Note: this will make a lot more sense if you read the first essay in this series, which sets out the premise that I'm exploring here. Caution, many spoilers below.

by Robert Heinlein, 1955, published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Heinlein's 1955 juvenile was yet another case of him going down a completely new path. Here we have a rather romantic tale of survival and pioneering. Heinlein sets us up with a Malthusian earth, overcrowded and low on groceries. Obviously, one way to deal with overcrowding is to export some people. The problem with this is that you can't do it with rocket ships. By 1954, when Heinlein wrote Tunnel in the Sky, Earth's population was increasing by 100,000 people per day. Even if you could build rocket ships that held 1,000 passengers each, you would have to launch 100 of them every day, just to prevent increase. And, of course, you would have to find 100,000 people per day that were willing to go. It's just not doable. In the words of the novel, "Rocket ships did not conquer space; they merely challenged it."

Heinlein wasn't a pessimist, however (and Dr. Malthus would be perplexed by today's falling population statistics for Europe). He figured human beings would find a way. For this novel, he invented the Ramsbotham Gate. This imaginary device bent space so that two distant places could be brought together. One could step into a gate in New York and emerge from it at the Grand Canyon. Even better, one could step in on Earth and emerge on some distant planet. This allowed Earth to transport its burdensome population to new colonies all over the galaxy.

Of course, this means there will be lots of colonists and they couldn't expect a lot of support from the folks back home. It didn't make sense to colonize with lots of high technology that could break down far off on some planet that might not be back in touch with the Mother Planet for years. Instead, the colonization uses more primitive technology, such as horses. After all, as Heinlein notes, horses can make more horses, something tractors haven't managed to do.

Since the humans will be doing this colonization rather primitively (it's not that technology is banned or anything, just that people were smart enough not to put all their eggs in the basket of technology), it made sense that they be led and accompanied by men trained in the arts of survival, pioneering and roughing it in general.

This brings us to Our Hero, Rod Walker. He's an average high school senior who wants to get "out where things are happening". To this end, he and his friends have signed up for a high school course in Advanced Survival – to give themselves a jump on college courses that cover similar material. As the book begins, the students are facing their final exam, which consists of being dumped on a planet somewhere to survive on their own for a few days, before being picked back up and brought home. Heinlein's dream of a future did not, apparently, include personal injury litigation: there is a very real possibility that some kid might get himself killed.

Before setting out, however, we see a little of Rod and his interactions with his family. Mostly, it's not so good. His father is distant and rather dictatorial (although not abusive in any way). His mother is weak and over emotional. His older sister is big and strong and a captain in the "Amazon Corps", but she's usually away on duty. They are a religious familiy, "evangelical Monists" (possibly, Heinlein was suggesting a religion based on Monism, but I don't know) and Rod's father takes his duties as "family priest" seriously.

On his last night home, Rod learns that his father is dying of an unspecified wasting disease. The Ramsbotham Gate can also manipulate time, and his father and mother are going into a Ramsbotham jump, with time passing five hundred times slower for them than the outside world. This means they'll experience only two weeks while the outside world experiences twenty years. It is thought that medicine will have advanced enough in twenty years that a cure will be available for Rod's father. In the meantime, they will transfer guardianship of Rod to his older sister, Helen. All of this puts Rod into a nice emotional swirl right before his survival test.

The next morning, he leaves, shaken and uncertain, but excited at the prospects of the test. He has a last fatherly talk, not with his father, but with his teacher, "Deacon" Matson. Matson is worried that Rod is too romantic, that he doesn't understand the treachery in his fellow man that can come out in the wild. He's afraid that Rod isn't aware of the Truce of the Bear. But, he notes, he has no formal reason to drop Rod, he has to let him go.

Before we go on, a word about Kipling's poem. Here are the relevant lines:

"Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then . . .
I have looked no more on women -- I have walked no more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray --
From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

The bear pretends to beg for his life and then, when he has lulled the hunter into security, he rips his face off. There is a subtlety here that will escape readers from the 21st century. The "bear" that Kipling is speaking about here is Russia. Kipling's greatest work, Kim, is set amid the "Great Game" of England and Russia vying for control of India and other parts of the East. Kipling knew a great deal about perfidy and we have to figure that Heinlein did too.

So, you're thinking, "Why the heck is Heinlein muddying the water will all this crazy stuff? Does the book really need 'evangelical Monism' and references to colonial-era British poetry?" I think the answer is "yes". By this time, Heinlein was acutely aware of his craft. He knew how to grab a readers attention and make them sympathetic to his characters. For example, in his letters to his agent, Heinlein says this about Tunnel in the Sky:

I did not use a central nonhuman character in this book because the book is filled with the killing of animals [hunting, that is]... all perfectly legitimate, of course, but I was afraid of questionable empathy if I let this story shift at any point to a nonhuman viewpoint in view of the necessity of showing them killing for meat. In my next one I will no doubt have a successor to Willis, Lummox, etc.

So, he's doing all of this on purpose, even though he makes it seem easy and natural (although there will be no "central nonhuman character" in any of the three remaining juveniles). In this case, I think the introductory chapters – before Rod starts his test – serve several purposes. First, it sets up the contrast between civilization, family and home life and the demands of survival alone in the wild. Rod's later adventures seem more exciting when contrasted to the mundane life of a city boy. Secondly, they sever Rod from his family. They aren't back there waiting for him; he's truly on his own. Thirdly, the coming of age story almost always allows for the youngster to get advice from an Old Man before setting out and this introduction allows for that. As for the insertion of religion into the story (something Heinlein rarely does and always with a purpose), I think it sets up some lessons from later in the story. As soon as he's gone, Rod never even seems to think about "Monism". Again, Heinlein has set up something that Rod can break away from to become an adult.

The test starts and almost immediately something goes terribly wrong. There is no pickup. After a month, it's clear to the students that they have been stranded. Later, we find that a super nova has bent the space in the region and it takes about two and a half years to re-calibrate all of the equipment and get to the students. But they don't know they'll ever be found. Naturally, they band together and try to make the best of their situation.

I won't go into the details. My telling of it all would be boring compared to Heinlein's, you're better off reading the book. Suffice it to say that Rod starts out as leader of the band, has his authority challenged and loses his leadership position, then gets it back. Along the way, the students battle the elements, the wildlife of the planet and each other. By the end of the book, their village is a going concern and they are starting back on the road to civilization.

Heinlein himself said this wasn't exactly a juvenile in its themes and not exactly Science Fiction, either. "It's a story", he said. The more literary among you out there are probably starting to think Lord of the Flies right now, so let's get that out of the way. Several reviewers around the internet (such as this one) seem to assume that, since Tunnel in the Sky was published in 1955 and Lord of the Flies was published in 1954, that Heinlein must have been responding to Golding. The fact is that Lord of the Flies was published in England by Faber and Faber in September, 1954. The novel didn't start out particularly popular and had sold only 3,000 copies by the end of 1955. Heinlein started writing Tunnel in the Sky in October of 1954 (according to letters to his agent) and probably had the story ideas worked out before then. He had just returned from an around-the-world trip (which came home through the Pacific, not the Atlantic) and had spent the summer writing a travel book (which didn't sell until after his death). There's almost no chance that he had read Lord of the Flies (which may not have actually made it to the US before 1955). Certainly, there would at least have been mention of plagiarism (the novels are pretty similar in overview) in his letters to his agent. It's probably best that he hadn't read it, anyway, because Heinlein didn't believe in the cynical view of mankind that Golding presents. His characters consciously work to civilize themselves, they don't degenerate into tribalism. Rod becomes "Mayor" of Cowpertown, not the leader of a tribe of savages. In a sense, Heinlein is refuting Golding before he had even read him.

Heinlein was teaching almost the opposite lessons of Lord of the Flies. Yes, man can be savage and violent, but he can also be civilized and altruistic. The difference is government. It allows man to overcome his nature and go on to better things. Government itself, however, can be wrongheaded or despotic. It's up to every citizen to keep themselves and their government on track. Government must be at the consent of the governed and a leader who isn't the choice of the governed is illegitimate (which is why Rod loses his leadership position - he hadn't been elected, he just sort of started running things).

Heinlein also throws in his usual message of tolerance for other races and creeds. Heinlein never calls attention to the fact that Carolyn Mshiyeni must be black. Instead, he once mentions that she is Zulu and leaves it at that. Reading this as a kid, I don't think it dawned on me that she was black, I just never thought about it. She's also just about the most competent survivalist of all of the students. There are other female characters who are strong and competent as well.

All of the students are warned before the test, "watch out for stobor". Afterwards, Rod asks his teacher about it:

"These are stober, aren't they? Little carnivores heavy in front, about the size of a tom cat and eight times as nasty?"
"Why ask me?"
"Well, you warned us all about stobor. All the classes were warned."
"I suppose these must be stober," Matson admitted, "but I did not know what they looked like." "Huh?"
"Rod, ever planet has its 'stober'... all are different. Sometimes more than one sort." He stopped to tap his pipe. "You remember me telling the class that every planet has unique dangers, different from every other planet in the Galaxy?"
"Yes..."
"Sure, and it meant nothing, a mere intellectual concept. But you have to be afraid of the thing behind the concept, if you are to stay alive. So we personify it... but we don't tell you what it is. We do it differently each year. It is to warn you that the unknown and deadly can lurk anywhere ... and to plant it deep in your guts instead of in your head."

This lesson is typical Heinlein and not to be forgotten. There are stobor in every neighborhood, all different. There are lots of stobor in Iraq right now, for example. Heinlein was making his readers alert to the fact that the world is not looking out for your welfare: it will kill you given the slightest chance. It's a good lesson, one that lots of people you meet these days have never learned (like this Darwin Awards Honorable Mention).

By the way, "stobor" is "robots" spelled backwards. Does this mean anything? No one really knows, as far as I can tell. It's a little hard to believe that it's an accident and that Heinlein didn't notice this (he had to stare at it for more than a month). On the other hand, "watch out for robots" means absolutely nothing in the context of the novel. It does bring up an interesting point, however. Heinlein almost never (and I can't think of an instance, so maybe I should just say "never") uses androids (human-like robots) in his stories. He had cyborgs (machines with human brains in them) and self-aware computers, but not humanoid robots. I suspect – and this is only my opinion – that Heinlein wasn't a fan of humanoid robots. It's a tough thing to get right, after all. If they aren't very smart, they're just demeaning of the human form. If they're smarter than humans, they usrp humanity. As I've said before, Heinlein had a mystical streak a mile wide; I don't think he was comfortable with human-like machines. None of this, however, tells us anything about "stober". My guess is that it is just a conincidence.

This is the first of the Heinlein Juveniles that isn't illustrated. I don't know if they were having budget problems or if they couldn't get an artist or what. The cover art is lame in the extreme.

In the end, the students are rescued and brought home, despite the fact that many of them have announced that they're happier in their own city than they were at home. Rod is the last to leave, and only does so then when compelled by his sister Helen. She has married the instructor, Deacon Matson, having met in the aftermath of the kid's disappearance. Rod's parents are out of the field, a cure having been found, and Rod is talked into coming home to see them. But, you can't go home again (Heinlein probably had read Wolfe). Rod can't stand being treated as a child, now that he is a man. He tells the Deacon: "I can't stand it." and the Deacon replies, "Yes, you can." Luckily, he only has to stand it for a few months, untila he comes of age legally. The last scene skips ahead a few years: Rod is leading his own band of pioneers through a Ramsbotham Gate to a new planet.