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Нудно, застаріло і надто багато сексизму

Paskudnie się ta książka zestarzała. Wizja roku dwutysięcznego w wersji Heinleina nie sprawdziła się w żadnym wymiarze, począwszy od technologicznego na społecznym kończąc. Ludzie AD 2000 to w "Drzwiach do lata" ludzie z lat siedemdziesiątych dwudziestego wieku tyle, że z lepami zamiast zamków błyskawicznych w spodniach, do tego cały czas korzystają z lamp elektronowych... ale mniejsza z tym, bo chybiona wizja przyszłości nie jest największą wadą tej książki, bardziej razi głupiutka fabuła i totalna jednowymiarowość postaci, które zabierają prawie całą radość z czytania. Prawie, bo mimo wszystkich braków nie można odmówić autorowi lekkiego pióra, zaś główny bohater: prostolinijny nerd - konstruktor o ironicznym poczuciu humoru, jest w prostej linii przodkiem bohaterów z powieści Andyego Weyra czy Dennisa E. Taylora (tego od: "Nasze imię Legion, nasze imię Bob).

I haven't previously managed to get through any of Heinlein's work, but I am nothing if not determined, so I finally picked this up and decided to have a jolly good go. And it was okay. The style is easy to read, conversational; matter of fact, even. It's almost not like reading a story, except of course you know that few of Heinlein's predictions work out (though he did predict the Roomba).

It's an interesting take on cold sleep/time travel, and a personal one. Dan isn't saving the world, he's just setting some personal wrongs right. Despite that, I didn't find it particularly driven by character: my sympathy for Dan as a character comes from the situation he's in, not for any personal qualities.

The best bits about the story are Dan's cat, who has a personality all his own, and who I rooted for more than anyone else in the book. Cat lovers will appreciate this one, and I think Heinlein got close to poetry in the way he talked about Pete, particularly at the end. It was certainly the best of his prose.

People rightly find the plot with Dan's friend's stepdaughter, Ricky, pretty creepy. I mean, he meets her when she's a kid, she has a crush on him which he knows about but treats as a joke... until the grown woman he's engaged to turns out to be scamming him, and then suddenly he says that if Ricky had been a little older, he'd never even have looked at Belle. And then follows a whole plot where he wants to track her down and marry her, and ends up going to her while she's still a kid and telling her to put herself in cold sleep when she's twenty-one so that he can then marry her when she's an adult. It's a bit of a fairytale anyway, a kid that age knowing what she wants and going through with it like that without ever doubting or changing her mind (not that we get to see Ricky's thought processes or how she grows up). But knowing her as a kid and deciding, based on that, that he wants to marry her, without ever meeting her as an adult -- yeah, kind of disturbing.

All in all, it's an easy read and interesting, but I can't say it's converted me to being a liker of Heinlein. I do want to try one more of his, since all I've read is this and part of A Stranger in a Strange Land, but it's the sort of thing where you have to keep the words "of its time" very firmly in mind.

One of Heinlein’s best—depending on whether you knock out “Glory Road” as Fantasy, perhaps his second-best novel. Light-years above “Stranger.”

The Door Into Summer was serialized in F & SF magazine in three installments in 1956 with very nice illustrations by Kelly Freas and then Doubleday brought it out in hardback the following year. It was well-received, with a few notable exceptions including negative comments made by John W. Campbell and James Blish. I read and enjoyed it in 1970 and had not looked at it again until now. The story opens in 1970, after the U.S. has survived a nuclear war that's destroyed Washington and New York but doesn't seem to have made much difference in other areas. Daniel Boone Davis is an engineer who has success designing labor-saving robots for domestic use, and he sets up a partnership with his friend Miles Gentry, who handles the legal side of the business. They're joined by the beautiful and seductive Belle Darkin, to whom Davis becomes engaged. Gentry is a widower but has an eleven-year-old stepdaughter named Frederica, known as Ricky, a brilliant redheaded child. (Ummm...spoilers now...warning, warning...) Belle betrays Davis, seduces Gentry, and they wrest control of the company from him and dump him into a cryogenic sleep chamber for the nest thirty years. When he revives in the far-future world of the year 2000, he works to right the wrongs that have been done to him, meets a man who just happens to have a handy time machine, and he and the-now similarly aged Ricky get married and presumably live happily ever after. It didn't occur to me that there was something really off about Davis being so fixated on wanting to get married to an eleven-year-old when I first read the book, but this time around the creep factor was inexcusable. Molestation and abuse were not common topics of discussion in the real 1970. Heinlein was using his second wife as a model for Belle and his third one as a model for Ricky, but it's still just really disturbing. Other than that, the advances in Heinlein's future world seem remarkably conservative; the robot brains run with vacuum tubes and tapes, babies all still require diaper pins, the dishes are all washed by hand, etc. All the work seems divided by gender, and the woman's work is to make the man happy and to keep the home clean and to bear and raise fine children. He lectures a little too much about economic theory and personal responsibility and political matters, but it's really a well-told story aside from the grooming aspect. There's a cool cat named Pete, and some quite clever twists and turns. I'm rating it at three stars, averaged as four from the original read and two for the current.

I'm a little surprised I don't seem to have posted a review of this one before. I read this book "way back when". I probably read it first when I was in high school or just after. That would probably be the 1960s. I went through a period when I discovered Heinlein and ran through everything I could get my hands on by him. Some I didn't care for, some I liked and some I loved.

Many people place this in his so called "teen reads" but there is some question about that due to some of the subject matter. Heinlein was very much a libertarian and had very open ideas about most things. This includes sex. Among some there's a bit of, consternation concerning the "final love interest" in the book.

Just try it yourself and decide for yourself.

Daniel Boone Davis (many of Heinlein's protagonists have names hearkening back to American history) is a master engineer and inventor...and that's what he wants to do. In the story which is placed in the "near future" (1970)...among other things in this "near future" people are able to take cold sleep. They can be frozen and awakened months or years later.

Now, if I go any further in this synopsis it will involve spoilers so I'll simply suggest you try the book if for some reason you have managed to miss it. There's something here for hard science fiction fans, science fantasy fans, animal lovers (particularly cat lovers), and fans of just plain good books. I can and do recommend this one. Enjoy.

Ale to była dobra książka. I zabawna. I przyjemna. I w ogóle super.

Oho, konstrukcja zdań prawie jak w "Czwartym Skrzydle".

Staczam się.

Somewhat unusually for Heinlein, this is a cute, fun book which doesn't try to ladle a bunch of right-wing ideology down your throat, or O.D. you on dubious sex. There's some time travel, a sympathetic main character, a Bad Girl, and a cat who steals the show every time he appears on stage. He even gets the title: the reference is to his endearing habit, during winter months, of making the hero open each door in the house in turn, just in case one of them happens to lead into summer...

This was quite a positive surprise for several reasons. If I were to characterize this it would be a joyous ode to the temporal travels of an engineer and its cat in search of happiness and love. I did enjoy the futuristic view of the future {2001} and the unending ingenuity of an engineer. It reminded me of "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" which was yet to be written {or was it;}

Well after many thousands of ratings this book is averaging 4 stars so my rating will make no difference at all.
I first read this back in the late 70s, and like most of Heinlein's early and middle work I really enjoyed it then and again now.
The storyline and characterisations are good and there is none of the (in my opinion) vague sexism and verbal meanderings of his later books (look how many pages his later novels have, yawn).

Ok I've just re-read my review and whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the book, Heinlein must've been a cat lover as he had Petronius exactly right, maybe I was a tad harsh on some of his later books. I just found them very introspective and self indulgent, and much as I enjoy Heinlein books I think I gave up after fighting my way through "Time Enough For Love". I don't think I've read anything written after that.
Yes, that sounds fairer :)

Y por fin, con algo de demora, me termino la lectura.

Primera lectura de Heinlein y la he acabado bastante contento. Una lectura muy amena en la que no ha habido momento para el aburrimiento... de hecho la novela es relativamente corta y se agradece que no añadan cientos de páginas de "paja".

La historia del libro toca uno de los clichés típicos del género, los viajes temporales. Pese a no ser gran fan de este tipo de novelas lo cierto es que me ha parecido original. La única pega que le podría encontrar es que para Heinlein su futuro "avanzado" fue 2001... y claro hay cosas que rascan. Pero como digo es un mal menor.

No tengo dudas, seguiré leyendo novelas de este gran autor.

I liked most of Heinlein's older stuff. Once he wrote "The Number of the Beast" he started writing too weird for me. This was one of his better ones. It is the first that I recall with a cat in it (he seems to have a reverence for cats) & an inventor who is a pretty smart guy but can still get himself into a world of trouble - and then back out again. Fun, quick read.