The besetting sin of most SF is its humourlessness; there is precious little gaiety in space. Robert Heinlein is the exception. He is so completely the master of his medium that he can afford to make fun of it. Space Family Stone [published in the United States as The Rolling Stones] is, for the most part, an agreeable send-up of the spaceways. The Stones wisecrack their way from planet to planet, doing a little trade here and there, tending the sick (Mrs. Stone is a doctor) but mainly enjoying themselves. Grandmother Hazel, who is "the only juvenile delinquent old enough for a geriatrics clinic", justifies her decision to go on to Titan: "The dull ones stay home—and the bright ones stir around and see what trouble they can dig up. It's the human pattern." Grandmother is beyond question one of the bright ones, and so is the baby, Buster, who has all the youngest's tiresomeness and who is a chess genius. So are the twins, who try to sell second-hand bicycles on Mars, and Father, who sometimes seems a buffoon but is not. Behind the knockabout fun, beyond the quiet heroism, there is a sense of adventure and—rarest of all ingredients in SF—a feeling of wonder. Notwithstanding the bureaucracy which bedevils the planets, the Stones believe that there are fine things yet to see, and they take with them, carefully dieted to control its alarming fertility, one of the compulsively loving and lovable flat-cats of Mars.
"Rewards for the New Age," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspaper Ltd. (London) 1969; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3529, October 16, 1969, p. 1202.∗
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