Man Who Sold the Moon

[artelliot]

A little confused here. Is Man Who Sold the Moon a short story or a novel? I received a copy but it starts with two other stories, Let There Be Light and The Roads Must Roll. Are they connected? After reading the first and a little of the second I fail to see the connection...I have yet to read the main story though. Maybe it ties it all together?

 

[chrispenycate]

Heinlein's future history, an entire timeline of stories that all dovetailed into one, continuous universe, was one of the first, if not the first, out there, and those are some of the first stories in it. Now, of course, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them.

The man who sold the moon is a short story, but there are, if I remember correctly (and it's more than forty years since I read it) there are references in it to "Blowups happen", and references to it in "Methuselah's children", and a whole network of minor, almost irrelevant links between the shorts and novels, while leaving each one readable in isolation. Remember, these stories will have been first published in magazines, primarily "Astounding/Analog", and collected later, so they weren't conceived to work as a continuity – except that they were.

Calling a collection of short stories by the title of one of them was quite common back then, and is still far from being unknown.

 

[j d worthington]

Chris pretty much covered this one, except that "The Man Who Sold the Moon" is a novelette rather than a short story....

As for the chronology of the Future History series, you may find this useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_History#Chronology

And, as you go through the entire set, you will begin to see how the whole is interconnected....

A question, though: Is the table of contents for your copy of The Man Who Sold the Moon the same as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon_(short_story_collection)

If so, then you're missing a couple of stories in the set.

 

[Pyan]

Hi, Art, and welcome to the Chrons!

The Man Who Sold the Moon is a collection of short stories and a novella by RAH which all fit into his "Future History" concept. The stories have no real connection with one another (apart from "Requiem" which is a direct sequel to TMWStM (the novella), albeit with a few years separating them) but show the progress of humanity over a span of 100 years or so.

There are two versions of the collection: one includes "Let There Be Light", "The Roads Must Roll", "The Man Who Sold the Moon" and "Requiem". The other has two extra stories, "Life-Line" and "Blowups Happen". This is the version that I own - published by NEL, April 1971 - and it also has a chart of all the stories in the "Future History" against a scale of years running from about 1950 to 2600. You can find a copy here.

Many of RAH's later works also fit in this timeline, culminating in the First Centennial Convention of the Interuniversal Society for Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple-Ego Solipsism which ends the flawed masterpiece that is The Number of the Beast. But if you're just becoming acquainted with RAH, I'd leave that one for quite a while.

Hope this helps!


(edit) I see I've been overjumped - but no matter! It just goes to show what an erudite bunch we are here...

 

[j d worthington]

But if you're just becoming acquainted with RAH, I'd leave that one for quite a while.

My, but we are given to understatement today, aren't we?

 

[Pyan]

Oh yes - but at least I refrained from recommending To Sail beyond the Sunset or Farnham's Freehold...

 

[artelliot]

Thanks for that. So they are and they aren't connected. I was left wondering why there was this huge time line in the front of the book. The stories in the book were noted on the time line, but I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to have gained by studying it. So he used it to plan out all of this stories. Brilliant idea. J.D.: my copy only has the three stories that I mentioned. The Wikipedia article mentioned at least three or four more. Once I've finished these I'll try to find the others.

 

[j d worthington]

Interestingly, though they aren't listed as part of the series, some of his earlier juvenile novels are at least tangentially connected to his Future History, such as Space Cadet, part of the background of which is connected to the events of "The Long Watch", etc. And, for that matter, there is a connection between Red Planet, the later Future History books, and Stranger in a Strange Land....