Adzel And Lummox

Robert Heinlein's Future History stops short of regular faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel which was due to take off right after the end of Volume IV. The concluding Volume V backtracks to the fate of the first STL interstellar spaceship. I do not accept anything after Volume V as a valid continuation of the Future History, Heinlein's name on the cover or no Heinlein's name on the cover.

Regular inter-species contact due to FTL travel begins very early in Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first collection in this future history series was entitled Trader To The Stars. The third story to be collected in his The Earth Book Of Stormgate features a giant quadrupedal Wodenite studying planetology on Earth.

Some of Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles do show routine interstellar inter-species relations, most notably perhaps The Star Beast which begins with the narrative point of view of a large intelligent extraterrestrial that is being kept as a pet in a backyard on Earth. This organism, Lummox, resembles Anderson's Wodenite, Adzel, but with more legs and eyes.

Since starting to write this post, I have checked among a few Heinlein titles on a bookshelf upstairs and have been somewhat astonished to find a copy of The Star Beast. Do I want to reread this juvenile novel after all these years to make a comparison with Poul Anderson? I am reluctant to reread any sf from that long ago. Damon Knight gave The Star Beast the highest praise of saying that it was worth rereading but added a damning comment on much sf:

"This is a novel that won't go bad on you. Many of science fiction's triumphs, even from as little as ten years ago, are unreadable today; they were shoddily put together, not meant for re-use. But Heinlein is durable."

-copied from here.

Knight continues by stating that he has read this book twice and will again for pleasure.

Which supposed triumphs rapidly became unreadable? It is the main contention of this blog that even Poul Anderson's hastily written works are worth rereading and that all of his works bear constant re-use. How durable is his predecessor, Heinlein? Let's find out.