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The Door Into Summer is a 70,000-word novel by Robert Heinlein, about a man who takes a “long sleep” into the future, and then uses a time machine to return to his own past. This novel was first published in 1957.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Plot
Told in the first person, the novel concerns the life of Daniel Davis, an engineer who in the year 1970 has invented some valuable, futuristic devices and founded his own company. His fiancé, however, schemes with his business partner to take the company in directions of which he does not approve. When he makes clear his determination to stop them, they drug him, and trick him into taking a “long sleep”—he goes into suspended animation for 30 years, waking up in the year 2000.
He finds himself penniless and lost, but he soon finds his bearings and gets a job at the company he himself had founded 30 years earlier. But while looking up some patent records, he finds that one of the great inventions manufactured by a rival company was invented by a man with the same name as him. He soon learns that a scientist has invented a secret time machine, and he convinces the man to demonstrate the device. This way, Davis heads back to the year 1970.
While there, he invents and patents the device he had seen in the year 2000, and then heads back into another “long sleep,” programming himself to wake up in the year 2000, where this time he will be rich. While in 1970 the second time, he also manages to find his favorite cat and bring it into the long sleep with him, and he makes arrangements and promises with a young girl he knows. He turns over much of his fortune to her, and promises that if she will go into a long sleep when she turns 21, set to wake up in the year 2000, he will agree to marry her. All this works as planned, and they live happily ever after.
Title
The meaning of the title is explained right at the beginning—the hero’s cat likes to go outside, but in winter time, with snow on the ground, he will beg his master to open every door in the house, each in its turn, hoping that maybe the next one will be the door into summer.
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