Note from the Blogger

These mini-reviews are intended to be short recommendations, not full blown literary reviews. Please feel free to add your own comments. -- Tim Drake

Friday, December 1, 2023

Double Star (1956) By Robert Heinlein

 

You know, Science Fiction written in the 1950s can be quite fun. Case in point, Double Star by Robert Heinlein which was published in 1956.  The novel is contemporary to The Martian Chronicles, predates-the original Star Trek television series, and is what seems like “light years” ahead of Star Wars.

As I read it in 2023 it is difficult to discern whether it was knowingly comic in parts or if that developed as the novel has aged, regardless it is quite funny poking at events “back then” that are still entirely relevant today.

The big picture of the story concerns the internal/external politics of The Empire, set in intergalactic space (or what was known at the time mainly Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn). The government is headquartered at Batavia, on the Earth’s moon.  It operates in a parliamentary form of government, with multiple representatives from various planets, and more divisions within. The two major parties are the Expansionists -- think America’s manifest destiny history; and the Humanity Party, the more isolationist one.  The Humanity Party currently holds the Supreme Minister (prime minister) slot.  An election is coming up however and John Bonforte, a former Expansionist Supreme Minister, is thought to be the likely winner.  To block that, allies of the Humanity Party have secretly kidnapped Bonforte and are holding him captive until after the election so that he can’t campaign.  In response, Bonforte’s team hires an actor named Lorenzo Smyth to impersonate him on the campaign trail and also at an upcoming diplomatic meeting on Mars.  They have only days to pull this off.

One of the more humorous parts of the book is when Bonforte’s team have to stop for a phone book to try to find an address, before they head back from Mars.  Opposition research is done using the Encyclopedia Batavia – what older people reading this will recognize as the Encyclopedia Britanica.

Bottom line: it’s a fun read.