The Door into Summer

Chapter-by-chapter summary

Spoiler warning: this section covers the whole plot, including the ending.

Part 1: Los Angeles, 1970

Dan Davis is an engineer who has built a line of household robots under the name Hired Girl, Inc. His old Army friend and partner Miles Gentry and his fiancée Belle Darkin, who keeps the books, have quietly gained control of the company. They plan to sell it to a bigger firm. Dan, who is busy with a far more ambitious robot called Flexible Frank, is outvoted and fired. He decides to take his payout and sleep for thirty years. Why it matters: the story begins with a man who has the ideas but not the power, and that gap drives everything that follows.

Part 2: Betrayal and cold sleep

Dan sobers up and fights back. He mails his stock certificate to Ricky, Miles’s young stepdaughter and the one person besides Pete he trusts, then goes to confront Miles. Belle drugs him, and the two of them have him put into cold sleep against his will, in a different facility from the one he chose. It is run by a friend of Belle’s on behalf of the company that is buying Hired Girl. Pete is left behind. Why it matters: the betrayal is now complete, and the reader shares Dan’s need to know what really happened.

Part 3: Waking in 2000

Dan wakes in the year 2000 with almost nothing. Miles died in 1972, Belle has become a bitter alcoholic, and the company that bought Hired Girl collapsed in 1987. Pete is gone. Dan takes a job at Geary Manufacturing, which now owns Hired Girl, and finds his own Flexible Frank sold everywhere as the Eager Beaver, with a patent credited to D.B. Davis. Why it matters: the future has used his ideas but not him, and the puzzle of how that happened gets sharper.

Part 4: The time machine in Boulder

A friend at Geary, Chuck, mentions that a working time machine may exist in a Colorado lab. Dan also learns that Ricky left Los Angeles and married a man named Daniel Boone Davis. He travels to Boulder and meets physicist Dr. Hubert Twitchell, who began with anti-gravity research and ended up building a machine that sends people back in time. Dan talks his way into using it, aiming for a few months before his betrayal. Why it matters: the novel turns from mystery into adventure.

Part 5: Back to 1970

Dan arrives with gold that is worth far less in 1970 than in 2000, so he has to raise money first. He meets a lawyer, John Sutton, and his wife Jenny, and John handles the legal side. Dan builds an automatic drafting machine called Drafting Dan, uses it to design the first Eager Beaver, and with the Suttons founds Aladdin Auto-engineering. Why it matters: the company Dan saw in 2000 turns out to be one he is building himself, so he is no longer only a victim; he becomes a cause of the events he saw.

Part 6: The night in the garage, and 2001

Dan returns to Los Angeles and watches Miles’s house on the night of the original events. When Pete appears, Dan removes Flexible Frank and the drawings from the garage, destroys the drawings and scatters the parts so Miles and Belle cannot use them. He then visits Ricky at her summer camp, gives her his Hired Girl stock and suggests she take cold sleep at twenty-one so they can meet again. Dan goes back to his original cold-sleep appointment. In 2001 he wakes to find Ricky, now twenty-one. They marry, and he sets out as an independent inventor. Why it matters: the loop closes, and Dan gets back what he lost in a new form.

Characters

Dan Davis

Daniel Boone Davis, the narrator, is a gifted engineer and a stubborn individualist. He is proud of his work and clumsy with people, and his trust in the wrong friends costs him his company. Pete and Ricky are his closest bonds.

Pete

Petronius the Arbiter, Dan’s cat, hates snow. He insists that somewhere in every house there is a door into summer, and he makes Dan open every door to check. He gives the book its title.

Miles Gentry

Miles is Dan’s old Army friend and business partner, in charge of money and legal matters. He gains control of the company, pushes through its sale and is Ricky’s stepfather. He dies in 1972.

Belle Darkin

Belle presents herself as a capable bookkeeper and Dan’s fiancée. In fact she has a criminal record, uses several names and manipulates both Dan and Miles. She is the one who drugs Dan.

Ricky

Frederica Virginia Gentry, called Ricky, is Miles’s stepdaughter and eleven years old in 1970. She is steady and sensible beyond her age, and she is the person Dan trusts with his shares.

Dr. Hubert Twitchell

Twitchell is a physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He invents time travel while studying anti-gravity, and the military classifies his work, which keeps it out of public view.

John and Jenny Sutton

The Suttons are a couple Dan meets in 1970. John is a lawyer who handles the legal side of Dan’s plans, and the two men found Aladdin Auto-engineering together. They give Dan a base and friends in a new time.

Chuck Freudenberg

Chuck is a colleague at Geary Manufacturing in 2000 and Dan’s beer buddy. He is one of the few people to talk with Dan in a world he does not know, and he is the one who mentions the time machine.

Writing about this book

A good report starts from one scene that stayed with you, not from a plot summary. Questions that can help:

• Why is Dan so trusting, and so good at coming back? What would you have checked earlier?
• Heinlein imagined 1970 and 2000 from the year 1957. Which of his machines have a modern version?
• What is Pete looking for with every door, and what would your own door into summer be?
• If you could go back, what would you change, and what would you leave alone?

One point needs care. Dan agrees to marry Ricky when she is grown, after meeting her as an eleven-year-old. Readers and critics have questioned this from the book’s first years to today. Rather than just praising or condemning it, separate how the author presents it from how you read it now. That makes a stronger paper.