Many of his fictions are immersed in space travel, interplanetary or interstellar and the characters and cultures of these as well as planet-bound stories are deeply affected by transport technologies and travel. Heinlein accomplished more than any other author at the dawn of the Space Age to get our era off the ground. Missouri, incidentally, was one of the four slave states (of fifteen) which did not secede as the American Civil War began, having perhaps more countercurrents than those states with more-famous battles. The heroes of both novels are young and more ignorant than they realize, but quick to learn albeit often through hard knocks. Both these themes also drive the main plot of the great anti-slavery classic, Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Heinlein's fellow Missourian, Mark Twain. Heinlein's "juvenile" science fiction novel, Citizen of the Galaxy. Together these meld as twinned themes of Robert A. Here I'd like to look at this conflict in two of its aspects, both apparently straightforward and eminently practical: freedom of movement and freedom of association. There are different ways, more or less abstract or concrete, in which we may think about freedom and its antagonist, slavery. September, October, November, & December 1957
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