Audiobooks you can get from the library - Tunnel in the Sky

[dreamshark]

A colleague gave me a 3-month free membership to Audible.com, which got me reinterested in audiobooks. Not interested enough to pay $14-20 per book, however, especially considering how much there is to listen to for free. This sent me back to Hennepin County Library online, where I enthusiastically added about a dozen titles to my wait queue. However, if you pick titles that are old and out of fashion, there is no wait. Thus, Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. I'm having such fun listening to it that I thought it would be fun to blog it. So here's my first impressions.

• I read this book as a pre-teen, and it was not only my favorite Heinlein EVER, it was one of my all-time childhood favorite books. Is it any wonder I'm such a fan of "Survivor?"


• Ugh, I think I see now why people make nasty cracks about the early sf masters as literary stylists. Stilted dialogue, internal monologues studded with long expository passages ("As you know, self..."), and in general kind of a tin ear. But it still grabs me. Of the dozen or so audiobooks I checked out, this is one of the few I think I'm going to finish. It's just a great story.


• It's funny re-reading this old favorite with the perspective of Heinlein's later work in mind. A lot of the same characters are there, including an early appearance of the Kick-Ass Female (Rod's big sister the space marine) and the Tedious Old Blowhard (Professor Whatsisname).


• Is it weird that I love the parts where Rod is agonizing over what equipment to take with him on the survival test? I like the fact that Heinlein has clearly spent so much time thinking this through. All his ideas sound thoughtful and plausible, until he gets to drinking water. Rod seems to think that he can carry enough fresh water in his Camelbak Hydration System to get through 10 days of wilderness survival. I don't know, dude, I think a portable water-purification system would be a good backup plan.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

They didn't have giardosis back then, so I bet he was planning to drink from streams. This story also has various flavors of Spunky Girl Sidekick, who I liked (Caroline and Jack).

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

In the preparation chapters he specifically says that he's planning to avoid drinking from local water sources. And according to today's installment he has only 5 liters of water, and is only taking tiny sips, trying to make it last. Of course, as we all know, no matter how tiny the sips he takes, that canteen is going to be long empty by the time he goes home.

[carbonel]

It's not my favorite Heinlein novel (that's Have Space Suit, Will Travel), but I'm very fond of it. And even more so once I realized that Rod is essentially an unreliable narrator -- or at least one with a very limited perspective -- and that Heinlein is having fun with it.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I understood 'hydration system' to imply some sort of recycling process.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Hydration system" is my term. Rod is actually wearing a "survival vest" with hidden pockets that hold 5 liters of water and a sippy hose that delivers the water to his mouth. This is almost an exact description of a modern Camelbak Hydration Pack (see link in original post). I think Heinlein did a great job of envisioning this particular technological advance; I just think 5 liters is an insufficient amount of water for 5 days.

However, as I moved along in the book I realized that Rod's original plan was pretty much to sit in a tree for the whole time, sipping water and eating protein bars. Needless to say, that plan didn't work out. But if it had, he might have been able to get by on an extremely restricted amount of water.