The Door Into Summer is one of the funniest, exciting, most stimulating, intriguing and satisfying books I’ve read. A real time travel thriller adventure dramedy, full of engaging tech, twists and turns, all told with complete ease and a trust in the reader to keep up and tag along. It’s also one of the most believable time travel scenarios I’ve come across.

It’s also my first Heinlein book, after having heard so much about him. He’s remarkably, shockingly ahead of his time in so many ways, not only describing technology that wouldn’t come into existence until decades later, but also in terms of social constructs and women’s roles. It’s clear that he has some very progressive ideas, wants more freedom for women by quite literally building household machines that will free them from chores. At other times he’s so much a product of his time that it’s hilarious, but I guess no one can really free themselves from their own social inheritance.

Also, Pete the cat is the BEST.

Ultimately creepy, and not in a good way. It's a time travel tale, and I'll forgive a lot for an entertaining time travel story. But "entertaining" and "time travel" are all it's got going for it. I haven't read a lot of Heinlein, but this didn't show me at all why he's got got so many fans.

The writing style is fine, but he goes wrong in a few key ways with the story. [SPOILERS] For one, he wrote the book in 1956, with most characters' natural time being 1970 and the rest of the action (reached cryogenically and returned from via time travel) being in 2000 and 2001. Both are full of technological, cultural, and historical differences Heinlein invented. These probably seemed cool in 1957 or 1960, but his 2000 here wouldn't have held up in 1985, let alone 2008.

Spoiling with age as badly as his inaccurate visions of change is his vision of something wholly unchanged over 50 years: a degree of sexism astonishing these days. Hell, I suspect his degree of sexism would have been startling even in the real 1970. It's not constant and overpowering; it's just striking.

Each of those would be flaws I wouldn't mind having to overlook for the sake of the time travel story, which is largely entertaining, but Heinlein completely undermines any satisfaction that could come from it by having the protagonist and narrator, Dan Davis, eagerly find a way (via the rampant cryogenics of imaginary 1970) to marry in 2000 the step-daughter of his business partner, a girl who, as a child called him "Uncle Danny."

He'd known her since she was a toddler or something (in 1970, she's nine and he's [always] thirty), and there's talk early in the book about how she had a crush on him and wanted to marry him when she grew up, but it's just some misplaced childhood crush and, of course, nothing he actually reciprocates. Supposedly. Ultimately, though, after all the time travel stuff (which you could totally separate pretty easily from this weirdness), during which he makes various occasional references to how great this kid is and how important she is to him, after he returns from 2000 (during which time he never met her as an adult) to 1970 and takes care of fun paradox stuff, he tells her that he's going to go into thirty-year cryostasis. (Again, though no one but he knows it's his 2nd time.) 30 years seems like forever to a young kid, and she's upset she won't see him again, and he tells her that in 1982, when she's 21, she could do "The Long Sleep" too and come out of it also in 2000. She asks, "If I do...will you marry me?" He replies, damn disturbingly, "Yes....That's what I want. That's why I'm doing this."

After they awake in 2000, they get married pretty much immediately. And then the book ends within a few pages.

So Heinlein's a freak and a perv. I don't care that much that this girl is physically 21 when they hook up. The "hero" never knew her as an adult, just as a young kid who called him "Uncle Danny," and it was based on that relationship that he decided he wanted to marry her. Also, the 21-year-old who opted for the cryogenics in 1982 apparently still has the precise same feelings as her nine-year-old self, which is similarly disturbing. Goddamn. Fricking. Creepy.

Throughout the book, the protagonist (and narrator) doesn't seem like a really great guy but sympathetic enough. If Heinlein's trying to blow the reader's mind by having him turn out to be not at all sympathetic after all that, I could see the point in that. But there's no indication that's what the author's up to or, indeed, that he sees anything wrong here. It seems instead that he's glad for Dan to have a happy ending. Parents of 1957, keep your children away from Robert Heinlein, please.

My default tendency is to react favorably to time travel fiction, so it's pretty striking to make that U-turn from amusement to revulsion there at the end and move this from the "OK" column into "Not OK. Not."

I read this as a teenager, back in the 1960s. Heinlein was my break-out author for reading. Never before had I inhaled books the way I did with Heinlein, and this was one of my favourites.

Беручи цю книгу до рук я сподівався прочитати щось неймовірно круте та цікаве. Бо до цього стільки позитивних відгуків про неї прочитав. Но не склалося. Якщо коротко, то книга мені не сподобалась. Така фантастика то не моє.

Не могла оторваться! Напряжение не покидало на протяжении всей книги. Временной круговорот в духе трилогии "Назад в будущее", которую я преданно люблю.

Восхитительно!

Are you a cat person? If yes, you’re definitely in for a treat. Pete is an amazingly written cat character if there ever was one. Yes, cat lovers will surely appreciate this one. Cat owners will understand that cats like Pete are as rare as true love and only come once in a life time, if we’re lucky, hence they will understand what makes Pete so special to Dan, his owner. However, even if you happen to hate cats, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the ingenious way Pete is described. That’s just plain good writing.

I’m making it sound like this is a novel about cat. Well, it’s not but it sorts of is. The cat I’m talking about is an important character, not in any futuristic genetically altered pet sense of the world, he just happens to be a side kick of our protagonist. Who might that be? Our protagonist is Dan Davis, an engineer, a well written characters, one could say a typical Heinlein hero. You know, a very intelligent badass guy who is on to take on the world and won’t let anything stops him. He is charming yet bold, brave but thoughtful, no fool but willing to take calculated risks.

Nevertheless, this isn’t exactly how he starts out! When the novel opens, he is not up to much. The novel opens with our guy drinking himself to death on account of his best friend and his ex-finance tricking him out of his invention (and hard earned future glory as well as financial security). So, he is a bit depressed. The only person he cares for in this world is Ricky, who happens to be a ten-year-old daughter of his late friend. He respects her and we suppose he imagines she might be a good companion someday because he decided to freeze himself so that they can be together in ten years’ time.

Some people find this part to be quite disturbing, but it isn’t like he wants to be with her when she’s a kid, he is romantically interested in the women she will be once she grows up. There is no knowing who that will be, you might say and yes that would be a valid point but it doesn’t seem to bother our protagonist. If Pete likes her, the girl must be ok and will stay that way (maybe Dan believes in cat’s intuition). I would say there is nothing fishy in the relationship between Dan and Ricky, but I can see why some might consider it to be a bit weird. Why the need to freeze himself up in the first place? He could have waited for her to grow up, but that sounds creepy doesn’t it? To watch someone growing up and then to marry them? Way creepier than just freezing yourself up and meeting them in the future? Actually yes.

It is interesting that he wants this relationship to happen when they’re about the same age. Does that indicate that he actually thinks there is something wrong in relationships in which there exists a significant age difference? Or more likely he needs the freezing up part to make the story more interesting? I mean this is a SF novel and we’re all waiting for the story to become well more SF. Furthermore, you know Dan is not motivated just by the desire to be with the future grown up Ricky. There isn’t much talk about Ricky if you think about it, this isn’t Lolita. There is not much talk about his feelings at that point and that’s not going to change drastically. Don’t expect him to get all emotional, it is not going to happen. This avoidance of emotional talk (or perhaps even thoughts) may be due to the fact that Dan makes that freezing himself up decision after a long period of drinking. It may be that his true feelings for Ricky only develop later on. At any rate, she isn’t the sole motivation.

Dan wants revenge. He wants to rub it into the face of his ex. He wants to be young when she is old. Perhaps most importantly, he wants to live in the future. He is an engineer you know. He is wondering what the world will look like in a number of years. Speaking of which, it is fascinating to observe how correct or how wrong Heinlein’s predictions were. There is certainly a lot of talk about the future in this one. Moreover, there is the actual ‘future’ experienced by a man from another time epoch and you can trust in one of the greats of SF to make that part good.
It does get more interesting because things don’t go as planned, I mean the freezing up and all. When he wakes up in the future, he starts seeing things he is sure he had himself invented. As he said, every engineer has his own signature and it is this signature he is seeing everywhere that is driving him crazy.

Enters time travel. You know a book about just being frozen wasn’t going to cut it. He needs to travel back in time. There needs to be more action. Not surprisingly, that is what we get. More action and adventure. No complains here. You know I’m not even sure if women play an important part in this novel. Perhaps not really. We have one typical femme-fatale and one angelic girl, but the relationships with them are never explored into great detail. As far as relationships are concerned, this is more about the love between a man and his cat then about love between a man and a woman. Just for a record, I don’t have a problem with that. Not everything has to be all romantic and stuff.

There is certainly a way to read the story between Dan and Ricky that makes it all sweet and romantic, but I think Ricky is there mostly for the plot. This is a one-man show or more precisely one man and his cat show! Romance isn’t a fundamental part of it, but it doesn’t feel out of place either. As I said, the relationship between Dan and Ricky can be read in a very sweet light (or in a slightly creepy one) …or it can be just ignored, if that isn’t your thing.

The Door into Summer is a very good SF novel that is mostly about adventure, time travel, engineering, future predictions, action, being badass and all those things we love about Heinlein. It is interesting enough to keep us intellectually stimulated and there is a touch of emotion that is just enough. I really enjoyed reading it. I have a copy at home, so I’ll probably reread it again eventually (emphasis on again because I already reread it). I recommend this to engineers, Heinlein’s fans, cat’s lovers, readers of SF as well as those interested in time travel stories. This is a fabulously written SF novel, pretty short but filled with such lovely things! The protagonist is and awfully charming and smart guy and it is great fun reading about his adventures. If you want to read a novel with a guy that makes it against all odds, this is the novel for you.

Final words? The Door Into Summer is a highly enjoyable read. It is not Heinlein’s best, but it is a very good novel. It found it to be incredibly uplifting and fun. In addition, this novel managed to accomplish what many great works of literature have tried but failed and that is describe perfectly an infinitely complex creature called....the cat.

We have machines that do the household drudgery better than any housewife ever could, Cold Sleep, time travel, clothes that fasten with Sticktite instead of zippers or buttons, a system of obtaining cash from our bank accounts by requesting it at certain machines, a cameo appearance by a young gentleman named Leonard Vincent who might very well have become someone much more well known, a vaguely creepy romance, and a nifty cat named Pete who drinks ginger ale. All wrapped up in Heinlein's fast-moving, humorous style with a 1957 copyright date as the crowning touch. I loved it!

რენდომად შემხვდა ამ წამს გუდრიდსზე და ძალიან მომენატრა.

«Двері у літо» Роберт Гайнлайн

Що я вам можу сказати, дуже потужний твір. Читається на одному диханні, звісно перші сторінок 60 йдуть нудно, але потім як пішло. Зловив себе на думці, що після історичної тематики книг, наукова фантастика займає друге місце в списку найулюбленіших жанрів.

До речі, хто бажає познайомитись з науковою фантастикою, то ця книга саме для вас. Легка, звичайна, не змушує вас розбиратися в цьому жанрі.

Книжка настільки чудово написана, що іноді відчуваєш, наче у тебе розмова з ліпшим другом і він тобі розповідає про своє життя.

Книжка написана в 50х роках. Але автор зміг передати атмосферу і 70х і 2000х років, начебто він дійсно використовував машину часу.

Гайнлайн показує нам, яке може бути майбутнє. З великою кількістю проблем, випробувань та багато чого іншого.

Не потрібно судити суворо роман про заморожування людини на певний час або машину часу, тоді були 50ті і такі штуки були новаторством.

Дуже раджу книгу, особливо в питанні знайомства з науковою фантастикою, ідеальний приклад.

9/10

I have so much ambivalence about this book!!!

I have a soft spot for vintage Sci Fi that reminds me of hanging out with my dad and discussing some thing we both read in high school. I started this book and it was hitting all the right notes for me - protagonist with a quirky, strong, distinct voice and slightly wacky approximation of 'how the future works' -- there is one really fun line where he basically approximates reading on a kindle.

That said despite acknowledging this is an older book I can't begin to forgive the treatment of women in it. So the narrator proposes to an eleven year old girl and because he doesn't touch her when she's eleven and waits until she's 21 we're supposed to view him as noble? On the one hand,
this is way less reprehensible than something like Lolita. Lolita, as disturbing as it is, is one of the most beautiful books I've read. It attempts to put you in the predator's mindset but the key difference for me is that it passed no judgement on the women in the novel. The women in this novel are all paper thin tropes. They have no agency or authority and for the most part are defined by their relationship to men. The 11 year old in love with the 30 year old with a bald spot? Well of course as soon as she's 21 she cryogenically freezes herself to be with him. What. The. Fuck. She is portrayed as having zero agency or thought about anything but this man for the decade in which she becomes an adult? The narrator never met her as an adult except for a picture that reveals she'll be pretty and somehow nothing else about her as an adult matters. If this were a one-off maybe I could excuse it as being radical as part of Heinlein's views on sexual liberation but repeatedly there are comments that are derogatory towards women. Check out my kindle notes and highlights for a few examples perhaps my favorite being when he suggests automation was a bad idea because receptionists used to be pretty women. UGH!!!!

In short, I docked at least one star for the treatment of women. Despite my love of the narrative voice, I think this type of novel is both what turned off more women from liking SciFi and also why so many find themselves drawn to SciFi/Fantasy YA because in these contemporary genres relatable badass female characters are so much more common.

Це досить наївна фантастика і до сюжету є кілька запитань. Але як можна не поставити 5 зірок котику?

,,თავისუფალი ნება და ბედისწერა, ორივე ჭეშმარიტებაა.მხოლოდ ერთი სამყარო არსებობს, ერთი წარსულითა და ერთი მომავლით... ,,აწ და მარადის უკუნითი უკუნისამდე''... სამყარო დასასრულის გარეშე.მხოლოდ ერთი სამყარო,რომელიც იმდენად რთულია,რომ თავის სქემებში თავისუფალ ნებასაც იტევს, დროში მოგზაურობასაც და ყველაფერ დანარჩენსაც. ბოლოს ისევ საკუთარ კარს უბრუნდები''.

ბიჭო ჰაინლაინ <3