The Door into Summer

There are many aspects to this book that is not meant to be taken seriously. Except for one thing: Heinlein, I think, knew a lot about cats. I finally got my first cat six years ago and she is not quite like Petronius the Arbiter, Pete for short, in the book. Since I got her from a shelter, she had to be neutered, an absolute no-no for Pete (and, perhaps, Heinlein's own cats).

I enjoyed all the passages where Pete is present and active the most. OK, time travel back and forth twice (not exactly, but I am not going to reveal the story) is fine with rare exposure of the inherent paradoxes (do we need parallel universes to avoid meeting our doppel gangers?) and is the nominal theme here.

The great wail of Pete and his warpath are, to me, the real core of the book. Last year I hosted here a beautiful white tomcat who wanted to become the master of the house - an impossibility, since the position was already taken. So he wailed and wailed and my little calico hissed and jumped on the door he was locked in. Eventually, after having several good meals, he marched back to a destination unknown on the snow, never to be seen again.

Cats are, indeed, special. Heinlein, perhaps, should have devoted more time to them.

From a personal standpoint I rate it a 5. I recall it fondly from childhood and have enjoyed rereading it multiple times since.

As fiction, a 3. Good story, clean writing, some nice phrases and ideas.

Mostly, it is a period piece now. A view to the gee-whiz feeling of the 50s that honest American engineering -- specifically not science -- could solve any problem.

I don't know if this is a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, but I was expecting a lot more from the reviews here. I am a time travel fan, and can't understand how anyone can rank this above Replay, Time and Again, Up the Line, Time Traveler's Wife or 11/22/63, to name a few. Perhaps I am being tough on Heinlein, but his 1950s view of both 1970 and 2000 were further off than i would have imagined. High expectations hurt my read as much as the mediocre execution.

This 1957 sci-fi romp is fun, but it bears many problematic hallmarks of the genre fiction written by white men in that era. Minor setbacks are blithely compared to slavery and rape, female characters are treated patronizingly, and the 30-year-old protagonist kind of falls in love with a preteen girl. (She asks him to marry her before he enters cryogenic sleep. He says that if she still feels that way when she turns 21, she can go into suspended animation herself at that point, and they can get married when they wake up in the future together. It's a pretty small part of the overall plot, and you can argue that the character ultimately has adult agency, but their romance verges on predator grooming in a way that personally makes me uncomfortable.)

If you can get past all of that, this novel really is a neat little adventure story from the golden age of science-fiction, with clever time loop shenanigans and some imaginatively goofy visions of the then-future. It especially sparkles anytime the hero shows his utter devotion to his pet cat, as when he insists that it get cryo-frozen along with him. But the book is very much a product of its time, and some modern readers may wish to give it a miss.

What is possibly one of my favorite Heinlein stories (next to the unabridged "Stranger") The protagonist is screwed over by his unscrupulous business partner (while he is assisted by the protagonists fiancé) and forced into cold sleep for 30 years. Now in the future he is alone and unprepared for this "brave new world", finds out time travel is possible, goes back and ensures that the evildoers don't prosper from their scheme and saves his partners daughter from their greedy influence by making sure she goes to her grandmother until she is old enough to marry the protagonist in the future (as they are kindred souls). Convoluted? Possibly, but explained so logically that you never really question the possibilities. One of the first of his novels I read as a teenager, I would recommend this for a young adult and older.

It is usually unfair to complain when old sci-fi books have made poor predictions for the future, because remarkably few books have succeeded in making accurate predictions. Indeed, most predictions just prove to be comical. But this book is fair game for criticism because it made its predictions, for the year 2000, so central to the story and to the nature of the principal character. As a result, the book falls very flat. And the characters and dialogue are old and tired. The time travel and suspended animation aspects are treated neatly, but the shocking aspect is the creepy pedophilic nature of the conclusion. Heinlein’s "Time Enough for Love” had an incestuous pedophilic aspect too, but in "The Door Into Summer”, it is shocking. Quite appalling. That’s the last Heinlein book I bother to read.

The Door into Summer (1957) is a standalone SF novel. It was published after Double Star.

In this novel, Daniel Boone Davis is an engineer and innovator. Dan created the Hired Girl line of household robotics. His cat is Petronius the Arbiter.

Miles Gentry is an former Army pal of Dan and business manager of Hired Girl. He had been married to a widow witn one daughter, Frederica, but his wife died before the Six Weeks War.

Frederica Virginia is a preteen girl. She has been a friend of Dan for years and loves Pete. Ricky says she is going to marry Dan when she grows up.

Belle Darkin is the secretary for Hired Girl. She is also Dan's girlfriend.

In this story, it is 1970 and Dan has just been dumped by the board of Hired Girl. Miles and Belle had outvoted him on a proposal to sell the company to a larger firm. Now he is drowning his sorrow and Pete is accompanying him.

A bar refuses him further service after they spot Pete. The city license disallowing dogs and cats in the bar. Dan decides to cross the street to talk to a man about the Long Sleep.

Suspended animation puts the individual into hypothermia at four degrees about freezing. It slows metabolic processes to near zero. However, there is a seventy percent risk that the subject cannot be awakened.

Dan also wants Pete to hibernate with him. The man discovers that the first subject in hypothermic research were cats. So the company sends him for a physical and tells him to return the next day.

Instead, Dan goes out to confront Miles. When he and Pete reach the house, Belle is with Miles. Dan has a few insights about Miles and Belle. He wishes that they had taken her fingerprints and checked her record before hiring her.

During the confrontation, Belle squirts zombie juice into Dan's veins. He becomes unable to move except as the command him. He answers Belle's questions, but she doesn't just ask one at a time. In the interrogation, Belle fails to learn some of the safeguards that Dan has taken.

Dan has been standing in the same position for a couple of hours and starts to collapse. Belle tells him to sit down. Then Miles tries to stuff Pete back into his bag. Miles gets a few scratches and drops Pete.

Belle tries to hit Pete with a poker. Instead, Pete scratches both her legs. The couple chase the cat. Then the cat chase the couple.

Dan sees only part of the conflict. Eventually, Pete escapes out the back door. But he patrols around the outside demanding that the humans come out and fight him.

This tale takes Dan to the future via another company. He wakes in 2000 and soon learns that his training is way out of date. Yet he recognizes many of the automatons as evolved copies of his designs.

Dan gets a job crushing new ground limos used as security against price-support loans. Now that they are two years old, they are being turned into scrap for the steel mills. Dan doesn't understand the economics.

The two most important things to Dan are Pete and Ricky. Pete is left behind in 1970, but Ricky should be somewhere in 2000. He doesn't have money for detectives, so he checks the records himself.

The economics of 2000AD sound a lot like recent support loans given to the auto industry. There are a few more mentions that are very close to predictions. The author was a little too optimistic is his timing, but otherwise very close in some cases.

Dan finds many things that remind him of his designs. This novel does not have a sequel, but is followed by the collection The Menace From Earth.

Highly recommended for Heinlein fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of time travel, engineering design, and a bit of romance. Read and enjoy!

-Arthur W. Jordin

Heinlein's The Door Into Summer will always hold a special place in my memory. It was one of the first real SF books I ever read, along with Ender's Game and a couple others that were much less memorable. For a number of reasons, I recently decided to give a reread and refresh my memory--was it as awesome as I remember, or was I just in love with my first look at the genre? I'm pleased to announce that it is at least almost as awesome as I remember it being. I'm also incredibly thankful that my first Heinlein was this one, mostly lacking in his trademark creepy sexuality. I say mostly, and will explain that below, but at least my younger self didn't pick up on the creepiness. Ah, for a more innocent age....anyway, moving on.

Daniel Boone Davis had it all, at least until he was double-crossed. He and his partner had a small engineering company, beholden to know man and free to tinker to his heart's content. He built the stuff, and Miles sold it. Belle was just the secretary, until she became Dan's fiancee. His next project was going to revolutionize everything--an automaton that could be taught to do nearly anything. Then it all came crashing down. Miles and Belle double-crossed him, forcing him out of the company and stealing the prototype for Flexible Frank. When Dan put up a fight, he found himself drugged and placed into cryosleep, awakening penniless thirty years later in the year 2000. Tough breaks, but he'd survive. What is driving him nuts is how many of his ideas he never got around to actually building seem to be everywhere....with patents registered to D.B. Davis....

Like I said, I really enjoyed this both times I read it. In some ways it's incredibly dated, and I'm pretty sure the limited nuclear war that supposedly happened in the sixties would still have wiped out humanity, but it's the rare time-travel novel (for what is a thirty-year sleep but a one-way time-travel) that manages to explore two separate futures--the 1970 that was still far in the future for Heinlein writing in 1957, and the still further 2000. Some of the inventions Davis comes up with are positively prescient, including a self-directing little robot vacuum. That's right, Heinlein created the Roomba way back in 1957. Unlike most of Heinlein's stuff I've read, there wasn't a lot of waxing philosophical or preaching this time around, just a fun story.

Now, about that creepy sexuality I mentioned. I'll get to that, but to explain it--and why I think it's less creepy in practice than it sounds at first glance--I'll have to disregard my hatred of spoilers. Read on at your own peril! So, the central romance here, as things unfold, is between Dan Davis and the young Frederica "Ricky" Heinicke. In 1970, Dan is in his thirties while Ricky is eleven. So yeah, there's that. And I agree, this whole thing does earn a raised eyebrow, but I would argue that it is not quite as objectionable as it first seems. The attraction between the two is nothing sexual--Ricky has a schoolgirl's crush on Dan, and has been coolly informing him that they will one day be married since she was six. While he always assumed this was a private joke between the two of them, once he awakens in the year 2000 he realizes that she's literally the only friend he has ever had that never screwed him over and starts looking for her as time and resources allow. By this time she would be older than him, subjectively, and he gets a bit obsessed with finding her. When he does, she's taken a cryosleep herself and is now twenty-one to his thirty-odd. So...still a bit creepy, but no pedophilia here so far as I'm concerned.

CONTENT: Brief language. I think the word "bitch" is used once or twice, possibly several milder profanities, but this was written in the age where the pulps wouldn't allow that kind of thing. There's even an occasion of something having the adjective "censorable" applied to it. Mild violence, including the attempted murder of a cat. Some creepy sexual themes, as described above, but not a whole lot of outright innuendo.

The Door Into Summer is one of Robert Heinlein's few adult novels of the 1950s, a period in which he was producing mostly "juveniles" centered on teenaged characters and targeted to adolescent boys. But while the main character of Door Into Summer is an adult, he seems rather juvenile to me, especially in his naiveté and his childlike approach to life and the realities of the business world.

The story concerns Daniel Boone Davis, a talented inventor living in the future world of 1970 (the book was published in 1957), who then jumps forward another 30 years to 2000 through cryogenic preservation in order to get back at his business partner and former fiancee who had cheated him out of his company (see what I mean by juvenile?).

Davis invents a couple of robotic household appliances meant to substitute for housemaids (this was a time when there still were such things in general employ), but his ambitions are limited to a small-scale operation. His partner Miles sees the potential of the inventions and wants to expand (I was frankly agreeing with Miles), though both are trumped by Belle, originally the firm's secretary and later Davis' fiancee and Miles' wife (allegedly).

Belle was a great character when first introduced but Heinlein short-shrifts her potential for evildoing, I think, as the novel sidetracks into time travel speculation in the second half. Lots of readers seemed to like this aspect of the book but I was more interested in the drama of Davis' conflict with Miles and Belle.

With Belle, I think Heinlein missed an opportunity to develop a compelling female character. Instead, we are left mostly with 50s vintage stereotypes of women obsessed with running households (the rationale for most of Davis' inventions). We also get an extremely creepy romantic subplot in which the girl of the adult Davis' dreams is Miles' preteen stepdaughter. Their relationship was the worst (and least plausible) aspect of the book, and the way Heinlein resolves it was frankly rather disturbing.

Written in the mid 1950's, the story is mostly set in 1970, where Heinlein imagines a USA after a six-day-nuclear war. The hero is an engineer and I thought there was a little too much, well, engineering. Also the hero's issues with his fiance and partner were a bit drawn out. Since the book is touted as a time-travel story, I was disappointed to find that plot didn't kick in for about 200 pages. Then the complexities of the paradoxes, etc., became interesting. Some of the "future" imaginings are sort of quaint, with a lot of the plot happening in the year 2000, when a newspaper warns that "Unseasonable Warmth Perils Winter Games." AN okay way to spend a few hours although it would have been nice to have an automatic assistant cleaning the house while I read. (Love the cat.)

Oh, 1950s science fiction - is there nothing you can't do?

One of the downsides to our modern information age is that we have so much information available to us. If I see a reference on a blog or in a book that I don't know, it's a quick hop over to Google or Wikipedia to find out what it is, and if it's really interesting I can find myself learning about something I never knew before. And so, if I want to know more about cold sleep, robotics or time travel, there's a whole host of ways that I can not only learn about it, but learn why it's just so hard to do. I mean, think about robotics - we've been looking forward to the perfect household robot for decades now. One that can cook and clean and do all those tiresome chores that we would rather not spend our time doing. The problem is that those tiresome chores are actually marvelously complex tasks, involving not only precise physical movements, but some very complicated judgment calls. Every time we figure out how to get a robot to do one of those things, we then have a hundred other things that need to be done to get it even close to human-like competence.

I know this because the internet knows this.

But back in 1957, this stuff was all new and fresh and unknown, so if Robert Heinlein wanted his main character to cobble together the perfect household robot with some off-the-shelf parts and a little bit of magic tech (the Thorsen Memory Tubes), then why not? Assuming we had the technology, what couldn't we build?

Thus is the set-up for The Door into Summer, an adventure in engineering, patent law, and economics, with a little bit of time travel thrown into spice it up. Our hero, Daniel Boone Davis, is an engineer of the purest sort - he got into engineering to solve problems, and that's what he does. He doesn't want to be just one guy working on one cog for a huge corporation; he wants to make things himself that he knows will benefit everyone. He's a real Populist Engineer, too - his creations are made with replaceable parts, specifically so that the owner can quickly deal with any mechanical problems themselves, rather than have to wait for a repair shop to do the work. The parts are all off-the-shelf, too, which not only makes the machines easier to produce, but makes the production cost lower. In other words, he's making machines that will benefit as many people as possible, and the first one is the somewhat misogynistically-named Hired Girl.

This machine (which is a very close approximation of the Roomba, by the way) becomes an instant success, and the company that Dan forms to take care of it is looking to become fantastically wealthy. Unfortunately for Dan, his business partners - Miles and Belle - are far more interested in becoming filthy rich than helping mankind. So when it looks like Dan's newest creation, an all-purpose household robot named Flexible Frank, is going to be a wild success, they manage to freeze him out of the company. Literally. They steal his inventions out from under him and force him to take the Long Sleep - to be frozen cryogenically for thirty years. He wakes up in the year 2000, without money, without a job or prospects, and without his beloved cat, Pete.

A word about the cat angle to this story - if you're a cat person, like me, then the relationship between Dan and Pete will really resonate with you. Its clear that Heinlein himself was a cat person, as he shows a wonderful understanding of the human-cat relationship, including the absolute uncertainty as to which one is in charge at any given time. While the cat is not absolutely necessary to the plot, it's a nice addition to the story. If you're not a cat person, well... you should be.

Anyway, in the wild future of 2000, Dan discovers that something very strange was going on around the time he got frozen, and the more he uncovers, the more it looks like there can be only one explanation - time travel!

This is really classic science fiction at its best. The narrator is a brilliant man who never meets a problem he cannot solve, at least not eventually. He's a certified genius, and were it not for his blind spot for pretty women and his trust in his business partner, he would have had a fantastic life as an inventor. But his love of making stuff gets in the way of how the real world works, and sets him up for a series of thefts and betrayals. But you never really worry about him, because he is a man with no uncertainties. He doesn't wallow in self-loathing and moral dismay when he encounters a problem like being thirty years in the future with no means of supporting himself. No! When he sees a problem, his first thought is, "How do I solve this?"

In other words, he's an engineer.

It's a remarkably optimistic book, too. While the future of 2000 isn't perfect, it's still a whole lot better than 1970. And while 1970 certainly isn't perfect, it's a whole lot better than 1957. The book rests on that wonderful mid-century assumption that while human innovation can't solve every problem (and indeed often succeeds in creating more problems), it is, in the long run, a force for good. For the modern reader this may seem terribly naive, but I found it refreshing.

So while the story is really pretty predictable, it's a fun ride. Even the time travel element isn't quite as risky as Heinlein tries to make it out to be, since the reason Dan opts for time travel is that he's found evidence that he's already done it. Therefore no matter how dangerous it might be, he knows for a fact that he'll be successful. He doesn't mention this, or even seem to notice it, but the sharp-eyed reader should pick it up pretty quickly.

While most of the driving force of the book is what I would normally consider pretty boring - patent law and engineering - there is one element to it that is distinctly Heinlein: the universality of love. Dan is done in by his belief that he loves Belle, who turns out to be a gold-digger of the lowest order. But in the end, Dan knows who he truly loves. The only problem is that she's an eleven year-old girl. Whether in the publication year of 1957, the year Dan starts in, 1970, or the far-flung future of 2000, a grown man marrying a pre-teen is something that is generally frowned upon. They're able to settle this problem with a little time travel/cryogenic jiggery-pokery, but when you stop to think about it, the situation can be somewhat... unconventional. If you stop to really think about their relationship, there's some strange moral ambiguity going on there. Fortunately, the characters don't really care and the book ends without going into the ramifications of what they've done.

The book isn't about moral complexity, though. It's about solving problems and finding happiness, no matter what you have to do to get it. It's about overcoming adversity, betrayal and even time itself to get the life that you know you deserve. It's about finding that door into summer, when all the other doors lead you only into the winter. While we may not be able to solve our problems quite as neatly as Dan Davis did, we can still follow his example.

Except, perhaps, with the romancing eleven year-olds. That's still not cool.

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"Despite the crepehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands... with tools... with horse sense and science and engineering."
- Daniel Boone Davis, The Door into Summer
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A fun story that explores the many time-travel paradoxes that are now commonplace science-fiction themes, but due to the age of this book I'd be surprised if anyone had fleshed them out so well before Heinlein did. There are a lot of ins-and-outs and he ties everything together admirably and manages not to leave any loose ends dangling (as far as I could tell). Sure, this is mostly stuff that we've all seen before, be it in TV, movies, books, or even games, but I'll bet it was pretty mind-blowing at the time and he pulls it off in style. The book also moves along at a smooth clip, and the first-person narrative is written in a breezy, clear way that makes everything understandable the first time around, which is something that I appreciate.

Unfortunately, it can be jarring to read about a "future" year 2000 which has already come and gone, and not nearly in the same fashion as described. Still, this was written in the '50s so I can't fault him for that, hindsight 20/20 and all. There's also nothing that could be considered life-changing or deeply thought-provoking; the rambling digressions that Heinlein was sometimes known for are completely absent here, which can be bad or good, depending on what you enjoy. What some people consider Heinlein's "creepy factor" is mostly absent here as well, though there are subtle hints of it. I personally see his "creepiness" as little more than a desire to "upset the applecarts" and shake up taboos (he grew up in what was a very repressive era for free-thinkers like himself), but I know it really puts some people out. Anyway, I'll shut up now and just say that this is a very good book overall, it is highly enjoyable, and if you're a cat person you'll probably like it even more.

Great book. I've read it several times. It's great to see the protagonist adapt and overcome. Just one question arises. How is this book possibly related to Space Marines????

"the store Best Sellers Rank: #43,080 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #398 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military > Space Marine
#472 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military > Space Marine" </p>

Methinks the publisher might be gaming the system.</p>

I started my love affair with science fiction in general and Heinlein in particular by reading his "juveniles" right at the time I was of the age the books were written for, a teenager. I remember well walking home from the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library with 3 or 4 books by Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov tucked under my arm. Unfortunately there are not too many writers out there like this anymore.

People who try to pigeonhole Heinlein as a writer of one type of science fiction or another don't know enough about him. Actually during his long career he went far afield into the areas of fantasy with Magic Incorporated, military sci-fi with Starship Troopers, and social science fiction with many of his later works. Those of us would have read Heinlein extensively know about his Future History stories that all meld together with different characters and timelines. This book is freestanding and can be read without any connection to any other novels.

Danny Davis is an inventor and engineer whose passion is revolutionizing the way household chores are done. His passions are his work, his lover for his fiance Belle who is the secretary of his high tech start up, his friendship with his partner and business associate, his cat Pete, and his fondness for his partner's stepdaughter Rickey. When things start to fall apart he decides to solve his problems partially by taking Cold Sleep for 30 years to wake up in a new world. I am not going to say any more about this book other than to say that my synopsis is woefully inadequate. Heinlein's characters are unique and interesting and the plot is very clever. He reveals a couple of the things about himself, too...his love of cats (he liked them his whole life) his love of engineering (he was trained as a mechanical engineer at West Point)and of course his hopes for the future.

Heinlein is more upbeat about the future in this book written in 1957 than he became later on. For that reason, plus the fact that this book is a little self contained gem, makes it a good first book. This is tightly written, clever, and fun. Those of you who are reading it for the first time are lucky.

I first read this one shortly after it was published, when I was in junior high, and it's still one of my two or three favorites among Heinlein's novels. This was also his "fastest" novel -- written in thirteen days after his wife unintentionally gave him the title, based on a cat/snow incident exactly like that described in the opening of the book.

The plot centers on Dan Davis, a mechanical engineer and inventor of the "bicycle shop" variety, living in 1970, only a decade and a half in Heinlein's own future, but in a world significantly different from our own. Washington, DC is gone in a cloud of radiation, Denver is the new U.S. capital, and commercially viable robots are well on the way, thanks to Dan's ingenuity. But he's also a lousy businessman, so his partner and his fiancée manager to swindle him out of everything he's designed and built prototypes of. In despair, after finding he can't do anything the Bad Guys, he decides to submit to the Long Sleep -- being frozen into suspended animation and tucked away under a mountain for a few decades. (What Larry Niven would call becoming a "corpsicle.") And when he gets to 2001, he likes it (it's much better than the 2001 we actually got) and settles in to trying to catch up on generation's worth of engineering. But then he discovers a certain someone else is about to be defrosted, and suddenly he knows how to get even and restart his own future a second time.

It's a delightfully complicated plot, with time travel, blue-sky gadgeteering of the sort any engineer loves to day dream about, and a very odd, very Heinleinian love story for good measure (the sort that will upset the puritans, as the author often did). Heinlein takes every opportunity to preach the values of good engineering and the social possibilities of the future, too. For, as he notes, technology has its own inescapable timetable. Leonardo da Vinci wasn't able to build any of the great ideas he came up with -- but "when it's time to railroad, people will start railroading. I have always found it amazing (and amusing), though, how an open-minded author of highly speculative science fiction can miss so completely the ways in which the future actually will change. At one point, Dan, while musing about inventing a "typing machine" that can spell correctly, notes that, with the miniaturization now possible in 2001, "it would be easy to pack a hundred thousand sound codes into a cubic foot" -- the equivalent of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Writing even in 1956, Heinlein badly underestimated the role of solid-state circuits in computerization. But it's a terrific romp of a story, nevertheless.

Heinlein was one of the "Big 3" of science fiction, which included Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. One of Heinlein's favorite subjects was time travel, including time travel equivalents. "The Door Into Summer" was Heinlein's first novel-length story to have a protagonist travel backward in time. Readers have consistently placed this novel among the top 100 novels of science fiction in a number of reader surveys.

Daniel Boone Davis is an engineer. We meet Davis just after he has lost control of his company, Hired Girl, to his former girlfriend, Belle, who is also the company's bookkeeper, and his former partner, Miles Gentry. Davis decides that he is going to take cold sleep and awake in his future in the year 2000, which is now our past. Before he goes through with this drastic step, he decides to confront Miles and Belle, which has to be a big mistake.

I thought Miles and Belle initially appeared to be ready to kill Davis. Finding paperwork on Davis showing that he was ready for cold sleep gave them an easy way out. Belle, who we learn is a skillful forger, makes a few changes on the paperwork and Davis is still going into cold sleep, but with a different company.

Davis awakes in the future only to learn what Yogi Berra already knew, the future just is not what it used to be. First Davis discovers that his investments went awry and he is penniless. Then he learns that he needs catching up in technology and culture to be a part of the world. He learns what happened to Belle, though he realizes that finding her was a big mistake. Ultimately, Davis wonders whether he made a big mistake taking cold sleep to travel into the future.

The novel gets quite interesting and complicated and I would rather leave the reader to have the fun of discovery. There are interesting twists and turns and a tidy end that is perhaps just a little too tidy, but it is all in good fun.

Many people consider Heinlein preachy in his books. While he does minimal preaching in this book, he does take the opportunity to make a few comments about society. Many of his comments are tongue-in-cheek and great fun. Some comments are subtle. Heinlein clearly has little respect for people who feel free to abuse the intellectual property rights of others, particularly inventors. He also had some interesting comments regarding the economy and the pitfalls of government control of the economy.

Heinlein had great fun with the paradox of time travel without ever getting into how someone could accomplish time travel. His purpose was to exploit some of the possibilities, and perhaps the absurdities, of time travel. It is certainly a fun book for those who like classic science fiction and especially classic time travel stories.

Enjoy!

First, I love time travel stories. I've been on a kick reading them lately. But it seems that the last few books I tried to read were so weighed down that I couldn't get through them without considerable effort (I just gave up on two of them). So I was as wary as one of Heinlein's cats when I started reading this book. Twenty pages in, I had my neck stretched fully out for Heinlein to scratch and was purring up a storm. (You have to read some Heinlein to understand why I used that illustration.)

His narrative is direct but engaging. There's some future science concepts, but none that an average person (especially in our time) can't grasp. It's a very quick read - I seem to like those since I read to escape the complexities of real life.

This isn't the kind of novel where a guy goes back into our established past and interacts with history. This is a novel about a guy in Heinlein's vision of two distinct parts of his own not too distant future - 1970s and 2000s. Since I read this in 2011, I was just as interested to see what Heinlein thought would happen in those decades as I was in the actual plot and characters of the novel. Other people have talked about the plot, so I'll mention a couple of things I found interesting about Heinlein's concepts.

1. Future technology. One of the only things he got right was the idea of video conferencing. But he assumed it would be adopted much earlier than it was. The truth is that while many of us use Skype and Face Time for specific kinds of calls in 2011, the technology is still not in wide adoption. Other than that, he believed that we'd have robotic machines (without AI) starting around 1970 which would be ubiquitous by 2000. You can also see that he has some concept of a desktop PC, or rather a machine that accepts commands through a keyboard and has a visual display (CADD), but naturally, he didn't work out the details quite correctly. Lastly, there's the idea of flying personal transport machines (cars, etc) that we've all been promised but are still awaiting.

2. 1950s sensability. I don't really know if this novel is supposed to be one of Heinlein's "young adult" novels or if he is just writing to the "clean, 1950s" standards. I like that there's no graphic violence or sex. But I also see that his views towards women are a little "quaint." I don't fault him for this, he's a product of his environment and he's certainly not disrespectful towards women in the novel. But the only intelligent woman is a con artist, the root of all evil in the story. All the other woman are sweet, "uncomplicated," domestic types - perfectly content to be homemakers. This wouldn't keep me from recommending this book, but it's just something to be aware of, especially if you want a young girl to read it. The one thing that does REALLY bother me is the final romantic resolution to the story. The main character decides to marry (the person he marries) based on ... what? What time have they spent together, getting to know one another and falling in love? I believe that they COULD fall in time, but they get married before they really have a chance to. Because if they actually DID fall in love during the time they spent together, that's just CREEPY and, frankly, illegal.

3. Heinlein's themes. Since reading this novel, I've read a second (The Puppet Masters). I'm convinced that he's obsessed with nudists and cats. (Personally, I couldn't think of a WORSE pet/owner combination.) I definitely plan to read more of his work, so I'll be on the lookout for how he works those two themes into the rest of his work.

Anyway, if you have children, I wouldn't have any problems letting a kid over 12 read this novel. But, as I said above, if she's a girl, just make sure she knows that she can grow up to have a mind just as brilliant as any man's...'cause Heinlein isn't going to tell her that.

3

There's always something entertaining about reading a science fiction novel written in the 1950s that talks about 2001 as the future. It's even more so, when the future is 1970. Both these cases apply in Robert Heinlein's The Door to Summer, and beyond that quaint 1950's version of the future, this is still an entertaining book.

The story begins in 1970, where Daniel Boone Davis is an inventor more interested in developing new gadgets than the money he can make from them. His general naivete about the real world also makes him fall for a sexy but vicious con artist who, together with Dan's business partner, wind up swindling Dan out of his company. A series of events lead to him being frozen for 30 years; he wakes up to a better world (partly because of his inventions), but one he's out of place in.

Dan is driven by two things: revenge and a chance to reunite with one of his few friends from his past life, his partner's 11 year old daughter (admittedly, there is something a little disturbing about his relationship with this girl, though nothing bad ever happens). Eventually, he learns of a way to travel through time and he cleverly sets a plan into motion.

I'm not the biggest Heinlein fan, but I do generally like what I read of his, and this fits that category. Time travel stories are often very tricky, but Heinlein does a capable job in dealing with the potential paradoxes. Plus, in this era of more sophisticated science fiction, it is fun to read a simpler story filled with the gee-whiz optimism of the earlier genre works. This is not the best known Heinlein work, but it is a good one.

I'm sure many other posters have given the summary, so I'll just jump into my brief review:

I found Heinlein's "Door into Summer" an interesting read. The pacing and writing reminded of Donald Westlake's "Somebody Owes Me Money" because the protagonist seems to have everything wrong going on, and he is trying to make sense of it. However, this pacing and writing ceased to remind me of Westlake after the long science exposition as well as the long science explanations. At this point, the book came on its own, but then became inconsistent in it's pacing, as well as confusing at some times.

Still, it was interesting and (as aforementioned) "entertaining"...as the protagonist seeks to undo the back-stabbing his friend (and fiancee) did to him by going back in time, make money, as well as make a promise to marry a friend (who happens to be an 11-year-old girl) once he returns to the future and she's older.

It's an interesting book, but it wasn't the "Oh, my goodness! You've got to read this!" book it probably could have been. I'm still new to, or at least reading sporadically, Heinlein novels(having listened to "Starship Troopers"...read "Podkayne of Mars," "Friday," as well as the short story "Menace from Earth") so I'm still on the look-out for that amazing Heinlein short story or novel.

This was like a Twilight Zone episode. The character dialog sounds like something Rod Serling would have written. Snappy, kind of smart a** but witty and interesting. Robert Heinlein is obviously a terrific writer and he does not disappoint. I had a great time and the pages just flew by. I love a good time travel story that does not get too caught up in the whole "gizmo-itis" that sometimes seems to be the point of the writer. This story was really about the way that people behave - heavy on the assumption that people are actually pretty normal and intelligent given their environment.

I would highly recommend this book for someone looking for a fun, happy time caught up in a fast moving story.

I'm a huge Heinlein fan, so I loved this book. Even an old, beat-up copy of this book works well, and I love having these three stories together in a hard-back. The only thing I was disappointed with was the era in which it was printed. Puppetmasters, for a time, was only printed in its abridged form. That is the version in this book. I recommended this to my brother, who bought it on audio, and as we listened to the first chapter, I heard dialogue that wasn't present in my copy. Very sad, I'll have to buy the unabridged version separately. Still, all the major plot points are still there, and the story is still thoroughly enjoyable.

I first read this as a 14 year old boy, in 1956, in the old F&SF magazine. A little later on, I bought it from the SF Book Club. I still have that old hardcover, and it is one of my most treasured possessions.

The basic story, in terms of time travel, is fascinating. Heinlein was a true thinker in the scientific sense, and he was a master of the art of following the logical consequences of a scientific breakthrough. Okay, perhaps actual cryogenic preservation is impossible (but all the votes aren't in yet, folks!), but he makes the events that result from such a possibility come to life.

Pete. Petronius the Arbiter. Oh... my... gawd. I have known this cat. Hell, I have lived with this cat! Maybe my "Pete" didn't like ginger ale, but he damn sure insisted on having his share of my Budweiser! I shared my dwelling with him (actually his name was "Guy", as in "Hi, guy!") for nearly 15 years before he decided to transfer his presence to a higher plane of existence. Every time I read this book, I tear up when reading about Pete.

If you think you're a science fiction fan, and yet you have never read (\"The Door into Summer", you are a neophyte pretender.

Get it.

Now.

I recently re-read this wonderful old science fiction classic by Robert Heinlein and was delighted how well it stood up against the inevitable "dating." In fact, the off-kilter forecasts were part of the charm of the experience. Even the trashy paperback cover and the misleading blurb by some hack who had barely read the book (my copy, not the one shown here), are irresistibly reminiscent of the paperback market of those days. Fun!

You see, it was published in 1956, but was set in the then "future" worlds of 1970 and 2000 (yes, there is time-travel involved). It is amazing how the naïve 1950's confidence in technology assumed that by 1970 the world would have smoothly survived a six-week atomic war, and set up goodies like self-driving cars on automated roadways. By 2000, things are even more "advanced." Yet he had no inkling of the impending arrival of computers, which were to change the world in very different ways from those he anticipated.

I've noticed this before with the science fiction writers of the 50's. They were, I think, all relatively young, and shared that vision that twenty years is a LONG time and forty or fifty years ahead was an unimaginable "great gulf of time." They didn't stop to think that the huge changes they envisioned couldn't really be physically possible in that sort of time-frame.

So what is it that remains so enjoyable about the book?

Well, first of all, Heinlein is a really good writer. His narrative flows smoothly, his ear for dialog is good, he crafts a neat plot. He has a truly characteristic "style" - that's not the word - "ethos", perhaps? Let's say that the writer he most strongly calls to mind is Kipling. He is not as elliptical as Rudyard K., but he has the same militaristic, no-nonsense approach to life, war, death and taxes. (The "Starship Troopers" movie made from his book in 1997 only captures the superficial aspects, not the social and political philosophy that underlay his writing.) He likes people who take responsibility for their actions. He has the same oddly old-fashioned view of women: he is romantic but horny; admires their deeper understanding of people; acknowledges their power in relationships, but is often paternalistic. Add a touch of H.G. Wells and you are getting something of the flavor.

Other good things: it has the best portrait of a cat I've ever read (excepting perhaps "The Cat Who Went To Paris".) The protagonist is Dan B. Davis, an engineer/inventor - isn't it fun to read of someone who does all his calculations with a slide-rule! Dan lives in an old Connecticut farmhouse with 11 doors "near the edge of the Manhattan near-miss" and his best friend and partner is Pete the cat. Pete is the source of the book's title. Pete holds his master responsible for "quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else." Pete disapproves of snow, so in winter, " I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment. . . . But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer."

Heinlein (as Dan) notes " . . cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy. . . .Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy." But Pete and he are the best of buddies.

Here's an example of his hit-and-miss forecasting. "The changes in the last thirty years...[1940-1970]. ...had been enough to bug a man's eyes out: two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of communism, the Great Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic power - why, when I was a kid they didn't even have multimorphs." (the last is never explained}.

Dan makes a semi-smart robot called "Hired Girl" which does household cleaning - governed by "tapes" in its memory- they cost him $39 each to make. (Later, in 2000, the reader is meant to be shocked by the incredibly huge price of a decent lunch: $10.) His little company steps up to the big time by renting a electric typewriter "with executive type face and carbon ribbon." (In those days these things were so expensive you might rent them rather than buy).

Another big idea of Dan's is for a drafting machine for engineers. "This gizmo would let them sit down in a big easy chair and tap keys and have the picture unfold on an easel above the keyboard. Depress three keys simultaneously and have a horizontal line appear just where you want it: depress another key and you fillet it in with a vertical line: depress two keys and two more in succession and draw a line at an exact slant." So near, and yet so far - the general-purpose computer was not on the horizon, let alone the interactive screen and the mouse. Does this have a lesson for those who try to extrapolate the future from today's technology? In 2000 he thinks about the possibility of a machine to take dictation, and reckons you could "pack a hundred thousand sound codes into a cubic foot." Heinlein, who died in 1988, must have looked back in later life and smiled at some of these predictions.

An unforgettable writer - one of a kind.

Dan Davis is an engineer in the futuristic world of 1970 (Robert A. Heinlein actually wrote this novel in 1957, so he was writing near-future fiction). After designing a whole line-up of automatons that clean up around the house, Dan goes into business with a friend of his and establishes a company called Hired Girl. His next big project is Flexible Frank, an automaton that can do all the things humans do. Unfortunately, Dan and his business partner have a falling-out over a conniving woman who manages to take lock, stock and barrel everything that's not tied down. After an angry confrontation, Dan is injected with a zombie drug and taken down to be put into Cold Sleep, a cryogenic chamber and awakens 30 years later in the year of 2000. After waking up, Dan finds he loves the world but misses his friends, in particular his cat, Pete, and almost-niece Frederika. The future holds marves Dan has never dreamed of, but it also holds a really strange past for him, one that he doesn't remember and feels certain he never lived through -- until he finds out that time travel exists.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote several books for young adults as well as adults, including STARSHIP TROOPERS, PUPPET MASTERS, HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, and THE ROLLING STONES. He won several awards and is well recognized in the science fiction industry.

As always, a Heinlein story -- especially from the early years -- goes down smooth. Never a missed note. I felt like Dan was one of those guys I've known all my life or would have no problem meeting. The discussion of the possibilities of time travel had come up in several stories during the 1950s, but Heinlein's unraveling of the special problems inherent in being able to do usch a thing are fresh and presented in a way everyone can understand. I liked Dan's cat, Pete, and was actually upset when I figured out the cat was dead in the past. The Heinlein thinking is present on every page, including a scene set on a nude resort.

One thing that kept jarring me throughout the novel was the fact that Dan was going to build a voice-activated typewriter. In the year 2000. But that's forgiveable. No one knew how big a change the PC was going to make. (Take a look at these reviews and the format they're coming to you on!) Even though Heinlein was off on his future history and didn't know how much personal computers were going to change things, his forward thinking in social and economic areas were and are cutting edge. He also stayed true to the science.

THE DOOR INTO SUMMER is a fantastic read for old-time SF readers, but may draw the younger set in as well. Heinlein stays true to the world as he knew it, and puts us face-to-face with the hero, turning Dan into an old friend almost at once. That was one of the best things about Heinlein's early work.

...there is no question that this would be among them.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read this book in the last 25 years. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times that I've tried to look at this book, with the firm goal of figuring out Heinlein's story construction rather than "reading" it, to discern exactly how he made it _so_ perfect. I've never succeeded, because Heinlein draws me into the story every damned time.

Enough so that it never bothers me that Heinlein's "future history" -- in the 50s, he wrote about events in 1970 and 2000 -- is completely out of sync with our own.

This is the quintessential time-travel SF novel, sure. But it's also a love story. And a story about what friendship means. And it also has a marvelous cat who behaves exactly as a cat should... with the appropriate level of cat-affection on the part of the book's hero. If you're owned by a cat, that should get you to buy this book immediately.

The Door into Summer is, by the way, completely "clean" -- you could give this book to a bright ten-year-old without worries.

Oh, okay, if you must have a short plot synopsis: our hero Dan is an inventor. His fiance and business partner pull a dirty deal on him, and rather than shoot him they put Dan into "deep freeze" to wake up 30 years hence. Only he arrives in 2000 with a grudge, and without his cat. To solve his problems, he has to experiment with time travel in the OTHER direction.

I have a library of over 500 SF/F books. And there are many Heinlein books that I love. There is no question that this is at the very top of the pile.

If you are a heinlein fan such as myself, it is bound to become apparent that Heinlein has a career that spans two major periods. By this, I mean that his books pre and post 'stranger in a strange land' are vastly different from one another. Its not that one period is better or worse than the other, its that the books that were written before the late 60's are different beasts than those created after.

Written in 1957, 'The door into Summer' falls nicely into Heinleins first golden age, when he was writing classics such as 'Starship Troopers'. This story is pretty simple, it has the complexity of a short story and is pretty straight forwards in comparison to the authors later works such as 'Time Enough for Love' or 'The cat who walks through walls'. However, the simplicity and dated sci-fi future views are quaint and the writing is so positive and chipper that it endures itself to the reader.

'Door into summer' is a tale of time travel. The protagonist is tricked into jumping into the year 2001 from the year 1970. Having been written in 1957, both of these time periods required a bit of musing on Heinlein's part. Its interesting to see how he sees the future now that we are well past 2001. Things that have yet to come to pass are bases on the moon, mars, and Venus, cars that drive themselves, robots that pretty much do everything, and a lot more. Its also interesting to see how much more complicated our world is today in comparison to what heinlein imagined. Its pretty amazing the way that computers have impacted our society and how inconceivable they were to those living just half a century ago.

'Door into Summer', is not my favorite Heinlein by any means. But it does hold its head proudly and is well worth reading. I think the main difference between the stories written before and after 'Stranger...' is that the earlier work pretty much can be enjoyed by any kid older than 12 as well as adults, and the later is truly more suited to a more sophisticated audience. 'Door...' is a pretty simple book. Nothing wrong with that, but it also makes me pause before I give it 5 stars because I know that as good as it is, I could probably find an easy 10 Heinlein books I enjoyed more.

Its not really easy to write from a first person perspective, because so many plot devices become unavailable when you can only tell what one character sees, hears, and does as it happens. Heinlein wrote many first person novels, and many are among his best.

"Door" doesn't get nearly the acclaim of many other Heinlein novels, yet it is eminently entertaining and as fully satisfying as ALL of the rest of his novels.

The hero is "done wrong", "done wrong again", and "done wrong yet AGAIN", putting him well behind the eight ball in every way before the story even gets off to much of a start. In fact, he may have the least going for him early on of any Heinlein character ever. But he displays the needed tenacity to overcome all these setbacks and winds up making a fight out of it. In the process RAH spins a tale of time travel with delightfully complicated plotting.

I don't like to give away a lot of the plot in these reviews, that's for you to discover and enjoy during the course of reading the book. I can tell you that if you like any Heinlein at all, you'll thoroughly enjoy this book. If you do enjoy this book, you will also enjoy a short story of Heinlein's, "By His Bootstraps", which can be found in a couple of his short story collections.

Incidentally, I read copiously of Heinlein as a teenager. All of his characters display a pragmatic but ever present tenacity, which had a great influence on my attitude towards life and its challenges. I give deep thanks to RAH for this gift.

One of my favorite Heinlein novels for fifty years now, though the book's "future" has long ago receded into the past. The book was written in 1956, and starts out in 1970, where electronic wizard Dan Davis has developed (in a West Coast garage!) a functional household robot. But his nasty partner and his even nastier girl friend steal the invention and put Dan away in a "cold sleep" facility, where he sleeps away the next 30 years. When he awakes in 2000, he finds that descendants of his invention are everywhere. He assumes he'll never learn why, and never be able to tie up some very important loose ends from his old like, but then -- shazam! -- he finds a way back to the past. I suppose the characters are pretty two dimensional, but I loved them as a child and I still do. The plot is still a winner, and some of the "future history" looks surprisingly prescient.

It was on the second or the third try that I finally read the book. I would take it out from the shelf and place it on the night stand by my bed with the intention that it would be the next thing I'd start reading. And somehow I'd always put it back and read something else. I had a feeling I wouldn't like this book.

But boy, was I wrong. The first time I seriously took to reading it, from the very first paragraph - I had a smile on my face. It managed to be funny without even trying. It was in the little things, and the way Daniel thought and talked. But what I liked most about the book was a feeling of immense optimism about the future and the things to come. It really filled me with energy and reminded me of how I used to think about life and possibilities when I was a kid.

I finished it in 2 sittings, it is a great book that I loved reading and would recommend it to anyone.

I rank this among Heinlein's three absolutely magisterial novels (the other two being _Double Star_ and _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_). Such judgments are notoriously subjective and controversial. But I feel safe in saying that any SF reader will find something to enjoy in this marvelous story.
It's part SF, part fairy tale, and part just plain good storytelling. Engineer/inventor Daniel Boone Davis and his feline companion Petronius the Arbiter are two of Heinlein's best-realized characters; the plot here is well-conceived and evenly, swiftly paced.
In case you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you. The setup is that Davis has just been rooked by his best friend and his fiancee, and he's out to do something about it. What happens then is the story itself, so I won't tell you; I'll just say that the time-travel aspect is worked out every bit as neatly as in "By His Bootstraps", and the tale is one of Heinlein's most humane ever. I've read it more times than I can count, and there's a bit near the end that _always_ gets me. (You'll know what I mean when you get there.)
Heinlein wrote this at the peak of his talent. If you haven't read it yet, don't miss it.

The Door Into Summer is a Robert A. Heinlein novel from 1957 (serialized in 1956), the very height of his glorious "middle period", when he was still writing compact novels, and when he was also writing his juveniles: in my opinion, his most productive period. The novel was published almost in parallel with his first Hugo Winner, Double Star, and those two novels surely rank among his best.
The Door Into Summer is one of Heinlein's sunniest novels, and one of his most straightforwardly enjoyable. At the same time, it's a little slight next to Double Star, or indeed next to some of his novels I which I don't think are as successful, but which are certainly more ambitious: Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and one of my other favorite Heinlein novels, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And by slight I don't mean just length (it's much of a length with Double Star, though much shorter than any of the later adult novels): thematically it's just not terribly challenging. But to say that is to risk denigrating the book unfairly: what it does, it does almost perfectly, and it ends up being quite moving as well. It's like a low-degree of difficulty dive executed with perfection: and such a thing is better than a high degree of difficulty dive ending in a bellyflop (which, sad to say, might describe some of Heinlein's late work).
The book opens in 1970, a few years after the Six Weeks War (a nuclear war: yes, this book was written in the 1950s). Dan Davis is a successful inventor. His main product is an automated "cleaning lady" called Hired Girl. He's got a booming new company, run from a business standpoint by his good friend Miles Gentry, and the company secretary, the beautiful Belle Darkin, is engaged to marry him. He is owned by a nice cat called Petronius Arbiter, and he has another great friend in Miles' 11 year old stepdaughter Frederica (Ricky). He has just finished designing an even better machine: an all-purpose automaton called Flexible Frank. Could life be any better?
Naturally, it all crashes on him. Miles and Belle betray him, marrying each other, forcing him out of the company, stealing his patents, even chasing away his cat. Then they stuff him into a cold sleep establishment, arranging for him to wake up in the year 2000, too late to take any action. Dan wakes in the year 2000, and several chapters are taken in giving us a view of the year 2000, while Dan relearns engineering, and tracks down the traces of Miles and Belle, and then looks for Ricky. What he finds is very surprising indeed, and he is driven to a desperate attempt to set his future right.
This book is set mostly in 2000, so one might be tempted to check Heinlein's predictions. Naturally, they are mostly misses (though he does mention something a lot like ATM machines, and something a lot like computer aided drafting). But that's unimportant: the light the predictions throw on the way people thought about the future in the 1950s is interesting. And the sum total of the changes Heinlein shows is a better world, which is Heinlein's real theme. To quote: "the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. ... Most of these long-haired belittlers can't drive a nail or use a slide rule, I'd like to ... ship them back to the twelfth century -- then let them enjoy it." For Dan Davis, the Door into Summer is the door to the future. (And that title image, "the Door into Summer", is one of Heinlein's happier literary creations.) This bright, sweet, optimistic novel is pure fun to read.

At the time he was writing, Heinlein's books were so much better than all the others because he was so much smarter than most other writers. He thought things through first (which many others did too), but then he added an element that many other sf writers didn't (and some STILL don't): humanity.
Dan Davis, an inventor, narrates the story. He's a brilliant inventor and has come up with some pretty amazing gadgets, including Hired Girl, a robot who cleans, sweeps, vacuums, mops, and generally works all day long without supervision. Dan's problems begin mounting when he learns he's been betrayed by his partner. And to add insult to injury, Dan's fiancée is in on the betrayal as well. As if betrayal alone isn't enough, the two conspirators have Dan placed into a 30-year suspended animation. Dan wakes up 30 years later and is focused on one thing: revenge.
Now lots of authors could have taken the above premise and come up with an entertaining story. Heinlein did this and much more. He shows us that change (for individuals and for all humanity) is difficult, but not impossible. The future is full of challenges, but no matter how much technology changes, no matter how much language, currency, and trends change, man's basic instincts and attitudes remain constant.
Heinlein also tackles the implications of time travel better than anyone else from this period. (The book first appeared in 1957.) The problem of time travel is well thought out and logical. (Wish you could say that about every time travel story.) If you haven't read Heinlein, or if all you've read is `Stranger in a Strange Land,' `Starship Troopers,' or `The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' (all great books), treat yourself to a fun, intelligent read from one of the true masters.

I think this is probably one of Heinlein's most optimistic novels, for once the protagonist isn't wrestling with some great social injustice or attempting to navigate his way through the social complexities of either the present day or some vaguely defined future . . . simply put, it's a book that's fun and one that makes you cheer the good guy for being himself and in the sheer pleasure of watching him come back from left field to pull out a victory using only his wits and ingenuity. Here that man is Dan Davis, a man who loves his cat and loves inventing. He's not too good at business so he has a good friend help him and eventually they hire a beautiful secretary . . . eventually both screw him over royally and get him thrown into "Cold Sleep", where he sleeps for thirty years until the year 2000. The middle section of the book is mostly devoted to showing how different and similar the future world might be, I don't think Heinlein seriously thought he could predict the future (to this date, no SF author has, they're not futurologists) because it's nothing like our world, however it's darn refreshing to see a world where the future is actually better than the present in just about every way . . . too many SF novels have dark depressing futures that their characters just want to escape from. The plotting here is swift, the twists, while you can probably see most of them coming it's fun to see how they're executed (that's ninety percent of the trick sometimes) and the main characters that you're supposed to like are fun, while you can't help but boo the characters you're not supposed to like. Even the cat is fun. Though, am I the only one who finds the relationship between Dan and his friend's stepdaughter Ricky to be just a little bit . . . disturbing? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. All in all not a deeply complex book and not one that will take up most of your time, but it's probably one of everyone's favorite Heinlein's books (if only for the supurbly evocative title) and ranks as one of his most memorable.

Dan the engineer does some inventing that would take a team of researchers years. He invents a household maid robot from commonly available parts. Here we are fifty years later and engineers still haven't figured that one out. Seriously underestimated are the computer sensors, controls and programs that are required for such a machine. I suppose he ought to be given credit for being aware of the possibilities of computer controls in the 1950s when computers were huge vacuum tube devices. Transistors hadn't yet been invented, or at least not well known. He didn't foresee the end of tubes. His computer memory was built of hypothesized on memory tubes. Oh well. Despite his depiction of electronically controlled robots, his far future engineers still used slide rules, forgetting that calculation is one of the easiest things for a computer to do, far easier than controlling a robot or drawing a plan.
His characters were pretty much one dimension. Heinlein never did learn to be very good at characters even years later. The plot is interesting for all the techo geeks. He gets swindled out of his company by an evil woman and deposited in 30-year time suspension "long sleep." She looks him up later though she's now old and he's still young. I got a laugh at the vision of 2001, the year he returns to life. Many things have changed but in ways he didn't imagine. We do have lots of computers, but no robot maids, nor FTL space travel, nor time travel. There never was W.W. III, for example. The business swindles are hard to follow. There is a humorous moment when Dan "drops from the sky" into a nudist resort near Denver.
It's a fun read on an afternoon.

At least until the group of books he wrote very late in his career, Heinlein tackled the theme of time travel very rarely, but when he did, most notably in "By His Bootstraps" and "...All You Zombies", the results were exemplary. With this book, Heinlein not only deals with time travel in a logically consistent manner, he manages to foresee CAD (computer aided drafting), the equivalent of Velcro for clothing, cryogenics applied as a method people might use to freeze themselves hoping for later medical advances to cure their ills, and the proliferation of robotics down to the household level. This last prediction hasn't come true yet, but it's at least on the horizon. In all, a remarkable set of technological predictions. But these are just side points to an excellent story of love and betrayal, told in first person from the viewpoint of one Daniel Boone Davis, inventor, engineer, and totally naive in the ways of women.

It's this last trait that leads to all the troubles Davis faces, as he falls head-over-heels for the secretary he and his partner hire to help run their new business of making and marketing his Hired Girl robot. Naturally, the 'secretary' is a sharpie out to take the company for all she can get, and she and Davis' partner eventually manage to screw Davis royally, leaving him bitter and willing to take the 'Cold Sleep' treatment for 30 years to get away from the mess. Before going to sleep, however, he decides to talk to his partner one last time. The ensuing scene, with his partner and secretary being attacked by his cat Pete while he is drugged into immobility, is one of the most amusing and endearing 'fights' in all of SF. The 'fight', however valiant, is lost, and Davis ends up taking the cold sleep, to awake in the year 2000.

His impressions and problems for that year, and how he eventually finds a way to travel back to the year 1970 in order to straighten out the problems with his former partner and secretary, form the balance of this fine adventure. Through all of this, Heinlein, most unusually for him, paints an extremely optimistic viewpoint, both for scientific advances and for human nature. Lacking in the heavy philosophy that so often characterizes his later works, it never the less has something important to say about the human condition, best exemplified by this quote: "I had taken a partner once before -- but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn't any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal. In the end."

A fun, fast read, and the characterization of Davis is excellent, a person you get to know and admire for all his block-headed stubbornness. The ending will probably bring tears to your eyes -- hopefully, yes, one of the doors of your house will be a Door into Summer, if you just keep trying doors.

This book probably missed out on a Hugo due to an accident of timing, as the 1957 World Science Fiction Convention was held in London and decided not to give out any Hugos for fiction. Perhaps it will be awarded a 'Retro' Hugo in 2007 - it deserves it.

When you hang on to a book through three decades, three trans-continental moves and various other tidal forces such as marriage and kids you either a) are very possesive about books (guilty) or b) you have a book worth hanging on to - one of those that is lovingly packed for a move well before the last-minute frenzy to shove everything into boxes and one that makes 'home' out of wherever those boxes are unpacked.
Heinlein wrote simply a ton of excellent science fiction and his place in the pantheon of that genre is so assured as to be fundamental. So when a lot of people, and check the number of reviews on this well-aged book, say it might be one of his best it's worth at a minimum a second look.
In this story you get not just time travel, cryogenic sleep, and robots, you get a quick tour through the meanings of friendship, love, deceit, the sweetness of affection and the bitterness of betrayal and if you don't have a good time along the way then there's really nothing I can think of to recommend for you with any likelihood of better luck. I'm sure there are lots of fine people who despise 'The Door Into Summer', I just don't know any of them.
My original copy has survived three decades in my possession; it's original cost was $1.50. Today's version costs a bit more but it'll have acid-free paper and probably better typeface and binding. The contents still outweigh the cost by a wide margin.

The Door Into Summer was a great novel. I loved the ideas of an inventor engineer who lives in the future of 1970 and who takes the cold sleep to 2001 after being duped by his lover and best friend.
One weakness for me was the love relationship with his friends very young ward (the one they saved after the war) was strange given the criminal age difference. Granted, later the difference is less so but its still weird. If she had been some employee at the plant and if Heinlein had predicted computers and the internet he would have had a perfect book. However, take into account that the novel was written around 1956 and that technology in the prior 15 -20 years had changed dramatically I can see the optimism for robotic advances.
Too bad he didn't set it a little further in the future so that younger readers could still read it without rolling their eyes. Still, he tells a cool detective story and rationalizes time travel in a way that rebels against alternate time lines a bit. As an adult who can consider the time it was written it is still a great discovery.

Written in 1957, this story translates well into the "future". The main character travels from futuristic 1970 to even-more futuristic 2000 and the technology predictions aren't bad -- robots, banks electronically interconnected, even suspended animation.

This isn't a ground-breaking story one might expect from Heinlein, but it's an acceptable read nonetheless. As they say... "Never read a Heinlein thicker than your thumb!"

you will never finish thinking about.

Dan Davis is a very talented young engineer. His inventions are works of genius, practical, reliable and capable of making life in general much easier. Unfortunately his talents in selecting business partners and girlfriends aren't nearly as good.

Dan and his friend/partner Miles have started an engineering firm capitializing on Dan's inventions and Miles' business talents. They have been quite successful, their Hired Girl robot is in demand and life is quite promising for Miles, Dan and their families, Miles' stepdaughter Ricky and Dan's cat Pete. Their business has been so good that they have hired a secretary/assistant Belle, to handle the day-to-day details....big mistake.

The inevitable love triangle leads to an end of a friendship and business and the beginning of a long strange tale of time-travel and paradoxes.

This is one of my favorite novels by my favorite author. It is amazing at how many RAH predictions, made in 1957, about 2000 come to pass. ATM's, CAD's automatic vacuums (Roombas), velcro have all become part of the 21st century but were still farfetched ideas when I first read this novel in the early 70's.

For fans of RAH many of his favorite themes are present in this story, time travel, cats, societal changes, elimination of household drugery and May/December relationships (with just a hint of incest). It also shows yet again that although RAH might love and revere women he just can't seem to treat them as equals.

Door into Summer is one of Heinlein's best novels. Daniel Davis, an inventor with no head for business, has been cheated by his fiancé and his partner, and wants revenge. Instead he winds up being drugged and given the "long sleep", waking up 30 years in the future. But gradually he notices something very odd about the future: many devices that are in common use, are identical to inventions he had imagined building in the past, but never got around to making before his involuntary journey into the future.
Time travel novels are often filled with paradoxes, and this is one of the most twisted. Davis has his chance to get the revenge he wanted, after all, by returning to his original time. A wonderful novel: I highly recommend it.

I am in the process of re-reading many of the SF books I first read in my youth, and The Door Into Summer is among the better ones. It's a short little book: only 154 pages of actual story text, and it reads more like an extended short story than a full-length novel. As others have pointed out, the book is hopelessly outdated in its visions of future technology, but that does not really detract from it all that much. Dan, the main character, is likable, the story is entertaining and moderately suspenseful, and if you like cats you'll be charmed by the descriptions of Dan's fearless feline companion, Pete.

The book's main weakness is that you, the reader, will pick up on clues about what's going on long before Dan does... which makes you wonder how smart he really is. And the ending feels a bit rushed - as if Heinlein suddenly had to wrap things up in a hurry. Otherwise, you'd think he'd flesh things out more, since the book is so short.

This is a different kind of story. It starts simple enough, a hard working inventor who trusts his business associates implicitly, who has a quirky cat(aren't they all!), and who falls for a legal loophole trap in which his trusted associates take his hard earned company away from him. The science in this novel provides some twists to the story which even took me for surprise at the end. Cat lovers will laugh with understanding at this strong-willed, full-of-personality feline who is the key to understanding the temporal anomoly.
The setting, personalities, conversations are all richly described and told in such great form. While the ideas of 'Hired Girl' and other household robots didn't take off like this, the Jetsons-esque concept is very 50's, but fun to read. The time travel concept is something to think about, as well as the practicality problems associated with beliving the future will hold a better oppourtunity without making an investment to make it better. A book I will read again.

This is one of the best Heinlein stories I have ever read, and I'm almost done reading just about everything he has written that I can find... It bridges the pacing and cleverness of his classic pulp stories ("-- All you Zombies --") with the time-travel age-bending love stories of juveniles like "Time for the Stars" and hints at the breakout from the puritanical restrictions on sexuality that was about to explode shortly thereafter with the publication of Stranger in a Strange Land.

It is fast paced, littered with plot clues that are sometimes obvious, and sometimes subtle, and human. Yes, Dan isn't nearly as fleshed out as characters in his other books, but with the limitations on story length, and being in first person, I feel the character develops through actions and plot well enough to understand him. By and by, this story focuses on the winding plot of the time paradox, and does it cleverly and with heart.

Critics have blasted Dan's cat 'obsession,' without truly understanding that Heinlein was a cat person more than most. Heinlein would never take the big sleep without his cat, and its not just a silly quirk. Some people actually do have feelings....

The cleverness in which the romantic plotline wraps up made me teary-eyed, however that might have been the effects of the rum I had been drinking last night before I finished the book. This IS Heinlein's "Lolita" : a clever masterpiece of storytelling wrapped around a (sort of) taboo love story.

You get glimpses of the Heinlein to come with his sub-plots and commentary on politics, bathrooms, cats, and sexuality, and it's all so nicely woven into the plotline that this is enjoyable to the masses as well as the Heinlein-o-phile such as myself.

Those to condemn this book for his inaccuracy on his vision of future technology are not looking at this correctly. 50 years later, it holds up in its essence: a very strong tale of action, intrigue, betrayal and love. What more could one ask for?