Robert Heinlein, Rocket Ship Galileo

William Patterson (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1947

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Children's Literature
Novel
Science Fiction

Resources

This essay considers all the juvenile fiction written by Robert Heinlein between 1947 and 1958.

Robert Heinlein was first approached to write a “boys’ book” early in 1945, but he was then engaged in important war work. When the first atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, Heinlein knew that the war was over and within a few days resigned his Navy engineering job. The entire strategic situation that would come to be known as “The Cold War” had immediately burst upon him, and he took on two urgent tasks: first, to prevent a future atomic war by placing atomic weapons under international control, and, second, to get his fellow Americans prepared …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2280 words

Citation: Patterson, William. "Rocket Ship Galileo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16265, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Save this article