Ah, old SF....

[flick]

I’m re-reading the Heinlein Juveniles, and it’s very interesting which bits make me splutter at the implausibility and which just make me go “ah, old SF...".

Going to the Moon in a home-welded ship and meeting Nazis there? Human-safe atmosphere on Venus? Canals and Martians on Mars? Making enough oxygen for three or four people with a couple of dozen rhubarb plants? Sure!

But ruins of cities on the moon? The asteroid belt being the remains of a destroys planet? Ludicrously short radiation-decay-to-safe times? Oh, come on!

(I do wonder why rhubarb, though.)

Comments

[damerell]

I read a Jack Williamson where the survivors of a sunken transport (trapped in an air bubble belowdecks) kludge up a bicycle dynamo arrangement so they can drive lightbulbs (they are, conveniently, trapped in a bit of the cargo hold with all the things they might want) so they can grow plants for oxygen and food. If you don't believe in thermodynamics, it doesn't exist...