Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein

I've always been of the opinion that some of Robert Heinlein's best writing is all around his period of the 'Heinlein Juveniles', remember Starship Troopers was technically a 'Juvenile Novel' even though Scribner's refused to publish it at the time. Tunnel in the sky  was published in 1955 was the 9th of these books. My discovery of the book was originally having read it in the early 80's and  then revisited it again in the late 90's, this is the first time I've read it since then (other Heinlein books I return to more frequently).

A lot of the Juvenile novels feel very Boys own adventure but if you look under the surface there is a lot more going on. In the future overpopulation is an issue due to exponential population growth. The discovery of teleportation has enabled man to colonise the stars, although the costs of this put limitations on how and why colonies are set up. We follow Rod Walker a school student on his final test for Advanced Survival, this involves students being teleported to planets and having to survive on their own for between 48 hours and 10 days. There is a high chance of death involved in this pursuit.

Rod transports to the planet for the test and after advice from his sister starts well by using very basic survival gear. Later though he is ambushed and wakes up an unknown time later with his gear stolen, he manages to survive but realises that he is past the time when they should have been signaled for pickup and the test ending. The rest of the story revolves around survival and meeting other students. We follow the development of a community and the issues this entails.

As with all the Juveniles this is an an enjoyable read, Rod Walker the main character as with a lot of Heinlen protagonists does come across as a bit an arrogant know it all, but this is at point juxtaposed with other characters that put him in his place. Early on the attitude by the 'Adult' characters to the death of children is very blasé almost impling that because of the issue of overpopulation life is worth less. There is also a continuing theme that seems to go through these books about the fractured relationships with the parents or guardians. I may need to look into that in the future. Heinlein always manages to add some politics within these books and some of the ground covered politically in this book was covered in Starman Jones (published 2 years earlier) with a far more subtle hand, Heinlein's libertarian (small 'l') opinions on Government and Democracy feel shouted at you to some degree. I noticed this more in this read through, when it probably didn't even register this when I first read the book in the 80's. Lord of the flies was published the year before this and I get the feeling this is almost a response to that giving far more faith in humanity.

Even though you still get some of the cultural references of the time to female characters, Heinlein as always has managed to still put some strong female characters in despite attitudes of the time. Overall Heinlein for me reads easily especially this period of time when in some ways he was more restrained than his later work.

Tunnel in the Sky is not the best of the Juveniles, but it is still well worth a read. Rating wise it's probably more of a 3 1/2 rather than a 3.