Rod, you’re a good boy…but sometimes that isn’t enough. The class (which includes girls as well as boys) has a final session with their instructor…Rod is asked to stay after the others and is advised that he would be wise drop the course and skip the test: They will be left on their own for 1-2 weeks, then returned to earth.

Final exam time has arrived: the students will be sent to a planet of which they know nothing–the test rules are ANY planet–ANY climate–ANY terrain an d NO rules–ANY weapons–ALL equipment. The book’s protagonist, Rod Walker, is a high school senior who plans on a future as a pioneer and a colonist and hence is taking a course in Outlands Survival.

Machinery gets out of order and requires a complex technology to keep it going–but good old “hayburners” keep right on breeding, cropping grass, and pulling loads. …made horses more practical than helicopters, picks and shovels more useful than bulldozers. Hence, old skills have again become relevant…the situation of the settlers: There’s a catch, though: keeping a gate open requires huge amounts of energy, so when the migrants move to a new planet, the gate is relaxed and they are left on their own until such time as they can offer enough trade goods to be worth the energy of reconnecting them…which may be a long, long time. Release from the Malthusian Trap was ultimately gained through an invention that opened up new worlds for settlement: a hyperfold device called a Gate allows people to transition instantly from earth to their new homes light-years away…and, unlike rockets, the Gate technology allows very large numbers of people to be transferred. The true meaning was more that of beggars fighting over a crust of bread…Life, all life, has the twin drives to survive and to reproduce. The hydrogen, germ, and nerve gas horrors that followed were not truly political. …the population of Terra had climbed well beyond that which its farm lands could support. Heinlein’s future world in Tunnel in the Sky has been faced with a crisis of massive overpopulation…a common projected future in books of this period: Another book, published at about the same time, projects a very different view of human nature and society. The book sold millions of copies and has become common assigned reading for high school classes. In William Golding’s 1955 novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, a group of students is stranded on an island–and they revert quickly to barbarism.

Robert heinlein tunnel in the sky