Reception
Groff Conklin reviewed the novel favorably, calling it "a magnificently real and vivid Picture of the Possible." Boucher and McComas named it among the best sf novels of 1951, characterizing it as "more mature than most 'adult' science fiction.". P. Schuyler Miller praised the novel as "very smoothly and logically put together," although he noted that it lacked the level of "elaboration of background detail" that he expected from Heinlein."
Surveying Heinlein's juvenile novels, Jack Williamson characterized Between Planets as "mov the series still farther from its juvenile origins toward grownup concerns." Although describing the plot as "pretty traditional space opera," he praised the novel for its "ably drawn" characters, its "well-imagined" background, and its "story told with zest." Williamson also noted that Heinlein closed the novel "with a vigorous statement of his unhappiness with 'the historical imperative'" leading to the loss of individual freedom as governmental organizations grew."
Read more about this topic: Between Planets
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)