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| Cover art by James Warhola |
| PODKAYNE OF MARS Robert Anson Heinlein New York: Ace Books, May 1987 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-441-67402-X | 176pp. | SC | $3.95 | |
Two kids from Mars — "Poddy" (named by her archaeologist father for the Martian Saint Podkayne), age 8, and her younger brother Clark, 61 — are thanks to an odd combination of circumstances bound for Venus and then Earth on the spaceliner Tricorn. Riding herd on the two geniuses will be their Uncle Tom, a well-known politician.
The trip is eventful enough, with snotty older passengers and a solar storm and Clark's clever vengeance thrown in for diversion. But the real fun begins when they get to Venus: a whole planet run by a corporation dedicated to profit, where the capital is a heaven of plush hotels and gambling casinos for wealthy tourists, while the smoggy hinterlands are noteworthy only for the native species and you have to get fifteen kinds of immunizations before they let you go there.
Poddy and Clark are treated to the best of everything, thanks to Uncle Tom's importance. But as it turns out his importance leads to certain political factions playing hardball in an attempt to change his position on a matter coming up at the Three Planets Conference on Luna. For hardball, read: kidnapping and potentially murder — a situation from which Clark, ably assisted by Poddy, rescues them.
This is a passable adventure story, but more a chronicle of the maturation of young Miss Podkayne Fries, who already behaves with more maturity than many adults. And her younger brother, in the crunch, is even more mature. There are implausible things about the tale. Most of them can be laid to its vintage; it was first published in 1963, before we knew for sure that Venus is hellishly hot2 and Mars has never evolved intelligent life. So I can suspend my disbelief over those aspects; but I refuse to believe that Clark could smuggle a fission bomb aboard a spaceliner — even if he did stash it in his sister's luggage and then distract the customs people from checking it.
This is not one of Heinlein's best. I'll give it a 4.
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