Bill Lerner and his father George decide to emigrate to Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, to begin a new life as farmers along with George’s new wife Molly and her young daughter, Peggy.
During their journey aboard the interplanetary colony ship Mayflower, the kids decide to form new branches of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Bill becomes a hero when he uses his old Scout uniform to plug a hull breach in his shared quarters compliments of a fist-sized meteor.
The pacing slows once they reach Ganymede and begin to build their new lives. George takes up a part time job as an engineer, his profession back on Earth, while Bill sets out to terraform his family’s allotted land and build their new home. Along the way, the Lerner’s receive help from their neighboring farmers and the Ganymede Boy Scouts.
Then, disaster strikes…
Compared to Heinlein’s other juvenile space adventures—such as Have Space Suit, Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy, or Starman Jones—Farmer in the Sky lacks suspense, tension, and developed characters beyond the protagonist. Instead, it is a first-person POV chronicling of emigration from Earth to Ganymede with several dramatic events scattered throughout. For example, I was disappointed when a certain supporting character’s death happened “off camera” and was glossed over in the final chapters. However, this might be to due to the fact that the book was intended for younger audiences during a time when writers trod lightly when dealing with sensitive topics.
As usual with Heinlein, his attention to even the minutest scientific and practical details—however fictionalized—offers the reader a sense of verisimilitude and plausibility. There is a fair balance between moving the story forward and describing the processes and pitfalls involved in taming the inhospitable surface of Ganymede.
This collection of seven stories includes such legendary Lovecraft gems as “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, “Cool Air”, and of course, “The Colour out of Space.” Interspersed among these are two shorter—yet no less eerie—spine tinglers “The Picture in the House” and “The Terrible Old Man.” The final tale, “The Shadow out of Time,” deserves its placement in this collection. It’s a novella that could easily be reduced to a short story, sparing the reader from repetitive and monotonous descriptions.
The first sixty percent of the story follows young protagonist Matt Dodson as he undergoes rigorous training as a cadet in the Solar Patrol Space Academy. While there, he befriends fellow cadets Tex Jarman, Oscar Jensen from the Venus colony, and Pierre “Pete” Armand from Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
This book has been in my collection for well over a decade. Until recently, I had only flipped through it to read excerpts from the script.
Through a gaping hole in one of the lowest tunnels of the New York City subway system emerges a horde of bloodthirsty reptilian creatures from another realm who begin terrorizing and slaughtering everyone from the city’s homeless “Mole People” to subway passengers and finally, the transit police and even the city’s Emergency Services Unit. In addition to the attacks, strange glyphs are carved into the stone and metal walls of the subway system seemingly by incredibly sharp blades… or possibly claws.
For as long as he could remember, young Thorby had been a slave—until he lands on Jubbal, one of the Nine Worlds of the Sargon Empire, and is purchased by a beggar named Baslim. It is not long before Thorby realizes that Baslim is no simple mendicant, but a spy and one who despises the slave trade. Once Baslim educates Thorby in reading, writing, mathematics, and even a bit of espionage, he frees Thorby from slavery and adopts him as his son.