An Interesting Little Collection of Heinlein Short Stories

Last Friday over at viewfromtheporch, Tam posted a sexy pic of Sally Rand's 1938 Packard along with a link to a collection of Heinlein's short stories which has some peripheral connection to said car.  I clicked through and discovered – for the deep bargain price of $0.99 – eleven stories I'd already read and four that I hadn't!  Specifically, these are:

• Let There Be Light, about the invention of the Douglas-Martin sunscreens that figure so prominently in RAH's Future History series.  Glad to finally read it, but I can see why he omitted it from various short story collections throughout his later life.  Being his second story published, it's just not all that good.
• The Year of the Jackpot, another stinkeroo, as Heinlein termed his early fumbling works.  Still, it has some interesting ideas about what would happen if a mathematician devised a way to predict the future.  SHGT anyone?
• Project Nightmare, an early Cold War thriller about a hastily concocted team of psychics staving off nuclear blackmail – if they can just keep from falling asleep.
• Sky Lift, in which a pair of pilots give their all to deliver vital medical supplies – to Pluto.

I can vouch for the remainder of the stories.  Because they're better than the four listed, they've shown up in various other collections, most of which are on my living room shelf.  Click through to the above link and click through to Amazon for the complete list, or to buy, in which case Tam gets her affiliate cut.

Now about the publisher and illustrations, I'm not so sure.  Most of the stories seem to be from the late 30's to about 1950, so maybe the copyright has timed out?  Don't ask me, I'm not a lawyer.  The publisher and copyright are both from Ukraine, which is slightly suspect.  The illustrations are few, probably machine-generated, and don't really add much.  Maybe those are a copyright fig leaf?  Again, not a lawyer.  Will Heinlein or his spouse miss out on any royalty payments because of these (possible) shenanigans?  Pfft, they've been dead 37 and 23 years respectively, so that's not a concern.  I like to think that they'd just be glad to see some early works getting a little more airplay.  Let the dead sleep and the living read.  Onward.

Overall and despite those concerns, I'm glad to have finally read these, especially Let There Be Light.  The Douglas-Martin sunscreens are in so many of Heinlein's Future History stories that not having read this always felt like a big hole in my literary knowledge.  Turns out it wasn't, but for $0.99 the itch has been scratched.