Literary Fictions

Red Planet ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Missouri-born author Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) was the premiere American science-fiction writer of the twentieth century. He wrote many novels and short stories that, no matter how fantastic, were always believable and grounded in scientific fact. His 1949 novel, Red Planet, is about people from Earth living on Mars and the problems they face with the inhospitable climate (200 degrees below zero in winter), with Martian natives, but most of all with others of their own kind. (Yes, people from Earth are devious, self-serving and corrupt, no matter what planet they’re on.)   

The main character in Red Planet is a young lad named Jim Marlowe. We are never told his age, so let us assume he is about sixteen. He is one of the colonists on Mars, living with his mother and father, his younger sister and brother in “South Colony.” Jim’s best friend is a boy named Frank Sutton but, more importantly, his best Martian friend is a “roundhead” that he has named Willis. Willis is a lovable ball of fur with “eyepods” for seeing and little “footpods” for mobility; he talks, but, more importantly, he can mimic and record any voice or any conversation he has overheard, sort of a living tape recorder.

When Jim and Frank go away to Lowell Academy, Jim must take Willis along with him because they are inseparable. The authoritarian headmaster of the school, Mr. Howe, confiscates Willis and locks him up, making Willis and Frank both extremely unhappy. Mr. Howe claims the school doesn’t allow “pets,” but the truth is he is going to sell Willis to a zoo because—don’t you know?—Martian roundheads are rare and valuable.

Jim and Frank break into Mr. Howe’s office to free Willis late at night when no one is around. It seems that Willis, during his captivity, has overheard (and recorded) a conversation between Mr. Howe and Mr. Beecher, the unscrupulous colonial administrator of Mars. These two villainous dogs have a secret plan, to save money, to prevent the annual migration of the colonists, which is necessary for them to avoid twelve months of killing winter weather. The boys must leave school and travel the thousand miles home to warn their parents and the rest of the colony. No transportation is available to them, so they skate on the frozen Martian canals, encountering unimagined perils, including being pursued by the villains and spending a freezing night inside a giant Martian cabbage (where they run the risk of being smothered as the cabbage closes up for the night).

Red Planet is an imaginative science fiction adventure, set in some future time when people from Earth find the courage and the technical know-how to go live on an unknown planet that still holds a lot of surprises for the uninitiated. Unless mankind destroys itself (which seems a distinct possibility), people will undoubtedly venture to Mars and even farther, at which time science fiction becomes reality.  

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp

Mr. Bridge ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Evan S. Connell was an American writer who lived from 1924 to 2013. His 1969 novel, Mr. Bridge, is a continuation of Mrs. Bridge (published in 1959), and follows the lives of the Bridge family of Kansas City, Missouri, from the 1930s through World War II. Mr. Bridge is technically not a sequel to Mrs. Bridge, because Mr. Bridge  is set at an earlier time than Mrs. Bridge, even though it was written ten years later. (You got that?)

Walter Bridge is the father of three children approaching adulthood: Carolyn, Ruth and Douglas. Carolyn is the smart, sensible one who enrolls in college. Ruth is the rebellious one, inclined to flaunt convention. Douglas, the youngest of the three, climbs trees and digs holes; when he sees a  movie about airplane pilots, he wants to be a pilot, even though he is only twelve.  

Mr. Bridge (the character, not the novel) is a hard-working lawyer. He subscribes to the theory that hard work equals success, and success equals material wealth, happiness and comfort for his wife and children. His wife, India Bridge, is a country club matron, a sheltered woman who has never seen a fortune cookie and who knows little about the world. She lives in an insulated world of privilege and class. She looks to her husband for cues on how to behave, what to think, what to like or dislike, etc. She leaves the running of her household to her black cook-maid-housekeeper, Harriet, so she has lots of time to go shopping and have lunch with her friends. The thing about Harriet is that she has an unsavory boyfriend named Couperin and a penchant for too many martinis.   

Living in a world dominated by women and children, Mr. Bridge must, by necessity, be the stalwart male. He is all the things that one might expect for a man of his time (1930s and ‘40s) and place (Midwest United States.) He is politically conservative (Franklin Roosevelt makes him cringe) and he believes that people of minorities are better off left in their own place. Today he would be called a racist. He belongs to a definite, identifiable class, a dying breed even in the 1940s.

Mr. Bridge is a loosely structured, episodic novel that, in the hands of a master writer like Even S. Connell, is a fascinating reading experience from the American realist school of writing. Later novels about life in suburbia were often drenched in sex and secret love affairs. There’s nothing like that in Mr. Bridge. Just solid writing and a set of compelling, believable characters and situations.

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp