Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein

Nowhere in the book is it
suggested that Podkayne
dresses like this.

I regret that the mighty Heinlein has struck out. So far I have greatly enjoyed every Heinlein book I’ve read until this one. With Podkayne of Mars (1963), Heinlein breaks many other patterns as well. The hero, Podkayne, is a girl. She is not in the military or in training for that. The book involves a political intrigue that Podkayne is only tangentially connected to. I have to admit, though, that by the end of the book, I liked it. I had to put aside my “modern” womanist values and be patient (book is quite slow up until the last 50 pages) in order to see the charm of this book.

Podkayne is 16 years old and is from Mars, though of Swedish/Maori descent (!). Her life on Mars is pretty tame, livened up by a bratty genius brother. At the beginning of the book she is committed to becoming a space explorer, piloting her own ship out into the universe. In the course of the book, however, she “grows up” and realizes that maybe she could just be a crew member on a ship…piloted by her husband…at least until she devotes herself to motherhood. In the crisis that develops in the plot, it is the genius brother who saves the day and in fact he takes over the first person narrative that has been in Podkayne’s words all along. Podkayne’s voice is taken away. The old Podkayne is pretty much burned to a crisp…she didn’t follow her brother’s orders.

These harsh lessons are learned as Podkayne goes on her first interplanetary journey. She is supposed to go from Mars to Venus to Earth. She doesn’t make it to Earth, so I don’t know why it was even in the book. The plot self-aborts on Venus. There is some cool science in the book, like how to plan an interplanetary journey given the various orbits and rates of rotation of the various space bodies. There’s also a somewhat obligatory sequence of everyone in the space ship cooped up in a radiation shelter during a solar flare event. I’m glad Heinlein allowed for the existence of solar flares, but the main lesson that Podkayne learned was that taking care of babies in space would be more fun than being a pilot.

The lengthy diaper-changing-in-space sequence was somewhat preposterous, especially given the careful science with which Heinlein treats space travel. No mention of feces and urine flying free in the low-grav environment or of the diapers themselves floating off en masse. There is mention of baby vomit spheres floating around but other rules of gravity seemed to cover poop and pee. Burping the babies was not discussed. This part of the book makes me value more highly than ever the invention of Velcro--you could really nail those babies down with Velcro.

I was shocked by the unbridled sexualness
of almost every image that came up for the
search "girls in space."

Podkayne is a typical 1960s teenage girl, a bit vain, worried about clothes and boys. Her science-orientation sets her apart until her conversion to traditional womanhood later in the book. It is the broadening effect of traveling to other planets that helps her see the error of her ways. Her mother, a famous engineer responsible for the terraforming of whole moons and the establishment of civilizations thereupon is criticized in the end for not spending enough time with her children…her neglect is seen as responsible for Podkayne’s insufficient attachment to infants.



Heinlein went with the cannister
model of spaceship



I am not upset with this book. It is just funny now and majorly out of date, as it should be 50 years later. I had more trouble with its slow pace. A hundred pages of roaming around a space ship preceded the 40 or so where the plot actually happened. The word “dithering” comes to mind.

 Hei

I’m sure Heinlein faced some pressure to write a girl’s book. This book, though, seems high-jacked in the middle, veering into a different book altogether. I would love to know the story of the writing of this book.

Sci-fi and the Status Quo


I did not add the circle. Later in the series
Troi's hemlines dropped, but then her
neckline also did.



Science fiction almost always reinforces the status quo, even as it claims to go beyond any known world. Traditional (antiquated) sex roles almost always prevail, even in the most up-to-date sci-fi with the most liberal values--I’m thinking of Counselor Troi’s wardrobe from Star Trek Next Gen.

The 21^st century Battlestar Galactica finally pushed back on these stereotypes and it broke open all sorts of amazing possibilities. The crucial moment was the decision to cast ace pilot Starbuck as a woman. But generally, women are passive nurturers in science fiction--the same role they are cast in in most portrayals in film, TV, and literature. Being a female sci-fi fan is a hard road to travel.



Starbuck



Another thing I appreciated about Battlestar Galactica was that they didn’t focus on an “alien creature of the week.” There were no Klingons or Vulcans. Because, you know, if there are other sentient life forms out there in space, they are not at all likely to be close together. We probably won’t encounter them in any near-earth neighborhood. Battlestar Galactica saw space as bleak and empty, hostile to life. (And, of course, there are amazing implausibilities in Battlestar Galactica--I simply choose to ignore them in this blog post.)

Images of Women in Science Fiction
 Princess Leia
 Katniss
 Nurse Chapel
Hermione--regular, prom
 Linda Hamilton from Terminator
 President Rosslyn of Battlestar Gallactica
 Tasha Yar of Star Trek NexGen
Starship Troopers, another Heinlein title

Space Cadet, by Robert A. Heinlein

Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher could never
escape his goody-two-shoes reputation on
Star Trek: NexGen

No, there is no irony in the title of this book--Heinlein wrote his book Space Cadet long before "space cadet" became synonymous with "airhead." And, really, I wonder if this book wasn't the inspiration for the most noteworthy of space cadets--acting Ensign Wesley--Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: Next Generation. The main character Matt Dodson shares only a certain earnestness and respect for authority with Wesley. Unlike Wesley, he is not that great at science and math (but is a natural as a pilot), hangs out with people mainly his own age, and he travels without his mother.

Space Cadet, written in the late 1940s, is the tale of teenager Matt's training for the Space Patrol--a peace-keeping force created to prevent the use of nuclear weapons on Earth and its neighboring planetary bodies. The story follows him from newbie to independent young officer. With his friend Tex, Matt goes through many agonizing tests in a boot-camp setting, during which many applicants are winnowed out. These tests include a ride through the too-many-G-forces/too-little-G-forces gizmo (Matt withstands 7 Gs and passes the test); personality challenges (there's a faked tragedy for the applicants to respond to); academic tests; and even ethical tests.

The 1948 cover--see below
for other covers with
other goals

Matt and Tex pass the tests and move on to a training ship and further study. Eventually, they move out into space as junior officers attached to a working ship. Eventually, they move into increasingly dramatic settings and adventures--especially when they crash land on Venus. On Venus, you see the impact that the training has had on these young men--the resources they have to draw on, the principles they follow. (And, of course, there is a counter-example, a cadet who washed out of the program early and scorns its values.)

But, the charm of this book is not particularly in its plotting. It's in the details. It's in the pace. Once again (see my blog entry on Rocketship Galileo), Heinlein pulls me right into the world of the book. Although nothing dramatic happened for pages on end, Heinlein created enough hooks on Matt for the reader to feel attached, to slide into Matt's spacesuit with him (that sounds kinky), to face the challenges, wonder at the new systems and knowledge, hope for success, fear failure. 

Slide rule--yet another wet dream
of science in the 1950s and 1960s--looks
like a tool for WASPs only

Heinlein is adept at drawing enough details into the picture to make it real without overdrawing or over-explaining. He gives enough for your imagination to complete the environment but does not worry if what I picture is not exactly what he meant. I was amazed, because I was hooked into this obsolete boy's adventure  novel right away. I struggled with moving through weightlessness and with magnetic boots and with trying hard not to need to use the airsick bags. I fretted over "astrogation" and the mathematics it required (and the slide rule!). I worried over my fitness for such an elite corps. (see the video at <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MiRlJSttQuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> for a tutorial on weightlessness, which makes it look embarrassingly easy.)

Young Matt is a great character--fun, but not dangerous; flawed, but not a loser. I was most interested in what happened to him during his Earth-leave, when he visited his home in Des Moines for the first time after entering the Patrol. What he found was a total disconnect. He found that his family could not understand anything he talked about and that it was all too complicated to explain. It was not discussed in the book, but I saw it as a critical moment for Matt--when his life in the Patrol became more real to him than his life on Earth.

This beautiful photo of Venus uses
color to indicate the concentration of
various chemicals in the atmosphere

The Venus part of the book was charming in its antiquated vision of Venus. For now, scientists do not believe that any life can exist on Venus--not only is the atmosphere thick with poisons, but the air pressure is so great that it exerts a dramatic crushing force. The surface is barren. If life might be there, we would have a hard time detecting it--our apparatus would need to be so thick to avoid being crushed that any delicate maneuvering would be difficult.




For more information, go to  http://library.thinkquest.org/18652/venus.html.

Matt and Tex, however, find a tropical dangerland with swamps and creepy critters and alien intelligence. This is their lab for putting into practice all of their training--their training in values and self-control as much as in any particular subject. They find that as a group they have more intelligence that any of them individually.

So, another thumbs-up for Heinlein. I don't think I've been to Venus with Matt, but I do feel like I went to some other world that was mistakenly called that. I have a feeling of movement, of time, of growing up. That's cool. And, that's good, because I have three or four more Heinlein books to read from my Easy Reader children's literature list.

Me and Space: Evolved Lemur

This is the tech-guy cover
from the 1980s or so, I'd
guess

I was a child in the 1960s (I turned 10 the year the moon landing took place in 1969), so maybe it's not a surprise that I have so much interest in space and space travel and the interaction of humans with unearthly conditions (such as weightlessness) and with others unlike themselves (such as Republicans). How do we solve the problems? Are there human characteristics that truly define us as a species? One of the most defining characteristics of humans is the sense of wonder, the tendency to gawk and to explore that which puzzles and amazes us. What lies beyond the horizon? What lies beyond the end point of the solar wind? But does this define just some of us? Is hide-boundedness another trait of humans--the desire for stasis and certainty?

See, these are issues that my submergence in the genre of science fiction have awoken in me. Because I did (and still do) submerge. My inner self resonates with the themes and imagery of sci-fi. It is abiding, and I know that because it has abided. There are episodes of Star Trek I have seen dozens of times, but I am still somehow intrigued. One of these is an episode of NexGen in which the crew started to devolve because the inactive content of their DNA was triggered by a virus. Troi was turning into a fish. Riker became a Neanderthal. Even scarier, Worf turned into a Neanderthal Klingon. But most touching was Captain Picard devolving into a lemur, acutely aware of sounds and sights, ever fearful. Could his humanness reach through the genetic programming to rescue the ship?

This is the soft-focus warm and fuzzy cover, probably
from the 1990s. Makes science fiction safe for kids--
although this is a distinctly adolescent book--not
for children.

I have seen Godzilla in the original. I have seen Hitler's hand creeping across the gangway of a submarine. I have made first contact with species so radically different that communication was nearly impossible (Republicans again!). I've been on so many different planets and spaceships that I cannot count them. What has this done to me? First, I know that it leads me to see humans as a species like any other on Earth, subject to the same survival pressures as any other. We are not divine. We are not the chosen ones. We are not on top. Second, it has increased my likelihood to see events from many points of view, to see that there are as many priorities as there are people. It has led me to attempt to lead with peace, not hostility.

There. That's my space manifesto. I am most touched by the Voyager space probes, which have now reached the endpoint of the solar wind, the outer edge of our solar system. And yet they travel on. They continue to gather information and will even after they can no longer communicate it to us. The Voyager probes mirror the journey we are all on--we are curious and communicating beings and we will keep looking...for what? For whatever comes.

So, weird, dweeb, nerd, geek? I'll accept the title of "evolved lemur," thank you very much.