In some ways the book is a love letter to mathematics. There's lots of talk about orbits, reaction mass, parabolas, etc. This book has tons of science, or perhaps I should say, math and engineering. (You could say that the overarching plot of the book is the maturation of the twins, their education not only in math but in the need to act responsibly.) On the more serious side, Edith risks her own life curing a plague, and Hazel and Lowell get lost in the asteroid belt while low on oxygen due to the twins' negligence. One of these capers appears to be the inspiration for the famous Tribbles episode of Star Trek, written by Heinlein fan David Gerrold. The Stones don't get involved in any wars, revolutions, or violent crimes-in fact, some of the episodes in the book are more reminiscent of a TV sit-com than a traditional adventure novel, revolving as they do around the twins' get-rich-quick schemes and little Lowell's precocity. Then it is off to Mars and then the asteroid belt. The twins' plan to engage in interplanetary trade evolves into a pleasure cruise for the entire family when Roger decides to buy a rocket ship to serve as the family's private space yacht. (There's also a teen-aged daughter, Meade, who feels a little underwritten and seems like a mere mortal I'm afraid she is just there to fulfill the plot's need for another person to look after the baby while everybody else is on adventures.) The fifteen-year-old twin boys, Castor and Pollux, got rich designing a valve and the four-year-old son, Lowell, is a chess master and some kind of psychic. The father, Roger, is an engineer who served as mayor and now writes a TV show.* The mother, Edith, is a doctor and a sculptor. The grandmother, Hazel, is an engineer who was among the first moon colonists and helped write the lunar constitution.
The Stones, who live on the moon, are a family of geniuses. (Philip Jose Farmer's The Green Odyssey was runner up at $2.50 all the others were less than 2 bucks.) Finally I discovered it at a store in Mankato, Minnesota, where I paid $3.50 for a Ballantine 1978 paperback it was by far the most expensive of the fifteen paperbacks I bought that day. I read Robert Heinlein's The Rolling Stones when I was a child, and for the last year or so have wanted to reread it, but for some reason I never saw it in a library or used bookstore. Like everybody, I love the Heinlein juveniles. As a child, I always thought it odd that one of the most famous rock bands, the most famous music magazine, and the most famous song by the musician sophisticated people were supposed to like, were all variants on "Rolling Stone." I also didn't understand the cliche "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Is moss good or bad? The world was a mystifying place when I was a kid.
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