Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein won the Hugo for best novel in 1956. It was the first of four times that Heinlein won this award.
I first read Double Star sometime around 1960 or 1961. It was the second book by Heinlein that I read, the first being The Door into Summer. Back in those days Doubleday was the only large publishing company that published hardcover sf. They had a trademark of a V2 rocket that they put on the spine of all their science fiction books. I used to walk the stacks of my hometown library looking for those little rockets. I discovered lots of science fiction authors that way including Heinlein.
The story unfolds a couple hundred years in the future. Mankind has spread throughout the solar system and encountered three other intelligent and civilized species. One of these, the Martians, plays a large part in the story. Our hero, an out-of-work actor, has been hired to impersonate a leading politician of the day who has been kidnapped. Heinlein makes it plausible that an actor could actually do this.
I won’t spoil your enjoyment of the story by telling you what happens next. But I will tell you about an anachronism in Double Star that is quite common in 50’s sf. One of the characters on more than one occasion is said to be using a slide rule. As we know, slide rules have been obsolete since the late 70’s when the first electronic calculators appeared. What’s missing in Double Star is an anticipation of integrated circuits which started appearing in the 1960’s. One cannot fault Heinlein too much for this – as far as I am aware, no one in science fiction anticipated the incredible and still ongoing miniaturization of electronics.
Aside from that one fault, Double Star is well worth the read. Recommended.
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