In this case, two guys at a bar are discussing the social or moral value of space travel ala an analogy to Columbus. “Columbus Was a Dope” (1947) – A short story like a lot of sci fi short stories where in lieu of exploring a topic via the narrative a concept is discussed by characters, usually with a twist. “By His Bootstraps” (1941) – A very short short story about a graduate student completing his thesis in a theoretical scientific field. He’s right of course and this story explores just how right and how terrible the fallout (pun) is. “The Year of the Jackpot” (1952) - A character using actuarial tables compiled from his job as a risk successor has determined that a given year would be the year in which several terrible tragedies/atrocities would occur based on a sense of things being “due”. These stories generally are just a conceit briefly explored and sometimes are a little better than that. The novels are often way weirder than a logline of them suggest, and sometimes this is great and sometimes not. The collection is a mixed bag, and generally have the the opposite problem of the novels. This collection was edited and revised and republished in the 1990s in order to keep those Heinlein monies going. Some of them are good and some of them are not, and a lot of them were published with pseudonyms. Like a lot of science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein just wrote and published tons of stories.
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