Who wrote Robert Heinlein’s ‘The Door into Summer’?

That’s obviously a trick question. Or is it?

If there are any of Heinlein’s novels I’ve not read, I’m not aware of them. His mid-1950s yarn ‘The Door into Summer‘ is one of my favourites, and speaks to me in a particular way. I read it first in my mid-teens, and remember well being unable to identify with the protagonist, Dan Davis, because he is introduced as being ‘on the right side of thirty by a few days’. I was, at the time, only half that age. I read it several times in the following years… and made a special point of reading it again when I was thirty. And again when I was sixty. (It being a tale with a time-travel theme, that seemed fitting.)

And then, not long ago, I discovered that there was a movie adaptation.

The Door into Summer (夏への扉 キミのいる未来へ) (2021)
Language: Japanese
Directed by: Takahiro Miki
Written by: Tommoe Kanno

Wait, what? Written by who?

This movie is, without a shadow of a doubt, based upon the novel of the same name by Robert Anson Heinlein.

In this adaptation, the characters all speak Japanese. That’s not a language I know, but that’s no problem; I’m perfectly comfortable with subtitled foreign movies. This one begins with quote, an entirely appropriate epigram:

The past, like the future, is indefinite, and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities

Stephen W Hawking (1942–2018)

… and, in the end credits, the source of that quote is openly acknowledged, again in English:

Special thanks
Professor Stephen Hawking – The Estate of Stephen Hawking

2021 movie ‘The Door into Summer’, end credits

Other than that, the movie features no English at all. And that, well, I have a problem with that, because, surely, the story’s originator ought to be given credit. Not doing so (particularly as Hawking’s minor contribution is so clearly presented) smacks of discourtesy, if not dishonesty.

In the trailer I found on YouTube (see below), the subtitles tease that this is “The long-awaited theatrical adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s The Door into Summer”. But the movie itself is silent on that point. Inspecting the end credits, I found this:

I think (but don’t know for certain) that that gives Heinlein credit for the original story. But why is it not in plain English? I consider the effective burial of Heinlein’s crucial role in this endeavour appalling, and that egregious omission coloured my initial impression of the movie.

On my first viewing, I felt that the story had lost its heart, and much of its depth. As is often the case with movie adaptations of novels, this one featured changes that didn’t enhance the tale; they just made it different.

In the book, the story begins in 1970; in the movie, it starts in 1995. That minor alteration is not a big deal; it’s understandable to want to bring the story up to a more current timeframe. However, one of the most interesting characters in the novel, Dr Hubert Twitchell, the ‘Unsung Genius’, is sidelined. Most of his interactions with Dan Davis are absent. That’s a great pity. It would have been wonderful to see on screen the dramatic scene in which Dan persuades Twitchell to flick the switch to send him into the past (or into the future).

Another change is the addition of a character named Pete, an artificial person – who doesn’t feature in the original yarn. This may be a nod to the book’s ‘Protean Pete’, a prototype machine. Or perhaps it’s a conflation of that ‘Pete’ with, arguably, one of the most important characters of all: Petronius the Arbiter, AKA Pete, the cat – who is the whole reason the story came to be.

When we were living in Colorado there was snowfall. Our cat—I’m a cat man—wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn’t leave. Just kept on crying. He’d seen snow before and I couldn’t understand it. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn’t leave. Then Ginny said, ‘Oh, he’s looking for a door into summer.’ I threw up my hands, told her not to say another word, and wrote the novel ‘The Door into Summer’ in 13 days.”

Heinlein interview with Alfred Bester; ‘Redemolished‘ p487, ISBN 0-7434-0725-3

Now, Pete (the cat) does appear in the movie, too. In the book, Pete is a feisty, ornery cuss who knows his own mind, suffers no fools gladly, and takes no prisoners at crunch time. In the movie, his part is played by an overfed, feeble feline; a simpering, cuddly lap cat. In the scene in which Pete bests Belle, I suspect he probably had to be thrown across the room to make it appear as though he was moving at all.

I find it totally unforgivable that Petronius the Arbiter was denied his finest hour.

But that’s just me. In its own right this movie is pretty good, and well worth watching. By the third viewing, I admit that it had begun to grow on me. Please don’t let my issues with it dissuade you.

The Door into Summer (2021) Japanese Movie Trailer English Subtitles (夏への扉－キミのいる未来へ－　特報映像　英