Podkayne 'Poddy' Fries is eight Mars years old (about 15 Earth years) and she has been planning to take her first trip to Earth.

Game Over : Sega – “The Murder of Sonic the Hedhehog.A teenager from Mars and her younger brother visit Venus with their uncle and find themselves in the middle of a brewing civil war.Pretty Hurts : “Pretty Baby : The Brooke Shields Story”.Seasons of Whatever : Metallica – “72 Seasons”.

The Cronenlogical Cronenberg 2: Twice Dead.All About Evelyn : Taylor Jenkins Reid – “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”.The Elementary 3 : Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”.Still Now : Jim Thompson – “Now, And On Earth”.

First of the Black Habits: Paul Feval- “Bel Demonio”.

Look Around Search for: The Not Too Distant Past ABOVE: “Alien contact”? Cover blurber didn’t read the novel. Still.) “Podkayne of Mars” is brief enough that even when its shapeless, made-up-on-the-spot plot nearly literally blows up on your face, you won’t mind the time investment – and Poddy is plain likable. (Ok, so that’s 9 in Mars years, 15 in Earth years.

In the early ’60s, Poddy was a feminist inspiration to young women who would be space captains – buuuut 2015 readers might feel differently every time Poddy talks about hiding her intelligence around men so as not to bruise their egos, ( our snouts are more sensitive to the scent of sexism.) Hopefully those readers don’t dwell too much on the “classic Heinlein” eyebrow-raising elements here: a few of the crew members seem a little too eager to have 9-year old Poddy wriggle on their laps, for instance. There’s suspense, and not-too-much science, and the threat of space terrorism, all conveyed through a winning narrator’s voice. Well, in Mars years.ġ963’s “Podkayne of Mars” is the last of Heinlein’s YA novels (he himself felt differently about that clasification.) There’s a whole galaxy of improvement between “Podkayne” and “Rocket Ship Galileo”. We’ve gone from Hardy Boys chasing Moon smugglers to a fully realized character in Podkayne “Poddy” Fries, a Marsgirl who travels from her home planet to Earth in a luxury cruise liner, accompanying her diplomat uncle and her game-playing genius brother. Except that Podkayne is supposed to be 9 years old.

Podkayne of mars by robert a heinlein