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dreamsharkA 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.
