Tunnel In The Sky - A Review
February 13th, 2007 | by Todd W |
The Wiley Library Review continues. Considering I started with a Heinlein Juvenile, I’ll just keep going with all twelve before we move on to something else.
Heinlein has been tagged, unfairly, as a ‘fascist’ by the self-declared enlightened who stand opposed to any perception that some people might be more capable than others. Spider Robinson wrote a great essay in defense of Heinlein, well worth the time.
Tunnel In The Sky is a hard hitting book for a younger reader. Here you’ll find Heinlein’s political ideas that were later presented in Starship Troopers and the rest of his novels.
Rod Walker is a high school student who’s ambition is to become a colonist. Earth has been shipping excess population through a gate system, dumping enterprising colonists on habitable planets to fare for themselves and build a new life. Since the gate technology is very expensive to operate, colonists have to go through self-sufficient, and can only establish a permanent gate back to Earth once they have the ability to pay for it through trade.
Lesson one of economics for a young reader - economics dictate resources. Sentiment has very little purchasing power.
Rod is facing his final exam in Advanced Survival, part of his curriculum to apply for a colonist position. The exam is simple - students are dumped on a pristine planet with whatever they can carry through. Survivors are picked up in a week to ten days. Failures are buried, or in most cases, consumed by the local fauna.
The class is all dumped on the same planet, but widely scattered. Rod comes across the corpses of classmates, and eventually hooks up with a living friend as they deploy survival skills.
Two weeks go by, and the pickup never happens. Two months pass, and they realize something is terribly wrong. Pickup might never happen, and short term survival becomes a long term issue. Slowly the students gather together, and the story turns to a political tale as the students form a community. The problems of government are confronted, as are the problems of ‘citizens’ who refuse to work.
I can’t deny that Heinlein’s writings shaded my political views, even if many of the ideas didn’t really take firm root until my early twenties. The roots of individual responsibility, self-reliance, and limited government are strong in his writing, yet expressed in a way that are accessible to a younger reader.
Heinlein doesn’t sugar-coat reality. People die as a result of stupidity, or deciding that good intentions are sufficient to change reality.
Tunnel In The Sky is another excellent Heinlein book, introducing younger readers to more adult content and themes. It is rare to find stories that both teach and entertain. This is certainly one of them.
This book was recently loaned to and read by Chris Gidman. I would love to read a write-up of his perceptions as an adult reading it for the first time.
