ROCKET SHIP GALILEO

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1947]. First edition. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket with a printed price of $2.00, very slight shelf wear along upper edge, touch of rubbing to flap folds, tiny rub spot to rear panel at spine edge. An attractive copy of this important book. (12943). Octavo, illustrated by Thomas Voter, cloth. The importance of this book cannot be overstated, as it is the first published novel (in book form), by one of the major, if not the most, important science fiction writer of post-war America. Heinlein established himself in the field of science fiction during the golden age of Astounding Science Fiction (starting in 1939), he would later introduce a generation of baby boomer children to this literary genre. After World War II, Heinlein's career expanded the reach of the genre by being published in the 'slick' magazines of the period (Saturday Evening Post and others) and he also began a series of juvenile novels to be published by the mainstream firm of Charles Scribner's Sons. Their reach was wide, especially into the library marketplace were many young children would encounter them. This title is "...the first US juvenile sf novel to reflect the new levels of characterization, style and scientific plausibility now expected in the field", "...it was the first in a series that represents the most important contribution any single writer has made to children's SF..." - Clute and Nicholls: The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (1994), p. 554-557. "A pioneering novel that began American mainstream science fiction for children and combined young protagonists, gadgetry, current science, and adventure in such a way that even today the book retains interest." - Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 5-62. George Pal's 1950 film Destination Moon is loosely based on ROCKET SHIP GALILEO. Heinlein co-authored the screenplay and served as a technical advisor to the production, along with German rocket expert Hermann Oberth. Destination Moon, the first of Pal's many sf films, "has great historical importance: its commercial success initiated the sf film boom of the 1950s, after a decade that had contained almost no sf cinema at all. It has interest in hindsight, too, in the partial accuracy with which it anticipated the actual Moon landing of 1969. To this day, Destination Moon stands as a film obvious made by people who knew about science..." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (1994), p. 324.