Merci à mes amis trolls imagivores pour cette sortie de ma PAL à l'occasion d'une lecture commune imaginaire.
En lisant ce livre, je me suis aperçue que je suis bien plus habituée au format cinématographique pour ce qui est de la SF "spatiale". Ce livre m'a vraiment beaucoup plu. Entre les réflexions scientifico-philosophiques sur le temps et l'espace, les relations humaines à distance et dans le huis-clos d'un vaisseau, la découverte de planètes étranges plus ou moins hospitalières, on navigue un peu à vue dans ce roman et on voit les choses à travers les yeux de Tom, jumeau télépathe embarqué sur le L.C., vaisseau-torche.
La mise en place et la préparation sur Terre sont très intéressantes notamment pour ce qui concerne les relations fraternelles. le voyage stellaire fait office d'intermède et au final constitue la partie la moins déroutante du roman.
La fin fait un peu l'effet d'une décélération trop rapide, un léger mal au coeur en refermant les pages et un rien de goût amer devant tant de nouveautés.
Chouette découverte de cet auteur que je ne connaissais pas, un space opera très agréablement à lire.

These days I suppose it would go YA. It was in the juvenile section when I was a kid. It likely isn't one of Heinlein's well known books. Actually, it is likely one of his less known works. Tom and Pat are twins, and telepathic. As a result of that discovery, they are to transmit info for the exploration Torch Ship "Lewis and Clark". Earth is overcrowded and they need new planets so that is their mission, to discover new planets for humanity. However, the ship encounters the issue of time going slowly for earth people and fast for the ship people. (Einstein's relativity playing havoc with the characters.) Soon Tom and Pat cannot link with each other. What to do now? Could Tom link up with his niece, Molly? Read and find out what happens.

It is Heinlein writing one of his "juveniles" and wonderful stuff. And it is far from his best! It might be more of a 3.5 for Heinlein. Very few others could have turned out such a book with great pacing, interesting characters and a great plot. This one I'm keeping, at least for now.

“This is why you [] were brought along: for research into the nature of time”

TIME FOR THE STARS is #10 in the deservedly popular series of Juvenile sci-fi novels by Heinlein and, with a few notable exceptions, it has withstood the ravages of time quite well.

Heinlein posits an indefinite future time in which the earth’s population is bursting at the seams and its resources are stretched beyond their capacity to deal with that population. Mankind has developed the technology to travel at near light speed but relativistic time dilation means that a space-faring crew’s discovery of any exoplanets suitable for colonization would be decades if not hundreds of years of earth time in the future – too late of course to have any practical value. But the discovery that certain pairs of twins can communicate telepathically – instantaneously and without regard to distance – means that the news of discoveries of habitable planets can be relayed to earth in mere days and weeks of spaceship time, at worse a handful of years on earth.

In TIME FOR THE STARS, Heinlein deals well with both the soft and hard sides of the sci-fi story-telling spectrum – the uncomfortable psychological realities of long-term interstellar travel; the effects of relativistic time and length dilations; the physical realities of dealing with both acceleration and weightlessness; command issues; death; sex and sexuality; and the obvious understanding that the nature of time, space, space-time and simultaneity is one of, if not the most pressing issue in mankind’s understand of physics and a unified theory of the nature of the universe. And while much of this is clearly beyond the grasp of all but the most precocious of young readers, an in-depth understanding of the magnitude of these questions is simply not necessary to enjoy the story on its surface.

I found it rather comical to observe that Heinlein was willing to hypothesize the existence of interstellar rocket drive technology that could reach near light speed (something that for us is still decades or centuries in the future, if it is achievable at all). On the other hand, somehow he failed to imagine technology for data storage beyond tapes (a technology that was well on its way out by the 1980s):

“He was threading a roll of tape into an autotransmitter.”

I wonder how Heinlein would react when told of our current (and rapidly accelerating) ability to store a terabyte of data on a data card that was less than four square centimeters and a couple of millimetres thick!

While almost all of the science and the plot itself has aged extremely well, one thing that did not was the outrageous levels of male chauvinism and misogyny that must have dominated 1950s society and allowed Heinlein to treat his female characters as he did. A few examples that will definitely grate the sensibilities of modern readers will illustrate:

On female crew members volunteering for hazardous duty: “Even Mei-Ling did and then got mad and cried when [the Captain] pointed out gently that she had better have her husband’s consent – which she wasn’t going to get.” Later: “My turn did not come until the fourth rotation and by then they were even letting women go ashore.” And yet further into the story: “Now will the women please go over there by the pantry so that I can pick the men who will go.” (I wonder if it’s any coincidence that the women were relegated to a location near the kitchen?!)

And on male ideas about appropriate female clothing: “Girls running around without a thing on their heads, not even on top … heads bare-naked, like an animal.”

Well, you can’t have it all, I guess. I still enjoyed it thoroughly despite having to control my gag reflex as I read nonsense like that. Definitely recommended for sci-fi fans of all ages and all eras.

Paul Weiss

A research institute discovers that some twins are able to communicate with telepathy between each other. It's not limited by the speed of light and offers a great chance for space exploration. One twin stays at home and the other is on board of a spaceship to explore new worlds.

Characterization has never been Heinlein's strongest point and it shows here again but he is extremely good at writing believable adventure stories. I liked that the protagonist is no hero, he is selfish and still has to learn how to deal with his own problems and with other people. That's a big difference to Heinlein's later books where the protagonists cynically show off their superiority and bypass normal ways because they know the ropes. Not so here! Actions and values are carefully evaluated from different sides.

There were some minor things I didn't like. The twins have strange relationships, not the deep emotional bound that I assumed they always have. This allowed some plot twists that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. I also found it strange to tell someone straight into his face that you don't like him.

Heinlein touches interesting topics that never grow old. I can recommend this book to every SF fan and especially to young readers. Read Citizen of the Galaxy first and then this one and you will understand why the author is still held in high esteem.

#10 in the Heinlein juveniles series during the 1950’s published for the young adult market.

Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, a progam is developed to explore space for new worlds to populate. The Long Range Foundation establishes a program to develop human telepathy to communicate between exploring ships and Earth. Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted with Tom going into space and Pat remaining home.

Another peek into the zeitgeist 70 years ago.

There's the usual nonsense, "matter converters" and not just interplanetary but interstellar travel -- but with electronics based on tubes that frequently burn out, and newspapers printed on something that's either plastic or cloth.

But put that aside, I think this book gave an insight I haven't seen elsewhere. Think of things from the viewpoint of these authors (and then the public). Sure, we had physics as of, say 1890; Newton well understood, thermodynamics mostly in place, Maxwell as the hot new thing but an obvious extension of classical physics. Then we get a generation that sees all that overturned, the story as we know: atoms, X-rays, relativity, nuclear power, quantum mechanics, spacetime curvature.

In such an environment, two things probably seemed reasonable -- at the lower end, that telepathy was not obviously crazy, after all the world was full of magic that hadn't yet been discovered or even imagined; and at the higher end that, yes indeed, the world WAS full of magic that hadn't yet been discovered or even imagined.
This probably allowed for a persistence of optimism about many things even in spite of the recent war, and then the cold war. Resource limits could be overcome, power too cheap to meter, tomorrow the stars! And then the disillusionment when none of what was promised (by these golden age SF authors) was delivered.

Of course the crazy thing is that magic was delivered; just in different places. Digital magic, biological magic, materials magic. But not that sense that everything we know could change tomorrow. We can build SSTs if we want -- but there isn't some unknown principle of physics that will make them just work without any nasty side effects the way one could believe in 1950. We're back to living in a world of known limits, and we all know that talk of Knudsen drives and warp effectors and jump points is make believe, fun for movies and TV, but emphatically not part of reality.

Who woulda thunk it? Science did indeed disenchant the world -- but only after enchanting it, as it had never been enchanted before, for 300 glorious years! And so the world we have today, where far too many people are unhappy that "all" we have is all we have, the most glorious lives in human history, because we WERE promised the stars, only to learn that that was a promise that could not be kept.

Took a while to find its feet, but when it does, there's a really great book in here.
The prose style is very sticky, which made it cumbersome.
The brother relationship was quite provocative and surprising for a kids book.
However, I felt rather uncomfortable with the ending.
All in all, a fair read.

Si aquest llibre té alguna cosa dolenta és que és massa curt: quan comences a voler saber més de tot plegat, s'acaba.



Ens trobem amb dos bessons que entren en una prova per veure si són telepàtics. Em va encantar que per saber si ho eren fessin transmetre un a l'altre el valor del logaritme neperià de 2 :-)



És un llibre d'aquests que es nota que estan ben fets, amb molta ciència. La premisa del llibre és que la comunicació telepàtica és instantània, de forma que si tens dues persones unides per telepatia, una en una nau espacial molt lluny i l'altra aquí, es comunicaran més ràpid que esperant que arribi un missatge a la velocitat de la llum. I a partir d'aquí ens explica la història de dos bessons... amb una sorpresa final.

The premise of this book is that certain sets of twins were found to have telepathic abilities which could be used as a source of instantaneous communication with ships traveling light years away. As interesting as I found this premise to be, the story didn't hold up at all. The characters were not very likable and there was way too much jumping around. This book has not aged well.

Oh and the ending was really really awful. The author really Janeny'd up the ending.

Wikipedia tells us that the famous wrestler Virgil Riley Runnels jr changed his name to Dusty Rhodes at Gary Hart's suggestion based on Andy Griffith's character 'Lonesome Rhodes' in the movie 'A Face In The Crowd' from 1957. Is it a coincidence that in 1956 a character named 'Dusty Rhodes' appeared in Heinlein's novel, Time For The Stars? I think not. Gary was a scifi geek and didn't want anyone to know about it. And he picked a great book to steal from: predating both Tau Zero and The Forever War, it also uses the time dilation concept as a substrate for the story. But as much as I enjoyed these two more recent efforts, I preferred Time For The Stars. Five stars may seem generous for one of Heinlein's juveniles, and I've tried to find fault, but no criticism really sticks. This is a really inventive, solid story executed in a relaxed, simple style.

Superb storytelling and hilarious pubescent perspective to begin with. Fascinating and adventurous thereafter. Then a little heavy on the coming-of-age topics. Adventurous again, but getting a tad tedious since we’ve already done this. A way to quickly end the story is devised; I get it, it makes sense but it really killed the narrative. Then let’s get weird and end it just wrong. Wrong...

Haha! I actually really liked the first half of this book!! Heinlein had a really novel idea and and wrote it so well from the perspective of a carefree young adult. Unfortunately Tom had to grow up (just a little), and play time was over. Still, the experiences he had traveling near the speed of light on a “torchship” were fun to think about. Can’t say the last half was as engaging though.

I rarely remember books over a long period of years, but this one is the exception. This is a Heinlein juvenile, and I read it when I was young. I enjoyed it as much now as I did then.

I read it again for two reasons. First, my writing group was looking at Nancy Drew. I read a ND mystery for the first time and found it sorely lacking in story and characterization. I started thinking about books I read when I was young and immediately thought of this one. Second (and this reason is a little silly), we read "Endurance" for one of my book clubs. This was Scott Kelly's story about his year in space with his twin brother serving as a "control" subject on Earth. "Time for the Stars" is also about twins, one who goes to space and one who stays home.

I'd always remembered Heinlein as a bit of a chauvinist and a poor writer of female characters. I was giving points to Nancy Drew for a better female role model. But even though the protagonist of this book is male, I liked Heinlein's females here. Like most of his characters, they were smart, competent, and no nonsense.