After reading Starship Troopers, I realized that I needed to read more Heinlein, and that inevitably led me to Red Planet. I think at this point I should just read as many Heinlein stories as possible. This marks another step in reading more of his work. Let’s get into the review.
Published in 1949, Red Planet remains one of the earlier works by Heinlein. It’s also part of his “Heinlein juveniles” books that Heinlein published throughout his life. In this world, humanity colonized Mars some time ago. For the most part, humanity coexists peacefully with the Martians. Two young colonists, Jim and Frank, go to attend boarding school in the city, but on the way there, Willis, a young Martian that’s more or less Jim’s pet, discovers three adult Martians. They engage in a water ritual together before Jim and Frank proceed with Willis to the boarding school. However, it seems that Martian and human tensions are rising.
I’ll start off by saying that I enjoyed this book mostly because it wasn’t what I expected. Especially of Heinlein. Reading his military sci-fi and more well-known short stories didn’t give me the impression that he had also written books aimed at a young demographic. It was interesting to see and research the development of Young Adult books in general, since books like this act as a good predecessor. As for the story itself, I think my favorite aspect of it was the characters. Jim, in particular, felt extremely fleshed out to me, and I was grateful to read this kind of YA protagonist that I don’t see too often in sci-fi, in particular.
I do kind of wish that the Martians themselves were featured more often. Heinlein introduced this race in other books as well, so this might be one of their first appearances. I learned a little bit about them in this book, but they didn’t really come into play until well toward the end, when the main conflict was set up. I wanted to learn more about how they worked and what their society was like, especially in relation to how they deal with the human colonists. However, I might be surprised at where else I find them.
This puts me on a path to reading more Heinlein, that’s for sure. I think I might plan to read his book Star Beast next. However, I also finished a few other books that I really want to review. Just another day in the life of someone trying to read as much as possible. Stay tuned for another blog post this week, as well as another review next week. Happy reading!
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