: The Menace from Earth
Author: Robert Heinlein
A neat little collection of science-fiction stories by Heinlein. I had not read these elsewhere, but they’re very good. There’s an interesting time-travel one that is too predictable and goes on too long (we see the obvious ending long before the main character does), and one about a flood that seems to have nothing sci-fi about. One of the best is the title story, about a 15-year-old girl who lives on the moon (she loves it and hates heavy earth) and wants to be a spaceship designer. She and her teenage partner have formed a company and are already working on the engineering. She’s very mature for her age, at least in terms of intelligence, but naive in terms of emotions. The “menace” referred to in the title is a beautiful earthwoman, who, it seems, has drawn her partner away from work on the spaceship design. Could she be jealous? Of course not! Don’t be absurd! She and her partner are just friends, associates, work-mates. She’s just worried about their business, of course. Without her partner, it will go down the tubes. In the end, of course, there’s a twist that reveals the truth to all, and it’s a wonderful little character study with some nice sci-fi accents. Great collection.
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