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1950: FARMER IN THE SKY by Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein’s first young adult science fiction novel was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1947. Heinlein imagined a realistic trip to the moon in Rocket Ship Galileo. For his 1948 novel, Space Cadet, Heinlein imagined a far more ambitious future, where humans had colonized Mars and Venus, and had explored all the way out to Pluto. In 1949, he focused on a Mars colony in his novel Red Planet. In 1950, Heinlein had humanity moving further out into the solar system, terraforming Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, in Farmer in the Sky.

(For some reason, this title is out of print except for an audiobook edition. There isn’t even a Kindle edition. Does that imply it’s no longer popular?)

It’s worth reading the Wikipedia entry for terraforming. They claim Jack Williamson coined the term in 1942 for a story, “Collision Orbit,” published in Astounding Science-Fiction. However, they said the first scientific use of the concept was proposed in 1961 by Carl Sagan, who labeled the concept planetary engineering.

Heinlein uses Farmer in the Sky to significantly explore the idea of terraforming, way ahead of the science community. Of course, he’s turned out to be completely wrong about Ganymede, but then we didn’t know much about that moon in 1950. I don’t think any work of science fiction has dealt with terraforming again so head-on until The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (1992-1996).

The novel begins on an overpopulated Earth. Bill Lermer and his father, George, decide to emigrate to Ganymede. Life on Earth isn’t bad, but food is carefully rationed. Bill is shocked when he discovers that George is marrying Molly at the last minute. One of the requirements of emigration is being part of a family. Molly has a daughter, Peggy.

When Bill’s new family arrives on Ganymede, they discover pioneering life is hard. The planet’s atmosphere has been undergoing a heating process for years. The air is barely breathable, and it’s cold. Peggy develops health problems because of the thin atmosphere and must stay in a pressurized room. Each new family is assigned land, but it’s just rock. To make it farmable, the rock must be crushed into powder, and then specifically cultured microorganisms, organic waste, and worms are added to convert that powder into soil.

A significant portion of the narrative is about farming. Heinlein emphasizes the hard work involved. He also dramatically illustrates the dangers of living in a geoengineered world. Like his later novel, Tunnel in the Sky, Heinlein puts the pioneer on a pedestal. One of Heinlein’s major themes has been the colonization of space. As a young teen in 1965, I embraced Heinlein’s science fiction stories as a personal philosophy. Heinlein made me believe in the final frontier like Baptists believe in heaven.

Today, millions want to colonize Mars, while others advocate colonizing Titan, a moon of Saturn. In 2025, I no longer see the point. Mars is colder than the pinnacle of Mt. Everest, and living on Titan would be like living in a flask of liquid nitrogen.

Heinlein’s books made horrible places sound appealing. Why? Heinlein transferred his love of the American Revolution and the American frontier to outer space. But it’s not the same. Elon Musk is spending billions to colonize Mars, and it might happen, but I’m not sure people will like Mars once they try to live there.

So, why did I love rereading Farmer in the Sky so much? It’s as realistic as John Carter living on Barsoom. And that might answer my question. Farmer in the Sky is a fun fantasy. But that’s not the answer either. Heinlein has a great deal of sentimentality in his juveniles. Heinlein is not a gripping plot writer. His stories are episodic. Nor is Heinlein a dramatic writer. His characters converse more than they conflict. Often they lecture. But Heinlein has a talent for creating likable characters and placing them into situations that evoke positive emotions.

I would say the Heinlein juveniles work on me in the same way old Frank Capra movies do. Capra was born in 1897, and Heinlein in 1907. They both expressed a sentimental love of America in their work, a kind that existed before World War II. I also see it in the stories of Ray Bradbury. Heinlein’s Ganymede is really Iowa in the 1920s.

I should have moved on from Heinlein after 1966. The world keeps changing, and I should have changed with it. Maybe after this rereading, I’ll move on. Or will I still be rereading these children’s stories in my nineties?

The future I dreamed of at 13 is much different from the one I find myself in at 73. If I had read realistic literary novels from 2025 in 1965, would I have been anxious to grow up and live in that reality? 2025 is more science-fictional than the science fiction I read back then.

James Wallace Harris, 9/27/25

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THE DREAM HOTEL by Laila Lalami

If you’ve ever wondered what the United States would be like if it had a social credit rating system like the falsely reported one in China, or the Orwellian surveillance system in Iran, then you might want to read The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami.

I read The Dream Hotel because it was on a list of the best science fiction novels of 2025. I felt I was dwelling too much in science fiction’s past, and wanted to sample what the genre is currently producing.

The Dream Hotel is an engaging story about a near future where America detains citizens whose RAA (Risk Assessment Administration) score is above 500. Sara Hussein is caught in a surveillance net when returning from a business trip to London. Her score goes to 516 due to an incident on the plane. When she gets huffy with her detainers claiming there were mistakes in their data, they start increasing her score and send her to a detention center for women.

Eventually, we learn that America has deployed various technologies that go beyond the algorithms that monitor our buying preferences. When I say the story is set in the near future, it’s only a matter of a few years. Lalami’s setting is almost today. The only science-fictional invention is a device that monitors dreams. That seems unbelievable to me. Sara is also accused of being a threat to her husband because of her dreams. That aspect of the story reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s precog story, “The Minority Report.”

The story would have been better if it had remained believable. It’s creepy how much we’re monitored. I see news stories and ads in my various social media feeds that are triggered by texts, emails, and sometimes, I fear, even by things I say on the phone.

Sara’s frustration to prove her innocence while in detention reminds me of Kafka’s The Trial and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The dream aspects slightly remind me of The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Sara believes she’s an honest, law-abiding, rational human being. Being detained makes her doubt herself. While detained, she reevaluates her life, looking for the behaviors she’s accused of having. With each new humiliation by her keepers, she rebels and radicalizes, which keeps raising her RAA score.

The Dream Hotel isn’t meant to be science fiction. It’s a literary-lite work that lightly extrapolates on the present. The U.S. isn’t transformed like it is in The Handmaid’s Tale. Nor does Sara live under Big Brother. I’m not sure if science fiction fans will find this novel entertaining. It doesn’t go to extremes. The Dream Hotel is just a best-seller and book club favorite because it gently borrows from our genre.

Reading The Dream Hotel made me crave a heavy-duty updating of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The future we’re racing into needs a stronger warning label. I’m not sure if the genre is up to the task. Technology is driving social change so rapidly that writers can’t keep up. Lalami doesn’t even deal with AI or the political upheavals we’re experiencing in 2025. Her protest is too gentle, her ambiguity too kind.

Unfortunately, our problems are too complex for novels. The only way to understand the near future is via nonfiction. Heinlein could have imagined Elon Musk, but not Donald Trump. Orwell could have. Orwell wasn’t a genre writer.

I’m searching for current science fiction novels that explore realistic possible futures. I don’t think members of SFWA are hoeing in that field anymore, but I’m not sure if literary writers want the job either.

Americans want reality to fulfill their desires, not what science measures. Readers choose escapism and entertainment. Novels that go too deep into our problems go unread. The Dream Hotel touches on some of our fears, but not in a way that will make readers depressed. It should have been scarier than anything Stephen King has written.

James Wallace Harris, 9/8/25