![]() Within half a page, Lorenzo has met a suspect stranger. ![]() ![]() And we’re too caught up in the story to worry about explanations. Yet, because of Heinlein’s facility in inventing names and providing context, they don’t need to be. Neither is explained, and neither are dropsickness or Silicoflesh or autosecretaries. In Double Star, we find out about bounce tubes because his hero Lorenzo doesn’t have enough money to take one, and about the Moon shuttle because he’s spectacularly sick on it. To them it’s as familiar and ordinary as the present is to us. He doesn’t walk us through his futures, pointing out the amazing inventions and advances. Heinlein’s forte was always his ability to create a convincing future without letting it take over the story and to make it seem like a real-and familiar-place. It’s full of space yachts and hush corners, Martian induction ceremonies and injection guns and interplanetary empires, yet everything seems completely believable. One of those times is the richly imagined future of Double Star. ![]() (The other two are Have Space Suit, Will Travel, and The Door into Summer.) It has all the things I love most about Heinlein’s writing: his can’t-put-it-down storytelling, his humorous, breezy style, his easy-to-identify-with characters, and his inventiveness in creating other worlds. Of all Heinlein’s books, his short novel Double Star is one of my three favorites. ![]()
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