| Publication date: | 1949 |
|---|---|
| Genre: | Science fiction novel |
| Series: | Heinlein Juveniles |
| Preceded by: | Ordeal in Space |
| Followed by: | Our Fair City |
| Wikipedia page |
“Red Planet” is a 1949 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about students at boarding school on the planet Mars. It represents the first appearance of Heinlein’s idealized Martian elder race. The version published in 1949 featured a number of changes forced on Heinlein by “Scribner’s,” since it was published as part of the “Heinlein Juveniles.” After Heinlein’s death, the book was reissued by “Del Rey Books” as the author originally intended.
Exposition
On Mars, Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native, volleyball‐sized pet, Willis the Bouncer, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. But one day Willis unwittingly tuned into a treacherous plot that threatened all the colonists on Mars, and it set Jim off on a terrfying adventure that could save or destroy them all!
Alternative covers
