This is the other early Heinlein novel I picked up for this trip. It’s
one of Heinlein’s so-called “juveniles”, and I can barely remember having
tried to read it when I was eleven or twelve. The hero is a school kid
named Jimmy Marlowe; he gets treated very badly by the
school’s headmaster, and I found it so unpleasant that I put the book
down and never picked it back up again.

The book is both better plotted and less inclined to lecture than
Beyond This Horizon, which was written seven years earlier;
still, I found it less satisfying. I don’t think it’s just because it’s
a juvenile, either, as many of Heinlein’s juveniles are first rate.
Perhaps the editor’s hand was a little heavier on this one.

All-in-all, I found it interesting mostly as a precursor to
Stranger in a Strange Land. I don’t believe that it’s set in
precisely the same universe, but the Martians we see only from afar in
Stranger in a Strange Land are clearly very much like the ones
we meet up close in Red Planet. It was interesting to get a
closer look at them.