Tunnel in the Sky
Ratings35
Average rating3.5
“Life, all life, has the twin drives to survive and to reproduce. Intelligence is an aimless byproduct except as it serves these basic drives.”
Yeah, okay. The reason I had two failed attempts to read “Lord of the Flies” is because having a group of schoolboys left on their own and trying to be grown-ups is not something I really cared about at that time. And I'm saying this because it seems that this book shares some similarities. The difference is that the initial part of Golding's book was soporific while Heinlein's was extremely exciting.
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So, in brief, this is a decent and entertaining Heinlein juvenile. I guess my search for a 5⭐ juvenile will have to wait, for some reason I thought this was the one. I guess I was expecting a dazzling story with a lot of planet-hopping adventures and a little less social commentary. But, again, it's a good survival story and I always enjoy, to a lesser or greater extent, the exploration of human nature and, in this case, the struggle to avoid falling into barbarism.
Some other themes worth mentioning: strong female characters, Malthusian overpopulation, teleportation, isolation and probably some other Heinlein-ations I'm forgetting about...
