Robert Heinlein: A little gem of a time-travel novel

The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein Edition: Paperback

"The Door Into Summer" is a little gem of a time-travel novel published in 1956-57 that I suspect gets scant attention from the casual Heinlein fan. It's about a hard drinking, cat loving, young engineer-inventor named, Dan, who in 1970, with a partner and a gold digging fiance, creates a business around a robot that cleans floors.

As the business takes off, Dan, focused on new designs finds himself not only swindled by his partners, but "sent" by longsleep (suspended animation) 31 years into the future to 2001. Through an odd turn of events, he eventually finds his way back to 1970, where things get really interesting.

I won't spill any more beans, but the pace is fast, the dialog rich and the characters, including the overindulged cat and the nudists, are believable and endearing. For the most part the book has aged well, outside of the usual sort of hit and miss predictions on the world of 2001—made by Heinlein in the mid-50's.

I just re-read the book yesterday after finding an old hardbound copy in a second hand bookstore. A great little read, and a love story to-boot. And, if you're an engineering-type, you'll appreciate Heinlein's depiction of a naive purist-engineer in a new world of high technology

Sue me, I love time-travel and zombie tales. If this is an also interest of yours, check out this Heinlein novel.