Stories "Ventures into Unknown Terreritory " 42:70

Requiem by Robert H. Heinline (1940)

Length: Seventeen Pages
Genre: Science Fiction-Space Travel-Romance

Short Summary-No Spoiler

Robert H. Heinline answers the question; "Can an old man travel in space?"

Quote

"No I just wanted to live a long time and see it all happen. I wasn't unusual; there were lots of boys like me-the kind of boys who thought there was more ramance in one issue of the Electrical Experimenter than in all the books Dumas ever wrote." pg14

Writer's Notes

Knights Errant 
The older gentleman is seduced by dreams of his youth.  Youthful dreams force him to take a journey to see if his body can handle the stress of a young man's game."Incidents out of a long life ran through his mind in vagrant dreams." pg 8 Unlike Fitzgerald who does everything for the dream girl; Heinline's character enthusiasm comes from the dreams shaped by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  Science Fiction has captured his core and won’t let go until he sees what space is like for himself.   Our hearts have some hidden piece that needs to be filled by a lifelong yearning.  The yearning is different for every person.  A Christian man’s  yearning can only be filled by Jesus Christ.   But in the secular world it is something that will make the knight leave the garden.

Paragraph Breaks
The movement of time is signified by a line break; but just in case the reader misses this cue Heinline writes "a few hours later."pg 6

Tidbits:

1.   The beginning poem was written by Robert Louis Stevenson:

   Under the wide and starry sky

   Dig the grave and let me lie:

   Glad did I live and gladly die,

   And I laid me down with a will!

   This be the verse you grave for me:

   Here he lies where he longed to be;

   Home is the sailor, home from sea,

   And the hunter home from the hill.

   This be the verse you grave for me:

   Here he lies where he longed to be;

   Home is the sailor, home from sea,

   And the hunter home from the hill.

Where You Can Find "Requiem" by Heinline:

1. Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master.
2. Listen to the Story on Radio Broadcast of Requiem on NBC Radio program X Minus One on OTR.NET.