Past Through Tomorrow

by Robert A. Heinlein

Paperback, 1987

Status

Available

Call number

813

Publication

Ace (1987), Paperback, 830 pages

Description

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the extraordinary work of the grandmaster of SF, Robert A. Heinlein. This one-volume omnibus of Heinlein's famous 'Future History' timeline, contains all of the stories, novellas and novels that make up one of the richest coherent narratives in all of science fiction literature. The collections and novels comprising THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW are THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON, THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH, REVOLT IN 2100, METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN and ORPHANS OF THE SKY.

User reviews

LibraryThing member 5hrdrive

Life-line: **** This was Heinlein's first published story, in 1939. That alone makes it a must-read.

The Roads Must Roll: *** I understand that this is science-fiction, but as a premise the technology is just too silly to believe. A decent story, though, and the worker's struggle set the stage for

much that followed.

Blowups Happen: **** This was written in 1940? Unbelievable! Sure, he got a lot wrong, but he came awfully close for the time. An entertaining story.

The Man Who Sold the Moon: ***** Two-hundred proof Heinlein, libertarian and gung-ho. Ignore-the-phone good.

Delilah and the Space-Rigger: *** Very short and to the point. Gender equality in space. Some interesting tidbits about the space station and Harriman Enterprises.

Space Jockey: **** I love how Heinlein handles space navigation without computers. It's all prisms and measurements and split-second timing and hard, hard math. But it makes sense and turns astrogators and pilots into heroic figures. This story is very reminiscent of Starman Jones, my favorite Heinlein juvenile.

Requiem: ***** Aw, this one's beautiful. I'd dearly love to go like that some day. "He felt as if he were every man who has ever lived, looked up at the stars, and longed." Peace, old man, I feel like I know you.

The Long Watch: ****.5 Story's good. Seems the brilliant minds on Earth have finally figured out that the Moon makes an excellent bombing base. Oops. But what sets this apart is the use of the framing paragraphs at beginning and end and the use of flashback to tell the story.

Gentlemen, Be Seated: **** I like the tour of the tunnels, everything summed up all neat and tidy. The tag-alongs are genius, as well. I think the story suffers some from the too-happy ending, though. Great title, if a bit cheeky!

The Black Pits of Luna: *** Another spoiled brat? That sure is a tired-out plot device. Lots of mid-century sensibilities here too that drag down the story. I do like put-upon Dick"Shorty"Logan, though. And I'm sure he'll be back.

"It's Great to Be Back!": ****.5 Again, you have to get past all the "my dears" and "darlings" and "don't worry your pretty little heads", but once you do that, you find an excellent story. This one's inevitable, I think. The differences between life on Earth and the Moon would be too great to stand the strain. In other words, you can't go home again. Seems a thought like this would lead straight to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

"-We Also Walk Dogs": **** So how exactly do you reduce the acceleration of gravity? And just what was the subject of that interplanetary conference? We get no answers here but the questions are fun to ponder. And a corporation that does any service for a price is rather handy to have around. This is all leading up to something...

Searchlight: ****.5 Using a genius solution to find a genius. Still, you'd think a lunar transport would be equipped with an emergency beacon of some sort.

Ordeal in Space: ****.5 Yikes, that's a long way down. A simple story, well told. Reminds me of Stephen King's The Ledge.

The Green Hills of Earth: **** The old, lone troubadour saves the day. Seems life is pretty cheap in Outer Space.

Logic of Empire: ***.5 Reads like a history lesson. Colonization leads to a slave economy, this time on Venus, and nobody back home understands.

The Menace From Earth: *** Stories told from the perspective of a fifteen year old girl don't appeal much to me, and it seems quite a stretch for old R.A.H. as well. I liked the idea of flying in the air storage tank, though.

"If This Goes On-": ***.5 Interesting story, but not Sci-fi. Takes place entirely in a USA that has become a totalitarian-theocracy, led by "The Prophet". Probably an important piece of the Future History, but I'd much rather get back to the more futuristic aspects. This one has a very Middle Ages feel to it.

Coventry: **** Picks up where "If This Goes On -" leaves off, some years later, but the same framework. I like some of the ideas expressed here - a person is free to do what they want as long as they don't "damage" others, and the redemption of Dave McKinnon makes for a good story.

Misfit: **** Science-fiction meets the New Deal. Big engineering project no problem for boy genius. Nice to be back out in space after the last few stories.

Methuselah's Children: **** Incorporates many of the ideas from the previous Future History stories into an interesting tale about the first interstellar flight. Introduces the Howard family into the narrative as well as the incomparable Lazarus Long. Unfortunately through a publishing error, my copy renders the last twenty pages virtually unintelligible, will be picking up another copy one of these days. Nevertheless, a good story full of unique ideas about our place in the galaxy. Look forward to reading more about Lazarus Long in the future.

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LibraryThing member wenestvedt

Now this is a great book: it contains a number of short stories that, together, provide the events along which Heinlein strung his "Future History" timeline. The final item, "Methusalah's Children," was a very good book when published on its own, and here serves to anchor the whole collection.

LibraryThing member szarka

I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but Heinlein's are among the best in sci-fi.

LibraryThing member morriss003

Warning: I am one of THOSE. You know. One of those people who bow in awe before the Master of Science Fiction. Robert Anson Heinlein may be the least known, but most influential person of the twentieth century. He is not and never will be politically correct. When an space organization made a list

of the 100 people who had most influenced space policy and left RAH off the list, there were howls of dismay throughout both the science fiction and the science community. "The Past Through Tomorrow" is his early work. Here you will find the various inventions for which he is seldom given credit. But the inventions, although important, are secondary to his ability to tell a great story.

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LibraryThing member jimmaclachlan

This is a compilation of 21 Heinlein short stories in his 'Future History'. If you've never read Heinlein & want a good introduction, this is probably the best single book of his works you can buy. You'll see quite a range of his best. The paperback is as fat as one of Jordan's books & contains

some novella length stories - two, "Revolt in 2100" & "Methuselah's Children" were published as novels. Others are title stories from other short story collections "The Green Hills of Earth" & "The Man Who Sold The Moon", for example.

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LibraryThing member thomasJamo

This is a MUST READ for a Heinlein fan. So many of his stories intertwine and many of the characters appear in many different books. These short stories help fill in some of the gaps. Some of the stories, though, are completely independent of his other works, but I enjoyed them all. Definitely pick

this one up!

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LibraryThing member RRHowell

This has some very special short stories. I particularly enjoyed The Menace from Earth, growing up. I think that these stories are also where Lazarus Long first shows up.

LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C

This is a collection of 21 stories that fit into Heinlein's "Future History." As Damon Knight's introduction relates, this isn't the future history, one that should be seen as predictive, but a future history. And it definitely has to be read in that spirit, otherwise especially in the beginning

the works could be seen as hopelessly dated. The earliest story here--the earliest Heinlein ever published, "Life-Line," came out in 1939 (and it's remarkable for a first story). All but "Searchlight" predate the Apollo Program (and that barely) and all but that story and "The Menace from Earth" predate Sputnik. That bothered me in one of the longest stories, "The Man That Sold the Moon"--particularly the detail where those putting together the project are looking for the tallest possible site for the launch--as if that would make a difference in distance or escape velocity. But, naturally, the farther you go into the book, the less that matters, and the more I began to see the stories as a whole bigger than its parts. And I don't think the later story "Requiem" would be half as moving without the context of the earlier story. And several of the stories are strong even taken in isolation: "The Long Watch," "Ordeal in Space," "Coventry," and my favorite among the shorts, "The Menace from Earth"--the one story in the collection with a female protagonist. There are two other novella-length stories, both of which I found engrossing. "If This Goes On--" and "Methuselah's Children." The first was revised and expanded into the novel Revolt in 2100 and the second is the first story featuring Lazarus Long, who'd feature in four later Heinlein novels, including Time Enough for Love. I'd name other Heinlein works as favorites: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Space Troopers, Citizen of the Galaxy. Nevertheless, this wouldn't make a bad introduction to Heinlein.

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LibraryThing member dbsovereign

At times boring, at times very entertaining these stories and novellas are assembled all in one place for the true Heinlein fan. A good introduction to some of Heinlein's more prophetic stories.

LibraryThing member librisissimo

Read this on publication, as part of my subscription to SF Book Club for a few years. Have read the individual stories other times, and most recently the ones that are also contained in "The Green Hills of Earth" collection.
I wanted to check and see if I still liked them - most of them I did. Some

more than others, but opinions of individual stories haven't changed much, if any; quality is variable; 3.5 is an average.
FWIW, I prefer the "old" Heinlein to his flights of fancy in the later years after he started living in the Lazarus Long subdivision.

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LibraryThing member Tatoosh

This is an anthology of Heinlein short stories. Most were written between 1939 and 1949 and they are rather dated by modern standards. The earlier stories are rather simple in plot and the emphasis on "how it works" is salient. Several are still interesting, however, and some hints of future

developments are discernable. My favorite is "The Menace From Earth," which story focuses on an intellectually precocious teenage girl living in Luna City and her thoughts and feelings about her “best friend” who is spending far too much time as a guide for an attractive older woman visiting from Earth. I love Heinlein’s idea that the combination of low gravity and a strong up-draft will permit humans to do aerial acrobatics (i.e., glide and fly) on the moon.

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LibraryThing member antao

(Original Review, 1980-10-13)

People have complained about roads as conveyor belts as represented in Heinlein's THE ROADS MUST ROLL as being an inefficient means of transportation because of a number of reasons, some of those being energy efficiency and the problems of handicapped people using them.

Instead of building them as a single conveyor belt, how about building them as a variable speed conveyor belt (by this I mean a conveyor belt that at different locations on it can have different speeds). This can be done by building them as a number of small conveyor belts, each of them having its own speed and controls. This immediately eliminates the problem of expending lots of energy dragging the whole road behind you. I don't know if the energy needed to drag lots of little roads is less than that of dragging one big road. Anyone with more knowledge care to speculate? These smaller belts could be sensor controlled, operating only when there is a chance that someone is close enough to use them. This could be done by stopping any belts with people too far away to use them, and when people get somewhat close start speeding the belts up to a waiting speed, and if people are very close speed the belt up to its normal running speed. This should save a lot of energy at nighttime or for places such as the middle of Kansas with very small people to area ratios.

An analogous construct to on-ramps on freeways could be developed by creating on-belts which would gradually speed the rider up to the speed of the lane that he was entering. If this was done gradually enough, the rider should not even notice it and handicapped people in wheelchairs should have no problems using it. This would preclude needing the agility to ride the walkways that was demonstrated in Asimov's THE CAVES OF STEEL. Off-ramps could be done the same way but on- and off-ramps could only be unidirectional (come to think of it, they already are on freeways.) This setup of multiple belts might preclude on-line steakhouses. Seats could be done as portable affairs, picked up upon entrance to the roadway and dropped off on leaving it. Balance however might be a problem with non-fixed chairs. An interesting thought just occurred to me. What if you rode a bicycle on one of these roads? Think of the speed-up that would give you.

Another advantage of a multiple belt roadway is that it is a simple matter to curve the path of belts to get a curved road without needing a special material. One safeguard necessary for one of these roads is for the situation (a la tRMR) of one belt somewhere in the middle stopping. Belts leading to that belt should have a gradual slowdown so that passengers don't go flying because of accumulated momentum. Belts leading away from that belt should gradually speed up so that the passengers are brought back up to standard cruising speed. This feature would also have the effect of stopping any problems such as those that arose in tRMR.

The question then becomes "HOW MUCH energy is lost to friction, compared to the energy costs of acceleration?" (I have heard that fairly effective regenerative braking systems (i.e., brakes which slow the vehicle by acting as generators, converting kinetic energy into electromotive energy) are available, but I have no figures for their net efficiency.)

With regard to wheelchairs, it seems to me that motorized models can already go fast enough to make a smooth transition --- and un-motorized ones (admittedly rolled by people in good condition) have in the past few years been beating the best times on foot for the Boston Marathon. A bigger problem would be people on crutches (my guess is that a large fraction of these are temporary rather than permanent, but that would mostly affect the social (as opposed to technical) factors of the problem); a short, parallel, accelerating belt would help these onto the slowest conveyor but after that there'd be problems.

Guess what: the SAME conveyor can be moving at different speeds at the same time. All that is required are elastic links. Consider that the requirement for equilibrium is simply that the speed in LINKS-PER-SECOND be the same for every point on the conveyor. Thus, if we want to go twice as fast over one section of conveyor, we simply double the length of the links! Of course this implies that objects such as chairs, freight pallets, steak joints, etc., can only be fastened down at one end. I've seen this phenomenon employed somewhere or other; it may have been in a baggage-handling system.

Note that the closest current technology to "rolling roads" is railroads, and that they are more efficient than cars and trucks. If you could get theoretical mechanical optimality, the rolling road would be more efficient than any vehicle that has to start and stop. A good way to get on and off is to have the road mesh with the edge of a, say, 1000 foot radius circular platform turning at 1 rpm. You come down onto the middle of the platform and move out to the edge, where you have a minute to step over the invisible line (the road goes around the loop, and disengages near where it engaged).

a) My personal favorite for short-range personal transportation would be a jet-belt or antigrav equivalent. I commute 8 miles and one would be ideal for this. Build another one into my suitcase and I'll be all set to hop over to the nearest RR (rolling road).

b) I am given to understand that the most dangerous activity commonly engaged in is bicycle riding (on streets where there are cars). Now danger of death or maiming may add spice to your commuting, but my last two bikes were stolen, so I don't do it anymore.

Given that the main objection to "rolling Roads" is all the excess road that has to be transported, how about roads that are stationary of themselves, but move the object to be transported? I can think of several ways -- a road of numerous computer-controlled electromagnets and a steel cart to sit in, for instance -- the cart could be moved from one side of the road to the other, adjusted for other carts, and sent down off-ramps, with the only power expended going entirely toward transportation of the cart. That would involve a hell of a lot of wiring, though.

Or how about a liquid approach? A standing wave, like, a flexible surface under the cart, rows of plastic tubes beneath and them connected to hydraulic pumps -- the cart would "surf" a continuous "wave" generated beneath it, and could either be steered by the front wheels or guided by wave variation. Again, you wouldn't have to move a lot of excess road, but I’m not sure whether it's all that efficient. Just playing with ideas...

First, both of the stories Weinreb mentions ("The Roads Must Roll" and THE CAVES OF STEEL) show extensive provisions for seating on the strips. Asimov specifically mentions that being seated on the strips is the prerogative of higher (job) classifications, while there is a chain of steakhouses on the rolling roads. Unfortunately, neither of them considers the problems of getting a material tough enough for the job and flexible enough that it can be brought around in a loop rather than simply brought under for the return trip the way an ordinary conveyor belt is. (It could be argued that such a reversal is not necessary in Asimov's design; the seats could collapse like the steps of an escalator --- but that would make a mess of one of Heinlein's steakhouses, to say nothing of requiring twice as much material (from internal evidence Heinlein's road runs in a dog bone layout).

Also, tRMR is not the story of a mechanical failure, although mechanical failures are mentioned in the story; he specifically states that when shutdown of all of the driving rollers in one of the twelve sectors caused excess tension on the belt, safety interlocks caused the belt to come to a smooth stop (although he does note the absence of an obvious safety device to force the speed of any belt to approximate that of its immediate neighbors). tRMR is the story of a management failure, which is a horse of a different color (which has been proved to be impossible by means of the pejorative calculus (- )).

[2018 EDIT: Still no conveyor belts in 2018; just the crappy escalators; I remember thinking at the time conveyor belts would be just a matter of time. Now I’m not so sure…I won’t see it in my lifetime. Maybe my children will.]

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.]

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