Red Planet

Robert A. Heinlein

1949

This is rather an oddity in its way. Despite being written in the forties when enough was known about Mars to have destroyed several major plot points, Robert Heinlein still managed to write an apparently serious story where the planet had sufficient water for canals and an atmosphere that you could just about survive in. There are also Martians, though they are a dying species.

The story is one of Heinlein's common themes: a colony that is suffering from oppression by the Company back home that has to fight for its rights or die.

As this was published as a juvenile book, the main protagonist is a teen who, amongst other skills is a crack shot, and has befriended an unusual example of Martian wildlife. When he and his friend are sent off to school, the new head turns out to be a real tyrant and impounds their weapons as well as Jim's pet. Rather unfortunate that he did that last, for Willis was a perfect mimic and he overhead the head and the governor discussing plans to halt the necessary migration of the polar colonies.

Getting this information back to their parents involved breaking out of school and trying to get back home before the head realised that they were gone. Getting out of school was easy, but the boys were less than half way home before the pilot of the ice scooter they were riding realised they were desperate criminals. Escaping his simple attempt to take them prisoners, the boys spend a couple of days out on the ice, but when Jim's friend comes down ill, they are forced to take shelter in a Martian city where it becomes clear the Martians are stranger than first thought.

Another Heinlein archetype turns up in the shape of the colony's doctor; the crusty old man who pushes everyone into open rebellion.

But can the colonists prevail against the power of the company?

One of the things that really marks this book out as a child of it's time is the role of the women in the story, or rather, the lack of roles for women - there is one who acts as chief of the commissariat when the colonists are besieged, but other than that, they are in the background cooking meals for their men folk or crying when there's nothing else for them to be doing.

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