This essay considers all the juvenile fiction written by Robert Heinlein between 1947 and 1958.

Robert Heinlein was first approached to write a “boys’ book” early in 1945, but he was then engaged in important war work. When the first atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, Heinlein knew that the war was over and within a few days resigned his Navy engineering job. The entire strategic situation that would come to be known as “The Cold War” had immediately burst upon him, and he took on two urgent tasks: first, to prevent a future atomic war by placing atomic weapons under international control, and, second, to get his fellow Americ

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Published 10 November 2004

Citation: Patterson, The Heinlein Scholar 2003-2005, William. "Rocket Ship Galileo". The Literary Encyclopedia. 10 November 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16265, accessed 9 February 2010.]