I've just finished reading Robert Heinlein’s The Door into Summer, an excellent science fiction tale written in 1956, even more so if you are a cat person. The title refers to the tendency of a cat to look for a door that leads to better weather. We had a cat named Chummy that would look out the front door, decide it was raining too hard to go out, run through the house (we were expected to follow him) and see if the back door had better weather. I bought the Kindle edition from Amazon for all of $6, most unusual for me because I’m such a cheapskate and prefer free downloads.
One of the features of the story is our hero’s inventions, including Drafting Dan, which would design things as you typed in commands for lines and curves. Interesting how far ahead of AutoCAD he was.
Ok Bruce, I can't really resist this side line attempt at humor.
I'm not a cat person by any stretch of any imagination, but books are cool. Maybe you and Kent Mc can work together on a cat jumping off a cliff into a joshua tree (gotta hurt). As an artist he can do some pretty wonderful things, as he's posted here. I'm sure you guys can figure out the joshua tree forest go to spot, or call me in Meadview (lots there) and I'll send some lat/long info & pix's if needed.
No cats, plenty of rabbits and lots of coyotes. Nature is funny that way, eh
> I've just finished reading Robert Heinlein’s The Door into Summer, an excellent science fiction tale written in 1956, even more so if you are a cat person. The title refers to the tendency of a cat to look for a door that leads to better weather. We had a cat named Chummy that would look out the front door, decide it was raining too hard to go out, run through the house (we were expected to follow him) and see if the back door had better weather. I bought the Kindle edition from Amazon for all of $6, most unusual for me because I’m such a cheapskate and prefer free downloads.
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> One of the features of the story is our hero’s inventions, including Drafting Dan, which would design things as you typed in commands for lines and curves. Interesting how far ahead of AutoCAD he was.
Read that book many years ago. By then it was already over 20 years old. The possibilities those old SF writers thought of! And how many have come to fruition!
B-)
The Door into Summer (edited post)
After posting, I thought of something more relevant to the OP.
Heinlein had experience with complicated drafting. He had a degree in Naval Engineering, and spent some time working at the Philadelphia Naval Yard in on mechanical ballistic computers. From what I saw of a 1950's ballistic computer, those things tended to be a 3-D mechanical nightmare as they packed super-precision cams and gears very tightly into a box.
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The first of Heinlein's books that I read was Moon is Harsh Mistress, and it's still one of my favorites. Then I went back and read some of his earlier and middle stuff, which are pretty good adventure stories with some added elements.
His later work took a different direction. Stranger in a Strange Land was ok, but by the time he got to Number of the Beast he was severely suffering from the lack of editorial control a famous author can exhibit. It could have made a decent book of half the size.
The only one of his later books that I can strongly recommend is Friday. It seems much more like his middle period.
Variable Star, which was a Heinlein outline finished by Spider Robinson, is also a little like the middle period, although you can see touches of both authors in it.
