This is apparently the first of the Heinlein juveniles, published in 1949, and according to the introductory material it set the stage for Stranger In a Strange Land. I did still enjoy the book, just not that much, so I give it three stars. As a much older and more sophisticated science fiction reader now, that means that it comes off as rather simplistic to me. Second, the story is considerably dated and most of all, it really is juvenile literature. The most interesting part is at the very end when Martian biology is discussed. A couple of teenagers do battle with and expose a corrupt headmaster of a school on Mars and they end up running away and living with the Martians for a while. First, the plot strikes me as a bit weak. I don't know how I would have rated it then - probably pretty high because I certainly did enjoy anything I read by Heinlein in those days - but it just doesn't have the same effect now. I am tempted to give it a four or five star rating in tribute to the nostalgia of revisiting something I read back when I was just becoming a science fiction fan, but I can't quite do it. This version is a restored version and appears as the author intended it to be. It appears that there was a grand battle between Heinlein and his editor and that the version I read in junior high school was drastically mangled in comparison to what Heinlein actually wrote. That is the case even if this is not actually the same book I read back then.

Now that I have read it again after all these years I can say that as soon as the little round Martian, Willis, was introduced the memory did come back to me and as I made it through the book more and more came back to me. Red Planet is one of those I was not sure that I had read. Some of the plots I remember and others of them escape me now. I am not sure that the school library had every single Heinlein juvenile, so I can't be sure that I read every one. That was a very long time ago and some of them I remember better than others. I can still picture the shelf on which they were all shelved.

' When I was in junior high school I read every Heinlein juvenile the school library had. This one is set on Mars and how a young man learns about growing up from his friend, a martian. ' Another juvenile that I keep coming back to as an adult. Overall Performance: Narration Rating: Story Rating:.

Red planet by robert a heinlein