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First published in 1950 Latest edition: 1990 Publisher: Del Rey Mass Market Paperback ISBN 0345324382
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 Reviews A short hop into the future, on an Earth almost as real as the corner store, teenager Bill Lermer lives with his widower father in the Diego Borough of the sprawling City of Southern California. His is a fast new world in which grammar school geography classes take field trips to Antarctica and study their regular lessons from versatile "studying machines." But while Bill can pilot a helicopter and follow the news from the developing offworld colonies, his world is not perfect: he seldom gets enough to eat. He and his father must limit their diets according to a strict caloric ration book, and although a new yeast plant has just begun production in Montana, the caloric ration has been reduced yet another time. Rather than tighten their belts, the Lermers decide to emigrate to Ganymede, where terraforming is underway and good food abounds. Written in 1950, Farmer in the Sky is one of Heinlein's first boys' books, and also one of the most muscular and optimistic. It deals with nothing less than the future of mankind; what, after all, must humans do to survive, civilization intact, when Earth becomes too crowded, famished and bellicose? Emigration to other colonized worlds is one solution, and that is what Heinlein illustrates so well in Farmer. He presents his readers with a Ganymede already partially modified to support life from Earth, and makes it all seem plausible--even commonplace (at least within the bounds of late 1940's scientific theory). A reader can see Jupiter hanging up there in the greenish sky, and hear the tremendous din of rock-crushing machinery. Against this vivid backdrop, a variety of characters win or lose as they try to wrest a living from Ganymede's newly created soil. Red-bearded Papa Schultz and his large family are seasoned colonists and adept at surviving the caprices of nature. Mr. Saunders, on the other hand, is shiftless and soon goes back to Earth. Perhaps one of the most memorable characters in the book is Hank, who at first seems like candidate for reform school but later proves to be just the right sort of rascal who makes a good pioneer. Memorable, too, are the young scientists and engineers of the book, courageous and intent on opening up new frontiers for humankind. In light of that (and many other examples in other books) it is no wonder at all that a goodly number of today's scientists and engineers cite Robert Heinlein and his books for young adults as one of their first inspirations. ~~Beth Ager |