isn't any good stuff in this book at all. Frankly, I don't really care one way or the other about the ending. She's sorta cute in a late-50s kiddie-lit way, but the folks who say this book is dated are entirely right. In the most recent PB edition of the novel, both endings are included, along with a bunch of comments/votes from readers who had much stronger feelings about the matter than I do.Ĭall me an ol' sourpuss, but I don't even especially _like_ Poddy. As Heinlein originally wrote it, she died as he _re_wrote it (at Putnam's behest), she was merely comatose, with every hope of recovery. _Which_ terrible thing happens to Poddy depends on which ending you read. While accompanying their uncle, a wily politician, on a trip from Mars to Earth, Podkayne and her brilliant but pesky younger brother are caught up in a. _That_, y'see, is why the terrible thing happens to Poddy at the end, and why Clarkie is turning out to be such a sociopath: their mother was just too busy with her _career_. But Heinlein was never a _parent_ anywhere but in his dreams.Īnd yet - in this sorta-juvenile novel ostensibly about young Podkayne Fries of Mars but actually, albeit indirectly, about her younger brother Clark - there he is up on his soapbox, blaming Mom for not staying home with the kids. _Troopers_ and _Farnham_, whatever their flaws (and I think _Farnham_ is a much, much worse book than _Troopers_), were about subjects in which Heinlein had some expertise - respectively, military service and surviving a nuclear attack. And if it were anybody but Heinlein, I'd say the hell with it.Īll right, look - between 19 Heinlein wrote what I regard as his three _preachiest_ books: _Starship Troopers_, _Farnham's Freehold_, and this one.

Podkayne of mars