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3 internautes sur 3 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
One of his best juvies, Mars 24 2004
This is undoubtedly one of Heinlein's finest 'juvenile' novels (and anyone who thinks there were no female characters in it must not have read more than 10% of it).I usually list _Tunnel in the Sky_ as my favorite of Heinlein's young-adult novels of the 1950s, and I still think it belongs at the top of the list. But this one is very close. As I'm sure you know already, it's the tale of a young fellow named Thorby, a slave on the planet Sargon who comes under the protection of one Baslim the Cripple. A sort of outer-space version of Kipling's _Kim_, the novel traces Thorby's life and development through several changes of venue -- and ends on Earth, where Thorby finds out who he really is and takes on some heavy, adult-sized responsibilities. It's a very well handled coming-of-age novel, and it expresses Heinlein's own remarkable take on maturity very nearly as well as _Tunnel_ (in some ways arguably better). And like _Tunnel_, it devotes _just a little_ space, toward the end, to preaching against straw men. (Here, it's a couple of custard-headed pacifists whose sole literary function is to mouth inane slogans that Heinlein wants to show up as irresponsible nonsense. There was _loads_ of such stuff in _Starship Troopers_ but in this one it's kept to a minimum.) It also shares part of its 'skeleton' with _Stranger in a Strange Land_ (on which Heinlein was also working at about the same time, still under its provisional title 'A Martian Named Smith'). Why, there's even a climactic courtroom battle, with Thorby represented by a crusty lawyer not terribly unlike Jubal Harshaw. (In general lawyers don't come off well in Heinlein's novels; in the final analysis the sharklike Garsch is no exception, although Harshaw fares somewhat better.) At any rate, the anthropological insights come fast and furious here (aided in part by a character who may remind you of Margaret Mead). One nice touch is revealed in Thorby's time with the Traders; like every other people in history, they call themselves 'the People' and everybody else subhuman ('fraki'). No s-e-x, though. At this time Heinlein was still publishing under the watchful eye of Alice Dalgliesh and Thorby's interactions with the opposite camp are as chaste as melting snow. I credit Heinlein with three absolutely magisterial works -- _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, _Double Star_, and _The Door into Summer_. This one belongs to the second tier of near-magisterial material, well worth reading and rereading despite a few warts.
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de Robert A. Heinlein
de Robert A. Heinlein
de Robert A. Heinlein
de Robert A. Heinlein
de Robert Heinlein
