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Tramp Royale
Here is a remarkable first-hand account of Robert A. Heinlein's travels around the world, from the bawdy sex shows of New Orleans, to the Panama Canal, the African veldt and beyond. A four-time winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, Heinlein put science fiction on the national bestseller lists and was the first author to be named a Grand Master by the science Fiction Writers of America.
371 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1992
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About the author
Robert A. Heinlein
1,055 books10.5k followersRobert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
Heinlein became one of the first American science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke are often considered the "Big Three" of English-language science fiction authors. Notable Heinlein works include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (which helped mold the space marine and mecha archetypes) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His work sometimes had controversial aspects, such as plural marriage in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, militarism in Starship Troopers and technologically competent women characters who were formidable, yet often stereotypically feminine—such as Friday.
Heinlein used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political ideas and to speculate how progress in science and engineering might shape the future of politics, race, religion, and sex. Within the framework of his science-fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly addressed certain social themes: the importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the nature of sexual relationships, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress nonconformist thought. He also speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices.
Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974. Four of his novels won Hugo Awards. In addition, fifty years after publication, seven of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for works that were published before the Hugo Awards came into existence. In his fiction, Heinlein coined terms that have become part of the English language, including grok, waldo and speculative fiction, as well as popularizing existing terms like "TANSTAAFL", "pay it forward", and "space marine". He also anticipated mechanical computer-aided design with "Drafting Dan" and described a modern version of a waterbed in his novel Beyond This Horizon.
Also wrote under Pen names: Anson McDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York.
Heinlein became one of the first American science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke are often considered the "Big Three" of English-language science fiction authors. Notable Heinlein works include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (which helped mold the space marine and mecha archetypes) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His work sometimes had controversial aspects, such as plural marriage in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, militarism in Starship Troopers and technologically competent women characters who were formidable, yet often stereotypically feminine—such as Friday.
Heinlein used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political ideas and to speculate how progress in science and engineering might shape the future of politics, race, religion, and sex. Within the framework of his science-fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly addressed certain social themes: the importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the nature of sexual relationships, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress nonconformist thought. He also speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices.
Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974. Four of his novels won Hugo Awards. In addition, fifty years after publication, seven of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for works that were published before the Hugo Awards came into existence. In his fiction, Heinlein coined terms that have become part of the English language, including grok, waldo and speculative fiction, as well as popularizing existing terms like "TANSTAAFL", "pay it forward", and "space marine". He also anticipated mechanical computer-aided design with "Drafting Dan" and described a modern version of a waterbed in his novel Beyond This Horizon.
Also wrote under Pen names: Anson McDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
February 5, 2009
Published by Virginia Heinlein from Robert Heinlein's notes, this is as close to an autobiography as Robert Heinlein ever wrote.
It is a non fiction account of a round the world trip that the Heinleins took in 1953-1954. As a travelogue it is dated---but I did not read it for the travel advice. I read it for the slice of life view of Heinlein at that point in his life.
Heinlein wrote about strange alient worlds in his fiction. Well, Singapore in 1954 was just as alien to my experience. Being Heinlein, he comments on politics and life styles and other matters. Whether you agree with him or not, the ideas are interesting and though-provoking. There is also quite a bit of humor--more than in his fiction.
I recommend it as an absolute MUST for any Heinlein fan who has not read this. Fans of auto biographies might be interested as well.
It is a non fiction account of a round the world trip that the Heinleins took in 1953-1954. As a travelogue it is dated---but I did not read it for the travel advice. I read it for the slice of life view of Heinlein at that point in his life.
Heinlein wrote about strange alient worlds in his fiction. Well, Singapore in 1954 was just as alien to my experience. Being Heinlein, he comments on politics and life styles and other matters. Whether you agree with him or not, the ideas are interesting and though-provoking. There is also quite a bit of humor--more than in his fiction.
I recommend it as an absolute MUST for any Heinlein fan who has not read this. Fans of auto biographies might be interested as well.
August 14, 2015
I found this book at a used book store on a recent trip to the shore. I had never heard of it before I picked it up. Published posthumously by Heinlein's wife, it tells the saga of their year-long trip around the southern hemisphere. Do not think this is a dry travelogue. Heinlein brought the warmth, wit and wisdom of his best fiction to the task. It is a great balance of description and social commentary.
It is somewhat dated, price-wise, being written in the 1950s, but don't let that stop you. You'll learn much about the world and human nature by reading this book.
It is somewhat dated, price-wise, being written in the 1950s, but don't let that stop you. You'll learn much about the world and human nature by reading this book.
September 28, 2021
“In South America, praise be, you can kiss your wife on a crowded downtown sidewalk without causing anyone to stare. You can even kiss another man on both cheeks for that matter (…)”
This book was a surprise, as it is unexpectedly, truly, impressively remarkable. A triumph, we could say. A riotous triumph, even.
Turns out I’ve read it close to 70 years after it being written and close to 30 years after first publication, and it still proved to be unputdownable, as is the case say with the best travel books by Theroux (to whom I’ll return, because coincidences!), for instance: I got enraptured with almost all of it.
It’s unfathomable to me how this took 4 decades to see the light of day. Maybe it was too candid (as an example, the man detested New Zealand with a passion, and it shows: “Plan your trip to avoid the place. This is not hard to do; only Tristan da Cunha is harder to reach, harder to leave. (…) If you ever follow the route we took, turn north when you leave Australia and see the Philippines and Japan instead; thus you will not be wasting your money.”) or too different as a travel (and couple relationship?) book in the 50s (I have no idea)?
“But it is not surprising that most Argentinos want to live in the capital, if possible; it is a charming, beautiful metropolis, not an overgrown village in search of a soul like some of our own that I won't mention for fear of being lynched. It has more than two hundred parks and plazas, some of them of great size, all of them of great beauty, abounding in flowers and trees and statuary.”
Let’s try and articulate some thoughts and considerations.
So first, there’s the Heinlein couple: A loving record of a marriage of equals.
This is as much a travel book as a record of the dynamics of a marriage couple (through mostly good days, but also some trying stretches), in a relationship of truly equals. There’s love, respect and companionship in droves. Both of them are complex, diverse and fascinating personalities—richly defined and generously offered to the readers—, and that’s extremely well conveyed in the narrative. Alone, this dimension of the book makes it already something precious, but there’s so much more.
Then second, there’s the trip: Travelling around the world, in the 50s, using the passenger cabin sections of freighter ships, throughout the Southern Hemisphere!
Virginia Heinlein pulled this off and it is genius. This is “travel” in the most honored tradition of the term since time immemorial. What a trip. What-a-trip! How envious I am. How grateful that this got put into writing so expertly and so vividly by such an author! Believe me: Wow!
They went to Tristan da Cunha!
“But there is one place left on earth which has long been settled and has a recognized, established government which cannot be reached by any regular means whatever, but only through lucky chance. It is Tristan da Cunha, a British colony in the South Atlantic, almost precisely midway between Antarctica, South America, and Africa. It is 1500 miles from the nearest land, St. Helena, a spot itself so remote that it was picked as a safe prison for Napoleon Bonaparte after he crushed out of Elba. (…) Wars, psychoanalysis, mass production, traffic, atomics, Marxism, airplanes, female emancipation, Hollywood, Kaiserism, suffragettes, paved roads and automobiles, market crash and depression, Sex Appeal and "It" girls, ENIAC, these things never happened. We are closer to Benjamin Franklin than we are to these people. (…) It was very hard for us to talk with them. We shared the same language, English, and their accent and idiom was not as difficult for American ears as, for example, Yorkshire; what we lacked was common experience. A detective in Sao Paulo could tell us, without language, that he was watching for pickpockets; we both knew what pickpockets were. We shared with the detective a common culture, Western and urban; lack of language was a mere nuisance to be circumvented. But with these islanders, although our language included theirs (their vocabulary is, for obvious reasons, quite limited), there was very little that could be said with it. We could ask direct questions about simple things—boats, sheep, weather, potatoes, fish. They would answer, readily enough, in simple declaratives—and there the conversation would bog down. Discussion was out of the question.”
It is true that a lot has changed in these last 70 years since the trip was taken, but the essence of the soul of the places, as expertly registered by Heinlein, I reckon to be mostly the same. Maybe not NZ: I travelled there for 2 weeks in 2018 and the lodgings, the food and the wine were all, let’s say, a marked improvement over what the Heinleins experienced (I mean, everything was brilliant) … but even here I’m not so sure about the people (I wasn’t there time enough nor was I “travelling”, just “touristing”). Anyway, what they endured was surely made into great reading!
When people go adventuring, like the Heinleins did, they run the risk of getting an experience like the following immediately after spending more than a week in the suite normally chosen by “Mr. Rockefeller” when staying at the Raffles in Singapore (which makes for amazing reading, which the stay at the Raffles does not!):
“(…) the worst thing about the ship was that it was filthy dirty. The ship had no purser; the chief steward, an Indonesian, doubled in brass and carried out neither the duties of a purser nor the duties of a chief steward properly. In consequence his Chinese staff, with whom he could communicate only through his Chinese assistant, ran the ship to suit themselves. Now it is an unpleasant fact that lower-class Chinese have no notion at all of Western concepts of sanitation; this is not a racist remark, it is simply a fact. Inasmuch as the stewards in this ship received no instruction in these matters and were subjected to little or no discipline, they did as they pleased—and what they pleased was often disgusting. (…) While we were not well off in first class, the passengers in second class and in third were in squalor. Second and third class in the Ruys were modest indeed, but they were spotless and smelled clean. In this ship they were filthy, reeking holes with a stench better left undescribed. The major shortcoming about ship travel is that, if you do have the bad luck to get a bad ship, you are stuck with it as thoroughly as if you had received a jail sentence. For three endless weeks we could have quit this ship only at Djakarta—which we would have done had Djakarta been an improvement, which it is not. (…) Here are two facts which illuminate but do not tell all. After three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule 92% of the natives could not read or write—nor did Batavia, the capital city, have anything resembling modern sanitation. These facts prove little, but they do cast doubt on the validity of the long-standing reputation the Dutch have enjoyed for being the world's ideal colonials. To my simple mind a lack of schools and sewers after centuries of rule spells exploitation of the natives—not benign paternalism. (…) Singapore is a city, a true metropolis, of slightly less than a million; Djakarta is a village of more than three million—it lacks almost every attribute of a city save people.”
My issue with the book is exactly the same I have with the travel books of Paul Theroux, on the same point. Namely, the United States has its faults, but it is clearly the best, the greatest country in the World, the bright light on the hill, the shining hope of the human race, etc. I mean, I do get this: “I myself am very weary of being told by scornful Europeans that we have no culture. In the first place it simply is not true, even in the snooty sense in which the sneer is usually put, as in painting, music, and literature we are lustily productive. But in the widest sense we have made the greatest cultural contribution of any society to date, by demonstrating that 160,000,000 people can live together in peace and freedom. Nothing else in all history even approaches this cultural accomplishment, and sneers at our "culture" are both laughable and outrageously presumptuous when emanating from a continent that habitually wallows in its own blood. I'll take Coca-Cola, thank you; it may be vulgar, no doubt it is simply impossibly American, it may lack the bouquet of a Continental wine—but it is not flavored with ancient fratricidal insanities.” But this is not the issue. (The Maori guide being “racist” because she praises her culture and defend her heritage would be…) Anyway, I’m not expanding on this here, as ultimately, it’s no big deal, just an irritation.
Ok, the coincidences…
Heinlein identifying something seriously bothering him in 1953: “The most important thing that I believe I have learned from a trip around our planet is that no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that, most tragically, it probably has no solution. I don't mean communism and I don't mean the chilling probability of atomic war; I mean something much worse: too many people. (…) Too little food, too many mouths. How will they be fed? Where will they sleep?”
Theroux stating something seriously bothering him in 2006: “I finally left Trichy, and India. What sent me away was not the poverty, though it was pathetic and there was plenty of it. It wasn't the dirt, though it sometimes seemed to me that nothing in India was clean. It wasn't the pantheon of grotesque gods, some like monkeys, some like elephants, some wearing skulls as ornaments, some in a posture of repose under the hood of a rearing cobra—terrifying or benign to the believers propitiating them with flowers. It was not the widow-burning or the child marriages or the crowds of the cringing and the limbless, the one-eyed, the stumblers, the silent ones who hardly lifted their eyes. (…) Not the heat, either, though every day in the south it was in the high 90s. Not the boasting and booming Indians and their foreign partners screwing the poor and the underpaid for profit. Not the roads, though the roads were hideous and impassable in places. Not the fear of disease or the horror of the obscenely wealthy, though the sight of the superrich in India could be more disquieting than the sight of the most wretched beggar. None of these. They can all be rationalized. What sent me away finally was something simpler, but larger and inescapable. It was the sheer mass of people, the horribly thronged cities, the colossal agglomeration of elbowing and contending Indians, the billion-plus, the sight of them, the sense of their desperation and hunger, having to compete with them for space on sidewalks, on roads, everywhere—what I'd heard on the train from Amritsar: "Too many. Too many." All of them jostling for space, which made for much of life there a monotony of frotteurism, life in India being an unending experience of nonconsensual rubbing.”
In The Happy Isles of Oceania, Paul Theroux (who also disses the New Zealanders, if I remember well), has a stint in Tahiti (Colonialism! Exploitation! Horrors!) and then arrives to Hawaii. Obvious book part (Part 4) heading: PARADISE.
40 years before that, after their New Zealand debacle, Robert and Virginia Heinlein deplane in Honolulu. Obvious chapter heading: PARADISE.
Yeah, sure, guys, absolutely…
Note to self: When a traveler ask themselves “What am I doing here?”, planes are nice to have around. Virginia Heinlein let go of her fears of flying over water just to get the hell out of a dreary Auckland and, in a trip recalled in The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux decided that a flight out was just the thing to short circuit, in a dreary Luanda, an African jaunt.
So it goes.
N.B.: “No description should be entirely flattering; there should be some criticism at the very least, for contrast and to lend conviction to favorable statements. But it is very hard to find anything to criticize in Uruguay.”
This book was a surprise, as it is unexpectedly, truly, impressively remarkable. A triumph, we could say. A riotous triumph, even.
Turns out I’ve read it close to 70 years after it being written and close to 30 years after first publication, and it still proved to be unputdownable, as is the case say with the best travel books by Theroux (to whom I’ll return, because coincidences!), for instance: I got enraptured with almost all of it.
It’s unfathomable to me how this took 4 decades to see the light of day. Maybe it was too candid (as an example, the man detested New Zealand with a passion, and it shows: “Plan your trip to avoid the place. This is not hard to do; only Tristan da Cunha is harder to reach, harder to leave. (…) If you ever follow the route we took, turn north when you leave Australia and see the Philippines and Japan instead; thus you will not be wasting your money.”) or too different as a travel (and couple relationship?) book in the 50s (I have no idea)?
“But it is not surprising that most Argentinos want to live in the capital, if possible; it is a charming, beautiful metropolis, not an overgrown village in search of a soul like some of our own that I won't mention for fear of being lynched. It has more than two hundred parks and plazas, some of them of great size, all of them of great beauty, abounding in flowers and trees and statuary.”
Let’s try and articulate some thoughts and considerations.
So first, there’s the Heinlein couple: A loving record of a marriage of equals.
This is as much a travel book as a record of the dynamics of a marriage couple (through mostly good days, but also some trying stretches), in a relationship of truly equals. There’s love, respect and companionship in droves. Both of them are complex, diverse and fascinating personalities—richly defined and generously offered to the readers—, and that’s extremely well conveyed in the narrative. Alone, this dimension of the book makes it already something precious, but there’s so much more.
Then second, there’s the trip: Travelling around the world, in the 50s, using the passenger cabin sections of freighter ships, throughout the Southern Hemisphere!
Virginia Heinlein pulled this off and it is genius. This is “travel” in the most honored tradition of the term since time immemorial. What a trip. What-a-trip! How envious I am. How grateful that this got put into writing so expertly and so vividly by such an author! Believe me: Wow!
They went to Tristan da Cunha!
“But there is one place left on earth which has long been settled and has a recognized, established government which cannot be reached by any regular means whatever, but only through lucky chance. It is Tristan da Cunha, a British colony in the South Atlantic, almost precisely midway between Antarctica, South America, and Africa. It is 1500 miles from the nearest land, St. Helena, a spot itself so remote that it was picked as a safe prison for Napoleon Bonaparte after he crushed out of Elba. (…) Wars, psychoanalysis, mass production, traffic, atomics, Marxism, airplanes, female emancipation, Hollywood, Kaiserism, suffragettes, paved roads and automobiles, market crash and depression, Sex Appeal and "It" girls, ENIAC, these things never happened. We are closer to Benjamin Franklin than we are to these people. (…) It was very hard for us to talk with them. We shared the same language, English, and their accent and idiom was not as difficult for American ears as, for example, Yorkshire; what we lacked was common experience. A detective in Sao Paulo could tell us, without language, that he was watching for pickpockets; we both knew what pickpockets were. We shared with the detective a common culture, Western and urban; lack of language was a mere nuisance to be circumvented. But with these islanders, although our language included theirs (their vocabulary is, for obvious reasons, quite limited), there was very little that could be said with it. We could ask direct questions about simple things—boats, sheep, weather, potatoes, fish. They would answer, readily enough, in simple declaratives—and there the conversation would bog down. Discussion was out of the question.”
It is true that a lot has changed in these last 70 years since the trip was taken, but the essence of the soul of the places, as expertly registered by Heinlein, I reckon to be mostly the same. Maybe not NZ: I travelled there for 2 weeks in 2018 and the lodgings, the food and the wine were all, let’s say, a marked improvement over what the Heinleins experienced (I mean, everything was brilliant) … but even here I’m not so sure about the people (I wasn’t there time enough nor was I “travelling”, just “touristing”). Anyway, what they endured was surely made into great reading!
When people go adventuring, like the Heinleins did, they run the risk of getting an experience like the following immediately after spending more than a week in the suite normally chosen by “Mr. Rockefeller” when staying at the Raffles in Singapore (which makes for amazing reading, which the stay at the Raffles does not!):
“(…) the worst thing about the ship was that it was filthy dirty. The ship had no purser; the chief steward, an Indonesian, doubled in brass and carried out neither the duties of a purser nor the duties of a chief steward properly. In consequence his Chinese staff, with whom he could communicate only through his Chinese assistant, ran the ship to suit themselves. Now it is an unpleasant fact that lower-class Chinese have no notion at all of Western concepts of sanitation; this is not a racist remark, it is simply a fact. Inasmuch as the stewards in this ship received no instruction in these matters and were subjected to little or no discipline, they did as they pleased—and what they pleased was often disgusting. (…) While we were not well off in first class, the passengers in second class and in third were in squalor. Second and third class in the Ruys were modest indeed, but they were spotless and smelled clean. In this ship they were filthy, reeking holes with a stench better left undescribed. The major shortcoming about ship travel is that, if you do have the bad luck to get a bad ship, you are stuck with it as thoroughly as if you had received a jail sentence. For three endless weeks we could have quit this ship only at Djakarta—which we would have done had Djakarta been an improvement, which it is not. (…) Here are two facts which illuminate but do not tell all. After three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule 92% of the natives could not read or write—nor did Batavia, the capital city, have anything resembling modern sanitation. These facts prove little, but they do cast doubt on the validity of the long-standing reputation the Dutch have enjoyed for being the world's ideal colonials. To my simple mind a lack of schools and sewers after centuries of rule spells exploitation of the natives—not benign paternalism. (…) Singapore is a city, a true metropolis, of slightly less than a million; Djakarta is a village of more than three million—it lacks almost every attribute of a city save people.”
My issue with the book is exactly the same I have with the travel books of Paul Theroux, on the same point. Namely, the United States has its faults, but it is clearly the best, the greatest country in the World, the bright light on the hill, the shining hope of the human race, etc. I mean, I do get this: “I myself am very weary of being told by scornful Europeans that we have no culture. In the first place it simply is not true, even in the snooty sense in which the sneer is usually put, as in painting, music, and literature we are lustily productive. But in the widest sense we have made the greatest cultural contribution of any society to date, by demonstrating that 160,000,000 people can live together in peace and freedom. Nothing else in all history even approaches this cultural accomplishment, and sneers at our "culture" are both laughable and outrageously presumptuous when emanating from a continent that habitually wallows in its own blood. I'll take Coca-Cola, thank you; it may be vulgar, no doubt it is simply impossibly American, it may lack the bouquet of a Continental wine—but it is not flavored with ancient fratricidal insanities.” But this is not the issue. (The Maori guide being “racist” because she praises her culture and defend her heritage would be…) Anyway, I’m not expanding on this here, as ultimately, it’s no big deal, just an irritation.
Ok, the coincidences…
Heinlein identifying something seriously bothering him in 1953: “The most important thing that I believe I have learned from a trip around our planet is that no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that, most tragically, it probably has no solution. I don't mean communism and I don't mean the chilling probability of atomic war; I mean something much worse: too many people. (…) Too little food, too many mouths. How will they be fed? Where will they sleep?”
Theroux stating something seriously bothering him in 2006: “I finally left Trichy, and India. What sent me away was not the poverty, though it was pathetic and there was plenty of it. It wasn't the dirt, though it sometimes seemed to me that nothing in India was clean. It wasn't the pantheon of grotesque gods, some like monkeys, some like elephants, some wearing skulls as ornaments, some in a posture of repose under the hood of a rearing cobra—terrifying or benign to the believers propitiating them with flowers. It was not the widow-burning or the child marriages or the crowds of the cringing and the limbless, the one-eyed, the stumblers, the silent ones who hardly lifted their eyes. (…) Not the heat, either, though every day in the south it was in the high 90s. Not the boasting and booming Indians and their foreign partners screwing the poor and the underpaid for profit. Not the roads, though the roads were hideous and impassable in places. Not the fear of disease or the horror of the obscenely wealthy, though the sight of the superrich in India could be more disquieting than the sight of the most wretched beggar. None of these. They can all be rationalized. What sent me away finally was something simpler, but larger and inescapable. It was the sheer mass of people, the horribly thronged cities, the colossal agglomeration of elbowing and contending Indians, the billion-plus, the sight of them, the sense of their desperation and hunger, having to compete with them for space on sidewalks, on roads, everywhere—what I'd heard on the train from Amritsar: "Too many. Too many." All of them jostling for space, which made for much of life there a monotony of frotteurism, life in India being an unending experience of nonconsensual rubbing.”
In The Happy Isles of Oceania, Paul Theroux (who also disses the New Zealanders, if I remember well), has a stint in Tahiti (Colonialism! Exploitation! Horrors!) and then arrives to Hawaii. Obvious book part (Part 4) heading: PARADISE.
40 years before that, after their New Zealand debacle, Robert and Virginia Heinlein deplane in Honolulu. Obvious chapter heading: PARADISE.
Yeah, sure, guys, absolutely…
Note to self: When a traveler ask themselves “What am I doing here?”, planes are nice to have around. Virginia Heinlein let go of her fears of flying over water just to get the hell out of a dreary Auckland and, in a trip recalled in The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux decided that a flight out was just the thing to short circuit, in a dreary Luanda, an African jaunt.
So it goes.
N.B.: “No description should be entirely flattering; there should be some criticism at the very least, for contrast and to lend conviction to favorable statements. But it is very hard to find anything to criticize in Uruguay.”
May 11, 2021
One of the most clear things that makes you clearly understand why RAH feels outdated, but his ideas are still fresh at the same time today as ever. As he clearly states the point of traveling to other countries is to feel how lucky, even over 70 years ago, people have it good in the United States. That is something that is still true even today, but is that same for the writing?
Was it good that this was published 40 years after it was written? Could readers have taken this anytime before?
So readers today would actually read authors' book out of the from what they usually would read? It sort of seems as time go on, reads would less and less likely in my opinion, partly look at how many read this book compared to if it was a science fiction novel.
But I don't think, especially if it was published in the 80s? Would this be considered as something that would help better his image?
Was it good that this was published 40 years after it was written? Could readers have taken this anytime before?
So readers today would actually read authors' book out of the from what they usually would read? It sort of seems as time go on, reads would less and less likely in my opinion, partly look at how many read this book compared to if it was a science fiction novel.
But I don't think, especially if it was published in the 80s? Would this be considered as something that would help better his image?
December 15, 2016
Surprisingly, this has become one of my favorite RAH books. It may be the most warmly humorous of all his books, and as has been stated elsewhere, certainly the closest he came to writing an autobiography. Kind of a shame it took 40 years for it to see publication, but an unexpected delight when it did.
Now as a travelogue, it's currently 63 years out of date, but as a historical record, it never shall be.
Hopefully, a good number of the places mentioned have improved their conditions for tourists (and their citizens), but I wouldn't bet the farm on Indonesia getting its act together anytime soon.
Take it as it is, a delightful tale of a real excursion, and pack wisely when you travel!
Now as a travelogue, it's currently 63 years out of date, but as a historical record, it never shall be.
Hopefully, a good number of the places mentioned have improved their conditions for tourists (and their citizens), but I wouldn't bet the farm on Indonesia getting its act together anytime soon.
Take it as it is, a delightful tale of a real excursion, and pack wisely when you travel!
May 28, 2016
804.91 The quest for unpublished material by the late Heinlein has now turned up this engaging account of a round-the-world trip made in 1953-54. It offers a working portrait of Heinlein's marriage, witty commentary on a great many places and things (and somewhat curmudgeonly remarks on others--the book will not be a best-seller in New Zealand or Indonesia), a nostalgic view of a world in which ships actually sailed to destinations instead of on cruises, and much sheer entertainment. The book has very little to say about science fiction but a great deal to say about a man who was as close as anyone to being the vital center of American science fiction.
September 22, 2012
This is not only a wonderful (yet severely outdated) travel book, but a wonderful stylized version of both of the Heinlein's characters. R.A.H. tells a good story and this is that. A good story. It is a love story as much as it is a telling of a 'round the world jaunt. It was as good as "The Cat Who Walked Through Walls". The social commentary at the end about the overpopulation and such was a little disturbing to me but understandable considering it's time (1953)and Robert Heinlein's perspective.
June 26, 2017
This is a 1950's around-the-world travelogue. But(!) not a straightforward one because Robert A. Heinlein's wit and wisdom shines through gloriously on each of page!
It was great fun seeing the world through his and Ticky's eyes (Ticky is his wife, Virginia, the explosive little redhead.). If you like Heinlein and/or you like reading about the world's peoples and cultures, get this book. You will love it.
It was great fun seeing the world through his and Ticky's eyes (Ticky is his wife, Virginia, the explosive little redhead.). If you like Heinlein and/or you like reading about the world's peoples and cultures, get this book. You will love it.
March 16, 2017
I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could.
Although Heinlein was primarily an author of fiction, I found his telling of a 1950s around-the-world trip to be well-written and engaging. Certainly too dated to be of use to current travelers, but interesting in the view of some (then) less-visited locations and modes of travel. It'd be interesting if he could manage an updated volume to compare then vs. now, but I'm guessing his long-ago death will prevent that.
So, worth the read for a look into the past of some foreign lands and the means used to get there, and certainly a nice dose of "new" Heinlein in this posthumously published book (there apparently not being a market for it upon it's original writing).
Heinlein very much seemed to have a real respect for most other cultures, governments, peoples, and religions, going so far as to pondering whether some aspects of these might be integrated into our own country to our benefit.
However! He often followed up these...liberal...views with sometimes bordering-on-the-vehement self-retorts extolling American exceptionalism and a somewhat disturbing nationalism. The final chapter, especially, containing what seemed to be a confusingly-phrased (to me) paragraph extolling the virtues of being Caucasian, is much made up of how superior America is to the rest of the world, and how that superiority should guide our nation's actions regardless of there being more the the world than the US of A.
Anyway, any long-time reader of Heinlein is already aware of his increasingly...conservative...views as he grew older, and I'd guess this book would mostly appeal to those people anyway (long-time readers, I mean).
Although Heinlein was primarily an author of fiction, I found his telling of a 1950s around-the-world trip to be well-written and engaging. Certainly too dated to be of use to current travelers, but interesting in the view of some (then) less-visited locations and modes of travel. It'd be interesting if he could manage an updated volume to compare then vs. now, but I'm guessing his long-ago death will prevent that.
So, worth the read for a look into the past of some foreign lands and the means used to get there, and certainly a nice dose of "new" Heinlein in this posthumously published book (there apparently not being a market for it upon it's original writing).
Heinlein very much seemed to have a real respect for most other cultures, governments, peoples, and religions, going so far as to pondering whether some aspects of these might be integrated into our own country to our benefit.
However! He often followed up these...liberal...views with sometimes bordering-on-the-vehement self-retorts extolling American exceptionalism and a somewhat disturbing nationalism. The final chapter, especially, containing what seemed to be a confusingly-phrased (to me) paragraph extolling the virtues of being Caucasian, is much made up of how superior America is to the rest of the world, and how that superiority should guide our nation's actions regardless of there being more the the world than the US of A.
Anyway, any long-time reader of Heinlein is already aware of his increasingly...conservative...views as he grew older, and I'd guess this book would mostly appeal to those people anyway (long-time readers, I mean).
February 21, 2009
This inspired me to travel around the world some day.
Read
November 18, 2019I will keep it short and sharp.
I read this book a few years ago having loved everything Heinlein wrote (even the drivel) but this book was bloody rude about certain parts of the Commonwealth which were trying to recover from WWII. The book seemed to suggest that America had saved all our arses and the UK and the Commonwealth were beholden to the USA got right on my tits. The USA arrived late and only after lending us materiel at hugely inflated prices which all of us were still paying off well into the 1950's.
I read this book a few years ago having loved everything Heinlein wrote (even the drivel) but this book was bloody rude about certain parts of the Commonwealth which were trying to recover from WWII. The book seemed to suggest that America had saved all our arses and the UK and the Commonwealth were beholden to the USA got right on my tits. The USA arrived late and only after lending us materiel at hugely inflated prices which all of us were still paying off well into the 1950's.
November 22, 2018
A fascinating insight into travel around the world in the 1950s. For my part, the author's views on the contrasting environments of Jakarta (stench and sewerage were foremost in RAH's perceptions!), Australia (wherein the keen Libertarian spent most of his sojourn dealing with the Taxman!)and New Zealand (which our world traveller found MOST unsatisfactory) were fascinating.
January 12, 2019
This is probably an odd choice for a Heinlein book, but I really enjoyed it.
October 27, 2021
Educational and entertaining tour of the southern hemisphere by the 20th century's greatest science fiction author.
January 31, 2024
One of the few Heinlein books that doesn't have an ebook or audiobook version. I thought I had a copy of this in hardcover from when it came out, but apparently not, so I'm reading a library hardcover edition. An interesting read, very much of its time. I do wonder how different things would have been if the Heinleins had decided to wait for an opening on their original planned round-the-world cruise instead of deciding to DIY it themselves and not wait. Also, is New Zealand really like that? Was it then? What happened in-between?
April 2, 2025
This out-of-date travelogue, written in the 1950’s by one of the most decorated science fiction writers and published posthumously, was clearly published for the ready market of Robert Heinlein fans thirsty for anything written by the Grand Master.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and all Heinlein fans will too. His wit, pragmatism, and personality shine throughout the book—even when covering the more mundane subjects such as the quality of hotels to the red tape involved in traveling. I especially enjoyed getting a glimpse of his wife’s personality as well. They make for some of the more humorous vignettes in this work.
The last chapter is probably the best where Heinlein takes off his gloves, so to speak, and allows himself to become a political pundit and talks about what he learned on his trip. This, for me, was the most interesting part of the book. Nothing there will surprise Heinlein’s fans gleaning his political/social viewpoint in his novels, but it was fascinating nonetheless.
This book frankly is not for a general audience. I can’t imagine that anyone not a fan of and familiar with Heinlein’s works would find this book particularly interesting.
It’s a must read for Heinlein fans. But of course, everything he wrote is a must read for his fans.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and all Heinlein fans will too. His wit, pragmatism, and personality shine throughout the book—even when covering the more mundane subjects such as the quality of hotels to the red tape involved in traveling. I especially enjoyed getting a glimpse of his wife’s personality as well. They make for some of the more humorous vignettes in this work.
The last chapter is probably the best where Heinlein takes off his gloves, so to speak, and allows himself to become a political pundit and talks about what he learned on his trip. This, for me, was the most interesting part of the book. Nothing there will surprise Heinlein’s fans gleaning his political/social viewpoint in his novels, but it was fascinating nonetheless.
This book frankly is not for a general audience. I can’t imagine that anyone not a fan of and familiar with Heinlein’s works would find this book particularly interesting.
It’s a must read for Heinlein fans. But of course, everything he wrote is a must read for his fans.
April 14, 2022
Tramp Royale was written about 70 years ago. This is the second time I read it, the first time, I read through it and found it interesting, but nothing special. This time, I noted more details and compared it to my own experiences in some of those countries, and definitely my own experience with residents of those countries.
First of all, the fact that Tramp Royale was written so long ago does have an impact - many of the places that RAH and wife visited are dramatically different today than when he visited, although there are some observations by him that still hold true. I also suspect it is much more difficult to travel by ship in the way that RAH did.
I did not find this book nearly as interesting as the first time through - I found it as much a commentary on RAH's biases as on the places he visited.
First of all, the fact that Tramp Royale was written so long ago does have an impact - many of the places that RAH and wife visited are dramatically different today than when he visited, although there are some observations by him that still hold true. I also suspect it is much more difficult to travel by ship in the way that RAH did.
I did not find this book nearly as interesting as the first time through - I found it as much a commentary on RAH's biases as on the places he visited.
March 8, 2012
Heinlein wrote many popular science fiction novels. At some point, checking the bank balance he realized he and his wife could take a trip around the world. This was in the early 50s and planning a trip of this extent from a Colorado town, pre computer, pre Internet was an adventure in itself. Eventually they are off and find themselves to be very enthusiastic and positive travelers. They mostly love the journey until they bog down in new Zealand. The book is a delight as are the heinleins.
February 10, 2016
I'm never quite clear on why readers complain that a 50-year-old book is "dated." I suppose the same reader would complain about Mark Twain or John Lloyd Stephens books of their travels?
Dated or not, Tramp Royale is a very interesting description of the Heinleins' trip around the world. The ocean crossings were made on freighters, something I didn't even realize you could do. Heinlein describes hotel frustrations in New Zealand that foreshadow Bill Bryson's experiences in England 10 years later.
I'd rate it an enjoyable read.
Dated or not, Tramp Royale is a very interesting description of the Heinleins' trip around the world. The ocean crossings were made on freighters, something I didn't even realize you could do. Heinlein describes hotel frustrations in New Zealand that foreshadow Bill Bryson's experiences in England 10 years later.
I'd rate it an enjoyable read.
September 12, 2009
A masterpiece of travel literature from an unexpected source: the Grand-Master of Science Fiction Robert A. Heinlein. Unpublished during his lifetime, this covers a round-the world-journey taken by Heinlein and his wife in the 1950's. Worth reading not only for the descriptions of circumstances long past but for the social and political commentary that underscores the philosophies espoused in all of his novels.
November 19, 2016
This book would be of interest to any serious Heinlein fan, since it shows where he got the germs of many things that went into his stories. As a travelogue, it is inevitably dated, but fun reading. Heinlein's wife, to whom he always refers with her nickname, "Ticky," is a vivid character in her own right, and a longtime reader of Heinlein such as I can see echoes of many characters that turned up in his work in her actions and behavior.
October 15, 2011
Even though this is NOT a science fiction novel, this is still a pretty good read. 'Tramp Royal' is Heinlein's telling of his adventures with his wife Virginia on a 1950's world cruise.
I will warn you about one thing. This book does have a dated feel and it should, considering that it was both written during the 1950's and the events in it occurred during the 1950's.
I will warn you about one thing. This book does have a dated feel and it should, considering that it was both written during the 1950's and the events in it occurred during the 1950's.
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August 4, 2008moonbase
January 7, 2011
Strictly for fans of Heinlein with a love of travelogues.
Hey, that's me!
Hey, that's me!
February 23, 2012
Outstanding travelog of an around the world adventure undertaken by one of the most prolific authors ever and his extroverted wife! I loved it!
August 15, 2015
A dated travelogue by Heinlein and his wife. Interesting historical read, but not good for much else.
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