I want the Stars is a 42,000 word Ace Double published in 1964. The story begins in medias res with an attack on an alien ship. The Horta, a group of telepathic aliens, are persecuting the Sordini, likeable amphibians that communicate via a color-based language. Intelligent races do not normally fight wars against one another in this future, but the humans intervene because the Horta are enslaving the Sordini. The attack on the Horta fails partly because humans have evolved into a peaceful race that does not often commit violence, and thus find the fighting psychologically difficult.

I’ve been on kind of a Heinlein kick lately.

Once upon a time, Robert Heinlein was my hero. I cut my eye teeth on his “Future History” series, which had a huge, huge, huge influence on me as an adolescent, I read his novels, I read his screeds, he was pretty much the epitome of what I wanted to be when I was an arrogant, know-it-all, condescending jerk of a kid: an arrogant, know-it-all adult.

Some reviews are hard to actually write. I have no idea why. I liked this book well enough, but I realized this morning that I’ve been deliberately distracting myself from writing a review for like a week now. I rattled off a review for “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” in like an hour, but I’ve tried fifteen times to write one for “ A Wrinkle in Time” and end up just staring blankly at the page. No clue why this should be, but now that I’m actually typing, let’s see where this leads us.

You know, I think I might be getting smarter. Well, realistically, that’s not possible - my neurology is pretty much locked-in at this stage in life, and in fact I’m loosing cells, but I’m better educated than I was, say, 15 years ago. I know more. If I’m not actually smarter, at least I’m thinking better - that’s got to count for something, right?