★★★ Delilah And The Space Rigger, 1949 (Wikipedia entry)

With a raging sexist named Tiny Larsen in charge of building Space Station One, trouble ensues when the company sends up a female electronics engineer. Tiny’s fits of bigotry are startling but he is eventually convinced to accept that discimination is bad for business.

★★★ Space Jockey, 1947 (Wikipedia entry)

A rocket pilot is called away from a date with his wife in order to fill in for a fellow pilot. He solves several dangerous problems, deals with unruly passengers, and chafes under unreasonable superiors. In the end, he saves the day and gets a promotion. The story is bookended by his relationship, which is troubled at the beginning and is solved at the end by his promotion. The space travel part is top-notch writing; the relationship part was overly trite and very nearly silly.

★★★★ The Long Watch, 1949 (Wikipedia entry)

Curiously, this story is included in Heinlein’s Future History timeline, though it actually appears to be set in the universe of Space Cadet, a Heinlein juvenile novel, which refers multiple times to the events in this story but is not part of the Future History. This is the story of Lt. John Ezra Dahlquist of the Space Patrol, who disobeyed a rogue commanding officer’s orders so he could prevent a nuclear war. In order to do so, he had to lock himself into the atomic bomb armory on the Moon. While disabling the bombs, he absorbs enough radation to kill him before he can be rescued by other Space Patrol members.

★★★★ Gentlemen, Be Seated, 1948 (Wikipedia entry)

During a reporter’s tour of an unfinished section of lunar tunnel, an accident occurs which causes an air leak. A tunnel worker and the reporter take turns sitting on the leak to stop air loss until they’re rescued. The tension is palpable, the story moves quickly with few unnecessary details.

★★★★ The Black Pits Of Luna, 1948 (Wikipedia entry)

A pushy family insists their small son be allowed to tour the lunar surface (children aren’t normally allowed), only to have the child run off and get lost. The older brother — the first-person narrator — helps find him. I thought the family dynamics between parents and two siblings were well-represented, as was the tension of the search. And for a story written before any person had even been in orbit, the technical details of a Moon base seem spot on.

★★★★ It’s Great To Be Back!, 1947 (Wikipedia entry)

A married couple returns to Earth after strongly disliking life on the Moon. But it doesn’t take long before they realize Earth isn’t quite as fantastic as they remember, and after several disappointing experiences they return to Luna City and find that it’s “home” for them.

★★ “—We Also Walk Dogs”, 1941 (Wikipedia entry)

Oddly, this story is included in the Future History timeline, despite featuring elements (like sentient ETs on Jupiter) that don’t mesh with the timeline. It’s about a company called General Services that purports to do the jobs people don’t want to do. The plot is weak and the story jumps around. Most of the characters are flat and interchangeable. I think the only highlights here are (1) the existence of high-ranking capable women and (2) the fun jabs at the “idle rich”.

★★★★★ Ordeal In Space, 1948 (Wikipedia entry)

Besides the weak title, this story is superb. It starts with an ex-spaceman looking for a job on Earth after a traumatizing experience in outer space — he was flung from a spinning spacecraft and only recovered by luck. Now he suffers from severe acrophobia and can’t bear to be outside. He finds an indoor job in a subterranean part of a future New York. His newfound equilibrium is challenged when a coworker invites him over for dinner — in an outdoor apartment building in New Jersey, where he ends up staying the night. When he hears a kitten mewing — trapped on an exterior ledge of the building, he is forced to fight his fear of heights in order to save the kitten. He later decides to re-apply for a job in space. I thought the mental and emotional struggles were handled finely; there’s nothing in the story that doesn’t further the plot.

★★★★★ The Green Hills Of Earth, 1947 (Wikipedia entry)

(I have reviewed this story elsewhere. It might be Heinlein’s greatest story.)

★★★★ Logic Of Empire, 1941 (Wikipedia entry)

Two well-off Earthmen argue about whether the plight of indentured workers on Venus counts as slavery, and then find themselves trapped in that very situation. (Eventually, they manage to escape and return to their normal lives — a process made much easier by the fact that they have resources.) At times it seems as if the point of the story is to argue for worker protections and worker rights, though it also sympathizes with the employers who need low-cost labor. It seems to conclude that the lack of a proper “money system” is the cause, rather than simple greed. I wonder if Heinlein was too attached to libertarianism at this point to take advantage of a perfect opportunity to argue against most forms of capitalism. (I don’t think Heinlein ever solved his internal paradox of holding mostly libertarian views while also strongly disliking the overly wealthy and the means they use to stay that way.) But the story itself is well-done and the actions and characters well described. It concludes that the problem can’t be solved because no one will listen:

“No, Hump, sweet reasonableness won’t get you anywhere in this racket. To make yourself heard you have to be a demagogue, or a rabble-rousing political preacher like this fellow Nehemiah Scudder. We’re going merrily to hell and it won’t stop until it winds up in a crash.”

“But— Oh, the devil! What can we do about it?”

“Nothing. Things are bound to get a whole lot worse before they can get any better. Let’s have a drink.”

—page 270