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The Past Through Tomorrow

(Future History or "Heinlein Timeline" #1-21)

Robert A. Heinlein,

Damon Knight (Introduction)

4.17 · Rating details · 16,113 ratings · 140 reviews

Here in one monumental volume are all 21 of the stories, novellas and novels making up Heinlein's famous Future History—the rich, imaginative architecture of Man's destiny that many consider his greatest and most prophetic work.

Contents:
* Introduction - Damon Knight
* Life-Line
* The Roads Must Roll
* Blowups Happen
* The Man Who Sold the Moon
* Delilah and the Space-Rigger
* Sp ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 830 pages

Published July 15th 1987 by Ace (first published March 28th 1967)

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Mar 12, 2020 Graeme Rodaughan is currently reading it

Shelves: science-fiction, anthologies

Re-reading a classic from my youth. Proceeding with most recent read at the top of the list.

15/Jun/20: 9. Gentlemen, Be Seated: Up next...

15/Jun/20: 8. The Long Watch: Love and honor overcome a tyrant. Simple, moving, brilliant storytelling. 5 'Love before Dishonor,' stars.

15/Jun/20: 7. Requiem: A man finally achieves his life-long dream only moments before his death - and it is enough. 5 'life-fulfilled,' stars.

14/Jun/20: 6. Space Jockey: A cautionary tale about allowing bratty spoiled 13 year ...more

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Nov 09, 2018 Manuel Antão rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1980

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Conveyor Belts: "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert A. Heinlein

(Original Review, 1980-10-13)

People have complained about roads as conveyor belts as represented in Heinlein's THE ROADS MUST ROLL as being an inefficient means of transportation because of a number of reasons, some of those being energy efficiency and the problems of handicapped people using them. Instead of building them as a single conveyor belt, how about building the ...more

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May 13, 2012 Jay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

On the afternoon of Saturday, October 4th, 1975, having just turned thirteen years old a few weeks before, I rode my bicycle about 2 1/2 miles to the nearest bookstore to my house that sold science fiction books--the long-defunct Books & Friends in Oakton, VA. I know this not because I remember the event, but because I wrote it in the back of a paperback copy of "The Past Through Tomorrow," an 830-page collection of Robert Heinlein's "Future History" stories. What I do remember is that I didn't On the afternoon of Saturday, October 4th, 1975, having just turned thirteen years old a few weeks before, I rode my bicycle about 2 1/2 miles to the nearest bookstore to my house that sold science fiction books--the long-defunct Books & Friends in Oakton, VA. I know this not because I remember the event, but because I wrote it in the back of a paperback copy of "The Past Through Tomorrow," an 830-page collection of Robert Heinlein's "Future History" stories. What I do remember is that I didn't start reading the book right away, but got absorbed in it the next year during a long family car trip from Virginia to Louisiana. This book, along with some "Archie" and "Superman" comics, helped make the trip bearable for me.

Virtually all the stories in this collection were written between 1939 and 1949, with a couple of them dating from, or having been revised, about ten years later. Since the stories appear in "chronological" order (from the point of view of Heinlein's telling of history), but they were not written in that order, one can't help but conclude that Heinlein had an outline of his history already in mind 1939; and indeed this is confirmed in the introduction by Damon Knight, which quotes one of Heinlein's editors writing in February 1941: "...Heinlein's science fiction is laid against a common background of a proposed future history of the world and of the United States. Heinlein's worked the thing out in detail...he has an outlined and graphed history of the future with characters, dates of major discoveries, etc., plotted in." Indeed, a version of this graph is reproduced in the book. What astounds me is that this was a work of imagination almost equivalent to Tolkien's history of Middle Earth, and yet it is not nearly so well known. That seems a shame to me.

The stories begin with present-day (that is, 1939) America, and the invention of a machine that can tell how long someone is going to live ["Life-Line"]. In retrospect this story almost looks like it doesn't belong in the collection, since the machine is destroyed shortly after it is unveiled, and its inventor Dr. Pinero is killed. Only much later, in the final story, does the main character refer back to the machine and to Pinero, making a nice closure for the reader.

There is a stately progression through the short stories, which tell of the invention of moving roadways between American cities ["The Roads Must Roll," "Blowups Happen"]. These stories don't have a major impact on the rest of the history, but the roads are mentioned in passing in later stories.

Then the real meat of the timeline gets started with what I call the Harriman Cycle--stories about space pioneer Delos David Harriman--that document man's first steps into space, landing on the moon, and establishment of permanent lunar settlements (all done by private companies, I'll add, and not by governments). These stories are "The Man Who Sold the Moon," "Delilah and the Space Rigger," "Space Jockey," and "Requiem," by the end of which travel between Earth and bases on the moon was, if not commonplace, more common that Space Shuttle launches at the height of that program.

The series continues with "The Long Watch," "Gentlemen, Be Seated," "The Black Pits of Luna," "'It's Great To Be Back!'," "--We Also Walk Dogs," and "Searchlight." These stories all describe life on the Moon, politics between Earth and the cities on Luna, and the evolving technology of the late 1900s and early 2000s, as Heinlein saw it (boy, don't I wish).

Man moves further afield in "The Green Hills of Earth" and "Logic of Empire," which tell of human settlements on Mars and Venus--both of which worlds have indigenous life. So too, one could say, does the Moon by now, with whole generations of humans being born and living their lives there, as shown in "The Menace From Earth."

The progression of civilization--in particular, American civilization, since other nationalities are rarely mentioned in any of the above stories--into space seems to be abruptly interrupted with a story that, at first read, doesn't seem to belong in this collection at all. "'If This Goes On--'" is the tale of an American theocracy ruled by a Prophet from the city of New Jerusalem (Kansas City, I think). Only slowly does it become clear to the reader that the US suffered a sort of coup around 2016 and this new government was set up, with all the trappings of a heaven on Earth but in reality a police state very similar to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia (which, considering the story was written in 1940, it was not prescient per se but extremely timely and shows that Heinlein was acutely aware of developments and conditions across the world). The story deals with events that would later be incorporated into the collection "Revolt in 2100," which is about when it takes place. SPOILER ALERT: The Prophet is overthrown in this story, and a new government set up which is clearly descended from the old US Republic, but is a more Utopian-minded form.

Throughout "'If This Goes On--'" and the following story, "Coventry," the new society in America is examined in some detail but barely any mention is made of other countries, Luna, or the colonies on Mars and Venus. Space travel appears to be banned by the Prophet and all traces of it expunged from the history books. This is explained to a small degree in "Methuselah's Children," the final story in the collection and the first appearance of the famous (and immortal) character Woodrow Wilson Smith, aka Lazarus Long.

I didn't mean for this review to be a detailed explication of Heinlein's Future History, which is a good thing because I've gone on too long already. There are plenty of scholarly discussions of Heinlein's work, and this collection in particular, online--along with descriptions of stories he meant to include but never wrote, stories that were written but left out, and so on. Let me just say in closing that if you are a Heinlein fan and want to immerse yourself in the universe that seems to have been his main playground of imagination, get a copy of "The Past Through Tomorrow" and dive in. Some of the stories are a little dated in their language and social mores by today's standards, but remember when they were written and enjoy the genius of the man who was able to project the technology and society of 1940s America and project it, plausibly, centuries into the future. ...more

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Aug 10, 2019 Jason Pettus rated it did not like it

Shelves: late-modernism, sci-fi, smart-nerdy, classic

I recently learned that back in 1966, when the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention chose Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books to receive a special Hugo Award for the best sci-fi series of all time, what came in second was Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" series. For those who don't know, it's a collection of several dozen short stories and novellas that he published in random order and in a myriad of different magazines over twenty years, but that nonetheless are all set in the s I recently learned that back in 1966, when the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention chose Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books to receive a special Hugo Award for the best sci-fi series of all time, what came in second was Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" series. For those who don't know, it's a collection of several dozen short stories and novellas that he published in random order and in a myriad of different magazines over twenty years, but that nonetheless are all set in the same persistent alternative future and share a common timeline, major occurrences and major characters, an impressive feat that became all the more so when they were finally collected and put in chronological order in a single massive thousand-page volume in 1967. And so I thought this would be a perfect way for me to start what I hope to be a pervasive overview of Heinlein's entire career over the next couple of years; after all, most of these stories were published in the 1940s and '50s decades when he was establishing his bona fides for the first time, and I've been told heavily influence his later more mature novels like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls that he's much better remembered for at this point.

So what a profound shock, then, to start in on this earlier this year and realize that they are barely readable now, 50 to 70 years after they were originally published, not just dated but so objectively awful that it took me literally six months to finally force myself to choke my way through to the end. The main problem here is that Heinlein is famously known as one of the first popular proponents of what's now known as "hard science fiction," in which actual plausible scientific notions from our own age are implanted into fiction set in the future; but since he was one of the first people in literary history to do this, his technique for implanting this modern science is so awkward and blocky as to be ludicrous, with many of these stories essentially containing only a few paragraphs of actual fictional narrative, to serve as an excuse for Heinlein to write another 20 pages of nonfiction discourse about the latest the human race knows about nuclear fission, or jet fuel, or the effect of weightlessness on the human body. Then when he finally gets out of his own way and manges to actually write some narrative fiction, these particular stories turn out to be textbook examples of everything atrocious that made sci-fi such an unrespected and hacky genre in these years -- the characters are largely cardboard cutouts, the dialogue as stilted as a Tommy Wiseau script, gleefully embracing every sexual and racial stereotype that even existed in the Mid-Century Modernist era, setting the stage for the James Kirk "rah rah white males" trope that dominated this genre for decades after.

If this was considered in 1966 to be one of the best science-fiction projects that industry had ever produced, then it's a profound reminder of just how far science-fiction has progressed and matured in the half-century since, as well as a virtual poster-child for how necessary the so-called "New Wave" of sci-fi that was in full swing at the time actually was for the revitalization of this genre. In this, then, reading The Past Through Tomorrow in the 2010s can be a very instructive experience, an enlightening look at why it took so long for sci-fi to gain mainstream acceptance and admiration in our society. But if you're simply looking to read some great work by Heinlein, do yourself a favor and skip this entirely, and go straight to the books from the late '60s through early '80s when he was at the height of his creative powers. ...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Jim rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1paper, scifi, 2fiction

This is a compilation of 21 Heinlein short stories in his 'Future History'. If you've never read Heinlein & want a good introduction, this is probably the best single book of his works you can buy. You'll see quite a range of his best.

The paperback is as fat as one of Jordan's books & contains some novella length stories - two, "Revolt in 2100" & "Methuselah's Children" were published as novels. Others are title stories from other short story collections "The Green Hills of Earth" & "The Man Wh ...more

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May 25, 2018 Al "Tank" rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a huge tomb: 830 pages and and inch-and-three-quarters thick. It contains 21 stories, some of which are novel-length for that time (50,000 words). The last story, "Methuselah's Children" has been published as a stand-alone novel (yes, I have it).

I won't try to review all of the stories for fear of boring everyone. It's enough that most of them are highly entertaining, even by today's standards, and all fit within Heinlein's "future history" timeline.

Of the stories, "Methuselah's Children ...more

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Jan 21, 2017 Lindsey rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

A worthy read for Heinlein's fans. The quality of the stories varies a bit, as they were written at different times, but having them in this collection and chronologically ordered helps keep the "future history" timeline straight.

The stories suffer from Heinlein's usual flaws (i.e. female characters) but also showcase his strengths (e.g. pushing new social and political ideas, a love and veneration of science). This collection is a good example of why Heinlein is considered one of the big three ...more

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Jul 14, 2017 Joan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, read-in-2017, adult-books, sci-fi, alternative-history

This is probably one of Heinlein's greatest works in terms of weaving together many stories with a self consistent story line. In it he introduces his best known character, Lazarus Long. Probably his next best character in terms of references to the character in other stories, would be D.D. Harriman. And to be honest, in many ways Harriman was a more likable character than Lazarus Long. Lazarus Long is sexist (gets much worse in other books and isn't all that noticeable in this one), selfish, se ...more

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Nov 18, 2017 Nicholas Whyte rated it really liked it

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2910459.html

Heinlein's mammoth future history: 21 stories published as a collection in 1967, though in fact all but two originally came out between 1939 and 1949, outlining the future development of humanity through the coming centuries.

Heinlein misses a lot of things - notably the rise of information technology; his 23rd century spaceships are still running with slide rules. Some of these are a bit too sentimental, some based on concepts that don't really resonat ...more

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Jan 30, 2012 Russell Fletcher rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, heinlein, favorites

The Past Through Tomorrow is a book of short stories by Robert A. Heinlein. It is my favorite science fiction book. (It may be my favorite book period.) Even though there are plenty of other things to read, I have to reread.it every year or two. The character D.D. Harriman is certainly an inventor ahead of his time, even though in his timeline he had different inventions to get into space.

Now for divergent thoughts not in this book but brought on by thinking about this book.
Speaking of inventors ...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Zachary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Though I greatly enjoy Heinlen's writing, I didn't think I'd read very many of his short stories. Surprisingly, I had read "Life-Line", which is the first story in this book. But I didn't mind re-reading it one bit! One thing I had not realized before was that it was the first short story Heinlen had ever submitted for publication. I think the book is worth getting for it alone.

Now, not only is this book just an incredible collection of plain good 'ole fashioned story-telling at it's best, but t ...more

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Nov 11, 2012 M.M. Strawberry Library & Reviews rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, awesome-book, author-robert-a-heinlein, outer-space, 100-all-time-bestest-books-ever

This is the first Heinlein book I ever read, and I have never looked back since. A fantastic collection of thought-provoking and interconnected stories made for a very excellent read. Personal;ly, my favorite stories were 'Requiem' and 'The Man who sold the Moon'. 'Methuselah's Children' is also part of this collection, introducing you to the Howard Families (and Lazarus Long) ...more

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Aug 22, 2007 Craig rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The best of Heinlein's classic future history short fiction. Arguably the best single-author collection of science fiction ever. I'd say that these stories did more to shape modern sf than any other works. ...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Fredrick Danysh rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

This is a collection of twenty-one vintage Heinlein short stories with a wide variety of plots. This is a great read for the science fiction fan. There are several classics in the collection. Inludes the novel METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN. ...more

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Jul 02, 2014 Jessica Zoop rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, read-kevin

Entertaining on the whole but Heinlein's high handed opinion of men, coupled with his disdain /annoyance of women, children, and parents got old. It feels like SciFi based Ayn Rand diatribe with a hatred of heavy handed government meddling in the affairs of get-the-job-done men. ...more

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Sep 30, 2011 Nandakishore Varma rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

I got this for a song at the roadside. I never knew that it was a compendium of stories describing Heinlein's future universe: its development through time and space. Very enjoyable reading. ...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Stuart rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic-sf, galaxy-spanning, short-stories, favorites

I think Heinlein was a better SF writer at shorter lengths, though this book is over 800 pages long. Methuseluh's Children is the best of them. ...more

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Oct 31, 2017 Michael Battaglia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don't know if Robert Heinlein had the first "future history" as we (and John Campbell) understood it, although he was probably one of the more extensive ones that had come down the pike thus far in the world of SF. While other writers may have written stories that appeared to happen in the same universe, no one had really taken a series of stories spread out chronologically over hundreds of years and explicitly set them in the same timeline (the closest I can think of is maybe Olaf Stapleton b I don't know if Robert Heinlein had the first "future history" as we (and John Campbell) understood it, although he was probably one of the more extensive ones that had come down the pike thus far in the world of SF. While other writers may have written stories that appeared to happen in the same universe, no one had really taken a series of stories spread out chronologically over hundreds of years and explicitly set them in the same timeline (the closest I can think of is maybe Olaf Stapleton but that's basically two books and literally millions of years so he's in another class altogether, with a scope that even Heinlein might have found daunting). Later on Cordwainer Smith would do something similar with his stories that also benefited from a helpful chart and even later constructing your own timelines as to the future would become pretty standard for both fans and writers, with the fans perhaps being even better at it if the profusion of wiki pages devoted to various SF settings are any guide.

What does link the better ones, at least in my mind, over histories that have been kind of stitched together after the fact, is how the stories and the histories themselves work to reflect the author's concerns about where we are but we're going. Just like Smith's showcased his interests in Eastern philosophies and modes of storytelling (among other things) Heinlein's future would allow him to work through problems in technology that he saw coming as well as the rise of religious fervor and the necessity of libertarian solutions to such problems.

If you've ever heard the words "science-fiction" I hope I don't to explain who Robert Heinlein was but for those coming in fresh he was one of the giants of the genre during its Golden Age, his career spanning from when SF was considered juvenile "pulp" stuff to when it started being taken more seriously, with quite a bit of that new public perspective coming due to his efforts. Among today's audiences he's probably more famous for his later works like "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and if you like problematic adaptations of works that are themselves perhaps thematically disconcerting, "Starship Troopers". Even so, I don't know how well known his name is among the general public nowadays, and its quite possible that beyond the big guns, the average SF fan hasn't read too much more of his work.

The stories collected here fall into his earlier period, around the forties and fifties, ranging from tales like his very first ever published story "Life-Line" to stories with lots of moving parts like "Methuselah's Children" that point the way toward what was to come later. At this point he wasn't pushing boundaries excessively but the stories don't have quite the young adult vibe that the "juvenile" novels would have and most of the time seem pitched toward an audience that could grasp the engineering and social issues being debated. What's impressive to me over sixty years later is how assured the writing is and how well constructed the stories are . . . while its hard to tell these days with the stories published in isolation from their original magazines, I imagine that one flipping through one of those old pulps would find these stories would stand out quite strongly in relation to what was surrounding them. He expanded the vocabulary of SF and did his best to relay the world in specifics without bogging down the reader in exposition. Even if you perhaps didn't want to live in his future, there was no doubt it felt like a real future.

But even well written SF stories from the forties are still stories from the forties, with concerns in the context of that time. So how do they hold up today to modern eyes? Fairly well, for the most part . . . readers of today may crave a little more sophistication in the actual writing but you have to keep in mind these are short stories written for SF magazines, where efficiency was probably at a premium. Most of the stories are set around some technical or social problem, like "The Roads Must Roll" or "Blowups Happen" and the crux of the story is trying to navigate a problem caused by the future and what possible solutions that same future might uncover to resolve it. A number of the stories are centered around opportunities that the future might bring, like "The Man Who Sold the Moon" or even the darker aspects of that future, like the capitalistic slavery of "Logic of Empire". A lot of the issues raised are still fascinating even today, if you can discount how dated some of the science is, especially all the stuff having to do with Venus (before probes visited the planet, a lot of SF writers got mileage out of the idea of aliens living there or that we'd be able to live there ourselves someday) . . . most of the time he's able to bridge the gap between "explaining" and "entertaining" with a clarity that's probably even more amazing if you were able to see what his competition was.

What's fun in these stories is tracing the gradual evolution of society in his history, especially the establishment of the Lunar colony (who already show the libertarian leanings that he would massively expand in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"), our spread throughout the solar system and his depiction of a theocracy that erupts and crashes (we see the tailend in "If This Goes On-") before giving way to the "Coventry" government. Along the way he makes stops for smaller, more personal crises, like "Requiem" (a fitting sequel to "The Man Who Sold the Moon"), "The Black Pits of Luna", "The Menace From Earth", and "The Green Hills of Earth".

If there's any downside to these, despite all of them being entertaining, its that some might find the parade of standard Heinlein "compotent heroes" a bit wearying after a while. He does his best to vary personalities and maybe I'm just a cynical man of the twenty-first century but after the tenth or so story solved by sheer pluck and brains and Yankee know-how you start to wish for almost anything else, although the variety you do get tends to be balanced by mentor characters who are on-hand to explain everything to our green protagonists with the wisdom of the grizzled veteran that holds their hands to guide them through ("Coventry" and "If Goes On-" both have this scenario, although in the latter you can sense Heinlein toying with the notion of being more provocative when it comes to pushing sexual mores). Taken in isolation its probably not as noticeable (the juvenile novels often have same mentality and I don't remember it bothering me that much when I first read them, but it may be more charming when stretched out over an entire book) but a steady diet only highlights how often he goes back to that same basic character trait. The moralizing and philosophizing that sometimes bogged down the late period novels isn't too much in evidence, although he skirts the edge of it sometimes when characters seem to be acting as mouthpieces for whatever views Heinlein held at the time. And while he's known for his strong female characters, that's not as much in evidence here, although part of that may be a consideration toward the times when even the most competent ladies still went dizzy for a man (probably the biggest flaw in the otherwise fun "The Menace From Earth").

All that means is that you have a slew of stories that may not be masterpieces (although some are close and closing story "Methuselah's Children" manages to pack a ton of ideas and sports the rare feat of coming just shy of making Lazarus Long over-confidently annoying) but are the work of a SF Grand Master both learning and flourishing in his craft while laying out a broad vision that had been mostly absent thus far in the genre. Its hard to see how groundbreaking all of this was today (my modern sensibilities probably gravitate more toward the aforementioned Cordwainer Smith, whose stories hit more like a gut punch) when just about everyone since then has ripped off some portion of it and while some of the interest in this is purely wanting to give props to the innovator, as it were, its rare that you can get any collection from a SF author in this era that is as top to bottom consistent, that is as frequently concerned with testing both his own limits and the limits of the genre. That Heinlein got better is an understatement. That he was head and shoulders above his peers almost from the get-go may be a revelation to some people that this book happily provides. ...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Darth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: heinlein

This is a collection of the core Short Stories & Novellas that are collectively known to make up Robert Heinlein's "Future History"

Since these were written in the early days (many in the 1940's and 50's) much of the "future" part is now past tense at least in terms of the year on the calendar. Also, most of these have that feeling to them I would describe as pulpy, which I think most people would consider fair, since they were actually first published (not all but many) in magazines.

You hear a T This is a collection of the core Short Stories & Novellas that are collectively known to make up Robert Heinlein's "Future History"

Since these were written in the early days (many in the 1940's and 50's) much of the "future" part is now past tense at least in terms of the year on the calendar. Also, most of these have that feeling to them I would describe as pulpy, which I think most people would consider fair, since they were actually first published (not all but many) in magazines.

You hear a TONNE of superlatives bandied about these days - sometimes it is hard to sort through them to the real truth that underlies, and of course it doesnt help that writing is subjective, and something that rings true or is interesting / moving etc...

All that said, the words that people use to describe Robert Heinlein do not begin to do him justice.
Not every story is perfect, and in most the science is pretty speculative based on the period. Of course we know no one is whipping out a slide rule in the future, but he couldnt possibly have known.

The stories really grabbed me, and never let go. Some are poetic and almost high art / drama type, some are just silly little blurbs about next to nothing. They all have people at the core, and the technology / science is largely window dressing for the characters - though there is plenty of the rocket ships to the moon and beyond to keep your attention if that is what you are there for.

It is SOOOO easy to read this, then almost pick an author and tell what you guess his favorite Heinlein was. Like Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the Mars trilogy very much in the fashion of The Man Who Sold the Moon... I got the feeling Niven / Pournelle had a soft spot for Jackpot and the one with the guy, the 2 kids and the bum (I forget the title)
Easily understandable, this collection is probly home to the most influential set or works you can assemble in this field (including the classic Doc Smith works that Lucas turned into Star Wars)
Words do not do it justice. It is classic, it inspired a generation of authors, and it probly gave the US government the idea to fake the moon landings - if you like Sci-fi - read this book.

Thank me later

...more

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Nov 03, 2010 Tim rated it it was amazing

This, along with "Time Enough for Love" (currently reading) is Heinlein's magnum ous. This volume has some 800 pages of small-type stories, novellas and novels, culminating in '"Methuselah's Children" (which I have already read - see my review- and found out subsequently that there was a great number of stories that antedated that novel. These are published in this volume in the order given in a table close to the beginning of "Methuselah's Children" but somewhat out of order in terms of publica ...more

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Oct 12, 2016 Connie rated it really liked it

This is probably the third time I have read this book, but it has been many, many years since the last read. What I found most interesting is...the stories were written in the 30's and 40's. The science was different then but so was the attitude towards women...and ethnic groups...and smoking! Overall this bunch of stories is very good for a lot of reasons. They certainly speak to how people generally interacted with each other. If you have a bit of a scientific bend...then all the references wi ...more

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Mar 09, 2014 Carena Wood beimler rated it it was amazing

Some of the stories are better than others, what I really enjoyed about this was that the books and short stories were in chronological order, so the young fellow wanting to go to the moon many pages ago eventually invents space flight, and then several stories later does get to go. It makes you feel like you have more invested in the series, as well.
One day I want to own all of the books and to read them all in linear order.

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Feb 04, 2009 Dale rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-collections

Always amusing to go back and read classic sci-fi and see which predictions were far-seeing and which ones failed to pan out. I understand why highways were never replaced with "rolling roads", but someone tell me why we haven't colonized the moon yet? ...more

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Jun 09, 2013 Mommalibrarian rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

99% of the characters are human. The most far out technology is the drive mechanisms on the rockets. One whole story was about financing a rocket venture - dreadfully boring. On the plus side this is not fantasy and there are no swords, dragons, or horses.

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Oct 17, 2007 Bob rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone at all

Shelves: sf, short-stories

Heinlein's "Future History" all wrapped up in one volume. An important starting point for Time Enough For Love and pretty much all of his later books. ...more

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Jun 13, 2009 Lindig rated it liked it

Shelves: sf

Spider Robinson be damned, RAH is a closet misogynist and male chauvinist pig, and his later stuff doesn't change that. ...more

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Jul 15, 2011 Centrillo rated it it was amazing

Another of my all-time favorites. Heinlein,while not as famous as Asimov, is at least his equal. The stories in this book, written over decades, paint a galaxy that is fascinating and complex.

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May 20, 2020 Groucho42 rated it it was amazing

All 21 of his 'Future History' short stories in one volume. It's another pandemic re-read. His set of short stories to novellas where he envisions a human history up to interstellar travel. In many ways it's very dated, such as the constant smoking, but that's no surprise. Still, much of it holds up.

For instance, his view of women is typically brief and simplistic, and in many of his other books they end up barefoot and pregnant. Still, in "Delilah and the Space-Rigger", even with the senseless ...more

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Feb 24, 2017 Austin Wright rated it it was amazing

In 1966, the Hugo Awards presented a one-time award for "Best All-time Series. The 5 candidates were:

"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
"Barsoom" by Edgar Rice Burroughs
"Future History" by Robert A. Heinlein
"Lensmen" by E. E. Smith
"The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien

Foundation won.

I pick up this book and was pleasantly surprised to find that it had almost the entire collection of "Future History" (it is missing 3 stories totaling about 130 pages).

There were some jaw-dropping amazing mome ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Michael Norwitz rated it really liked it

Over a period of more than 20 years, Robert Heinlein had in mind a future history of Earth, and he wrote 21 stories (not sequentially) which took place in this history (before it resolved into the Lazarus Long/Howard Families series of novels). This collection completes that series, finalising with "Methuselah's Children." Unfortunately I suspect most of it will be harder going for many readers ... his style and characterisation (particularly of women, before he catches up with feminism) will st ...more

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About Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

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Robert Anson Heinlein was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction".

He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first SF writer to break into mainstre ...more