History Literature / TunnelintheSky

* BadassTeacher: Deacon Matson. One-eyed, reduced fingers, decorated veteran of some of the first expeditions, including an award for being the sole survivor, who thinks that students being allowed any weapon is for sissies and would test them unarmed if he could. Going unarmed does make the test safer, per ParanoiaFuel below.

** Rod averts the trope with his sister's advice: he takes only a knife, a vest pack, and rations. Even Matson questions why he didn't arrive with popular camping equipment and outdoor gadgets like other students.
** Subverted by Matson during the final inspection. Students are expected to be prepared for any reasonable survival circumstances, in particular not bringing [[ExposedToTheElements cold weather gear]] is an automatic failure despite Matson knowing they wouldn't need it. A few students go overboard and bring pressurized [[HazmatSuit space suits]] and Matson fails them as well, both for stupidity: the test is a ''test'', not a DeathTrap, and students wouldn't be thrown into vacuum or toxic environments without being informed.

* DemocracyIsFlawed: Discussed by Grant and Rod; not that democracy in inherently flawed, but that adopting wholesale the form of government used in an agrarian democracy or an industrial republic won't work for their co-operative colony.

* DisasterDemocracy: The stranded students' mistake isn't establishing a democracy but making their government more complicated than primitive survival warrants. Still, as the guys who attempt to turn the thing into a ''Lord Of The Flies''-style "do-as-you-please" TeenageWasteland end up showcasing ([[TakeThat by means of getting killed quickly]]), a degree of society ''is'' needed in a disaster, and thus all of the kids agree on trying to make it work.

* {{Hammerspace}}: Caroline leaves for the test unarmed, barefoot, and carrying an overnight bag. A mere fifteen minutes later, Rod departs and finds her empty bag in the relay room. She arrives at the colony nearly a month after the test began and nobody is really sure how she managed to hold onto her odd assortment of items, including her diary and a sauce pan, for so long without her bag.

* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: Deacon Matson tells the students that they will be facing the most dangerous animal known. When a student, quoting a text book, takes that to mean either leopards or "snow apes", Matson clarifies that he's referring to other humans.

* MustHaveCaffeine: Matson mentions that when leading an expedition on a primitive planet, it's not the power/lights/plumbing that you miss, its the things like coffee and tobacco.

* NonIndicativeTitle: The titular Tunnel (and its failure) only serves to set the plot in motion, and ceases to be relevant after the first couple chapters. From a storytelling perspective, Heinlein could just as easily have made it a spaceship without having to change anything else.

** The reason Helen recommends that Rod takes only a knife: a gun's power will give Rod a false sense of courage and safety which would possibly get him killed. A knife is only so much better than being unarmed and his vulnerability will make him paranoid enough to avoid conflicts and survive. Helen knows from experience, she took a gun on her first expedition and losing it saved her life: she ran from a native beast rather than fighting it and learned later that the creatures were virtually ImmuneToBullets. Having no gun immediately makes Rod more cautious when he arrives; he elects to crawl downwind, since that would give him the best chance of seeing anything that was hunting him.
** The final word of advice given to students is to beware of "stobor". They initially assume the stobor to be the giant, lion-like creatures they occasionally encounter, but then finally identify what stobor actually are: [[spoiler:"dopy joes", normally dim-witted and lethargic creatures who have an annual TheSwarm season. However, after the rescue, Rod finds out that there never were any "stobor." It was a vague warning specifically to frighten the kids into being cautious. Nearly every life-bearing planet has some animal that turns out to be a monster of legend under the right circumstances and the best protection is being completely paranoid.]].

* SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfVelocity: Rod and Jack notice a new star and conclude that they've just witnessed a nova. [[spoiler:At the book's end, it's revealed a nova is what interfered with the recall. It's implied that they saw the nova that prevented them from returning home when realistically it would be many, ''many'' years before one world saw the effects of a nova, least of all ''both''. One possible explanation is that the ''effect'' of the nova reached the space around the planet at nearly[[note]]They don't see the nova until after the recall is overdue[[/note]] the same time the light from it did, and it flat out stated that the portals are delicate at best, with many variables that all have to be just right. If looked at like this, the reason the cut-off happened when they saw the nova is because it altered local space.]]

** During the mayoral election a number of items are chosen to serve as anonymous ballots: pebbles, twigs, and leaves. Waxie, running on his "scientific breeding" platform, needs an item to serve as his ballot. Jimmy offers a solution: the fragmented shards of a failed clay pot. Which he announces to the colony as "I'll get chunks of it and all the crackpots are votes for Waxie."

* TooAwesomeToUse: Rod shoots down Jack when she suggests that they use her dart gun for hunting. Although theoretically it can be used indefinitely (as it runs off of manually-pumped compressed air and the darts can be retrieved and re-envenomed), Rod points out that no matter how careful they are, the day will come when the last dart will be lost -- and that could be the day they really need it.

* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: Knowing that their current colony is not in a defensible position, Rod and Roy are sent to scout for a site that will be suitable for the long-term. An injury turns their scouting mission from weeks to months; when they return, the colony is much more established and, since no serious issues have arisen, people are willing to risk staying where they are rather than start over in a new location. Rod disagrees; a group of his close friends consider leaving the group to move to the more defensible location, but ultimately decide to remain.

* WeatherControlMachine: "Weather conditioning", as well as plumbing, heating, power, etc. are mentioned as luxuries that are absent in the new colony planets.

* YearOutsideHourInside: When Rod's father is diagnosed with an incurable disease he and his wife go into a Ramsbotham field where two weeks to them will equate to twenty years in the real world. They will stay in the field until a cure for the disease is found, [[spoiler: which turns out to have been discovered much sooner than the twenty years the doctors estimated it would take. Rod's parents exit the field just as he returns home from his time on the alien planet.]]

* TapOnTheHead: Just a few days into his survival training, someone hits Rod from behind and he wakes up with all his gear missing. He concludes that the blow was meant to kill him too.

* DebateAndSwitch: On the first night of the test, Rod hears a man sobbing nearby and begins internally debating his responsibility to risk his own life in order to help someone else who is clearly in great distress. The issue is resolved when he hears another man start to sob, then another, and realizes that it's actually animals making the noise

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Matson asks Rod who gave him the good survival advice and Rod explains it came from his sister in the Corps of Amazons. Matson grumbles that a woman like her would have kept him from being a cranky old bachelor. [[spoiler: When Rod returns, Matson is now his brother-in-law]].

* InconvenientItch: Upon being out as a girl, the first thing Jack does is remove her armored vest and scratch an itch, which she claims has been bothering her ever since she teamed with Rod several days earlier and had to wear TwentyFourHourArmor to conceal her gender.

* TrainingAccident: The test was only supposed to be a week and a half maximum; after the recall fails to appear, they consider the possibility it's meant to be late and the test is secretly longer. Rod takes it further and hypothesizes that the real test is figuring out that rather than being on a distant planet, they were actually on EarthAllAlong and need to make their way to safety. Eventually, it becomes obvious that the recall isn't coming and they're stranded.

* EarthAllAlong: Subverted. When the recall never comes, Rod conjectures that the students are actually on Earth, and part of the test is figuring out that fact and making their way to safety. This is not actually the case, as proven when Jack shows him a [[AlienSky constellation that doesn't resemble anything seen from Earth]].

* HumanPopsicle: A variant: Rod's terminally ill father will spend two weeks in a Ramsbotham field and return twenty years later in hopes that medical science can save him.

* NamingYourColonyWorld: Early on, Rod watches colonists depart for new New Canaan. The world they were stranded on was named Tangaroa after a Polynesian goddess, although they don't find this out until contact with Earth is reestablished, and they never got around to naming it themselves.

* TwentyFourHourArmor: Jack wears a heavy and hot armored vest at all times after meeting Rod, one that disguises her gender. She wasn't sure that he would have teamed with her if he knew she was a girl, and as a whole, she was right.

* OverpopulationCrisis: China apparently conquered Australia and paved over the entire continent to make room for its growing population before the PortalNetwork was developed, now they force hordes of settlers to new worlds through the gates. And Helen apparently finds it acceptable to retire from the military and raise a large family, despite the existence of this trope meaning that there's a shortage of available husbands (because more women are being born than men).

* SassyBlackWoman: Caroline.

* TrainingAccident: The test was only supposed to be a week and a half. Early after the recall fails to appear, they consider the possibility it's meant to be late and the test is secretly longer, with Rod hypothesizing that part of the test is figuring out that they're on Earth and making their own way to safety. Eventually, it becomes obvious that the recall isn't coming and they're stranded.

** The final word of advice given to students is to beware of "stobor". They initially assume the stobor to be the giant, lion-like creatures the occasionally encounter, but then finally identify what stobor actually are: [[spoiler:"dopey joes", normally dim-witted and lethargic creatures who have an annual TheSwarm season. However, after the rescue, Rod finds out that there never were any "stobor." It was a vague warning specifically to frighten the kids into being cautious. Nearly every life-bearing planet has some animal that turns out to be a monster of legend under the right circumstances and the best protection is being completely paranoid.]].

* FamousFamousFictional: "...Cowpertown is safe in history, along with Plymouth Rock, Botany Bay, and Dakin's Colony."

** The final word of advice given to students is to beware of "stobor". They're very cautious around the unfamiliar native animals until they finally identify what stobor actually are: [[spoiler:"dopy joes", normally dim-witted and lethargic creatures who have an annual TheSwarm season. However, after the rescue, Rod finds out that there never were any "stobor." It was a vague warning specifically to frighten the kids into being cautious. Nearly every life-bearing planet has some animal that turns out to be a monster of legend under the right circumstances and the best protection is being completely paranoid.]].

* WagonTrainToTheStars: Interstellar colonization is accomplished by means of literal wagon trains as technology can't be sustained by a survivalist colony while wooden vehicles and pack animals can.

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: Zigzagged. On the one hand, women make up their own (separate) military units and make up half the survival-course students in the story; on the other, sexual mores are such that a bunch of teenagers, isolated from their parents and all forms of authority, take precious time out from the business of survival to stage their own ''marriage ceremonies'' before daring to fool around. When Rod gets home, his parents' attitude is that of people who fully expect him to let them pick his friends for him. When his military sister opts to get married, she leaves the corps, though it's unknown whether she was required to (even in 1958, married women were permitted to serve in the US military, albeit in noncombat roles).

* SocietyMarchesOn: Zigzagged. On the one hand, women make up their own (separate) military units and make up half the survival-course students in the story; on the other, sexual mores are such that a bunch of teenagers, isolated from their parents and all forms of authority, take precious time out from the business of survival to stage their own ''marriage ceremonies'' before daring to fool around. When Rod gets home, his parents' attitude is that of people who fully expect him to let them pick his friends for him. When his military sister opts to get married, she leaves the corps, though it's unknown whether she was required to (even in 1958, married women were permitted to serve in the US military, albeit in noncombat roles).
** In a conversation with her brother, Helen makes it clear that she plans for marriage to be the end of her military career. Her goal is a farm and a flock of children. As this is also the goal of many Heinlein heroes, that should not be seen as sexist.
** Rod is not regarded as a legal adult until he turns 21, whereas now it would be 18.

* OverpopulationCrisis: China apparently conquered Australia and paved over the entire continent to make room for its growing population before the PortalNetwork was developed, now they force hordes of settlers to new worlds through the gates. And Helen apparently finds it acceptable to retire from the military and raise a large family, despite the existence of this trope meaning that there's a shortage of available husbands (because more women are being born than men).

* CompensatingForSomething: Why Rod's sister advices him not to take a firearm; because he'll think himself tougher than he actually is and get overconfident.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The teenager portrayed on the front cover (presumably Rod Walker, due to the lack of equipment) is Caucasian, despite Rod being African-American in the book..

** Subverted by Matson during the final inspection. Students are expected to be prepared for any reasonable survival circumstances, in particular not bringing [[ExposedToTheElements cold weather gear]] is an automatic failure despite Matson knowing they wouldn't need it. A few students go overboard and bring pressurized [[HazmatSuit space suits]] and Matson fails them as well, both for stupidity: the test is a ''test'', not a DeathTrap, and students wouldn't be thrown at vacuum or toxic environments without being informed.

* DeadGuyJunior: Jimmy's son [[spoiler:is named after Grant.]]
* DidNotThinkThisThrough: On seeing Jack is using his Bowie knife, Rod accuses her of being the person who attacked him and stole it. Turns out that man is dead and Jack removed equipment from his body. Jack takes some convincing not to end their partnership on the spot, seeing it as a violation of trust and a sign that Rod is too stupid to think things through--she'd hardly show him the knife if she was the one who had stolen it, after all.

** Arthur Nielsen is known as "Waxie".
* JustAKid: [[spoiler:When the rescue finally comes, the adults treat the surviving students like they're still children, ignoring that they survived an alien world and formed a civilized, self-governed, and thriving colony there]]. On getting home, Rod finds his father expects to resume raising him, despite the fact that he's been functioning as an adult for three years and is nearly 21. This is exacerbated in Rod's case by the fact that his parents have been inside a YearOutsideHourInside device, so his three year absence only felt like a couple weeks to them.

* KillerRabbit: [[spoiler:Dopy joes are rabbit-sized carnivores with an over-sized head that are slow and clumsy. Except during the dry season when swarms of them become the planet's apex predator. An army of dopy joes chases all other animals, including the massive "lions", to the shores of a dead sea were they must feast well, given the millions of bones]].

** The reason Helen recommends that Rod takes only a knife: a gun's power will give Rod a false sense of courage and safety which would possibly get him killed. A knife is only so much better than being unarmed and his vulnerability will make him paranoid enough to avoid conflicts and survive. Helen knows from experience, she took a gun on her first expedition and losing it saved her life: she ran from a native beast rather than fighting it and learned later that the creatures were virtually ImmuneToBullets.

* RaceLift: Rod is turned into a white kid on the covers.

* SchizoTech: Settlers travel through portals to other planets with animal drawn wagons. This is justified by the fact that opening a portal is expensive, so settlers on untamed worlds have to be prepared to be out of contact for long periods of time, making animals more practical than vehicles that require fuel and maintenance.
* SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfVelocity: Rod and Jack notice a new star and conclude that they've just witnessed a nova. [[spoiler:At the book's end, it's revealed a nova is what interfered with the recall. It's implied that they saw the nova that prevented them from returning home when realistically it would be many, ''many'' years before one world saw the effects of a nova, least of all ''both''. One possible explanation is that the ''effect'' of the nova reached the space around the planet at the same time the light from it did, and it flat out stated that the portals are delicate at best, with many variables that all have to be just right. If looked at like this, the reason the cut off happened when they saw the nova is because it altered local space.]]

** In a conversation with her brother Helen makes it clear that she plans for marriage to be the end of her military career. Her goal is a farm and a flock of children. As this is also the goal of many Heinlein heroes that should not be seen as sexist.

** During the mayoral election a number of items are chosen to serve as anonymous ballots: pebbles, twigs, and leaves. Waxie, running on his "scientific breeding" platform needs an item to serve as his ballot. Jimmy offers a solution: the fragmented shards of a failed clay pot. Which he announces to the colony as "I'll get chunks of it and all the crackpots are votes for Waxie."

* TooAwesomeToUse: Rod shoots down Jack when she suggests that they use her dart gun for hunting. Although theoretically it can be used indefinitely (as it runs off of manually pumped compressed air and the darts can be retrieved and re-envenomed), Rod points out that no matter how careful they are, the day will come when the last dart will be lost -- and that could be the day they really need it.

* AmazonBrigade: A literal version; Helen Walker is an assault captain in the Corp of Amazons. This trope exists because there are more women being born on an overpopulated Earth than men, so there's a shortage of available husbands, so women are taking on a lot of traditionally male roles. Helen makes it clear that she intends to leave the military and raise a large family should she find a husband.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Matson asks Rod who gave him the good survival advice and Rod explains it came from his sister in the Corp of Amazons. Matson grumbles that a woman like her would have kept him from being a cranky old bachelor. [[spoiler: When Rod returns, Matson is now his brother-in-law]].

* AgeGapRomance: Because there's such a shortage of potential husbands, Helen doesn't care how old hers is as long as she can find one. She does, marrying Rod's elderly instructor from college.

* AndTheAdventureContinues: Years later, [[spoiler: Rod becomes the leader of a new colony and leads them out to a new world]].

* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: Helen's unit is called "Walker's Werewolves".

* CoolGate: Ramsbotham Gates.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: Ramsbotham Gates saved the world from overpopulation. They allow colonization of space because the departing gate is the only equipment required for a one-way trip. Colonies must be self-sufficient until they're successful enough to warrant the cost of installing a gate.

* AccidentalDiscovery: Dr. Ramsbotham, inventor of the gates, was actually trying to build a time machine rather than a teleportation device. On his first successful test, he saw a jungle through the portal and, assuming he'd succeeded in reaching prehistoric times, armed himself and jumped through. He was immediately arrested for waving a firearm in a botanical garden.

* GenderBlenderName: Humanity's savior who conquered the stars was Dr. Jesse Evelyn Ramsbotham, saddled with both an EmbarrassingFirstName ''and'' an EmbarrassingMiddleName.

* ICallItVera: Rod follows in his sister's footsteps and names his Bowie knife. Helen's is [[Theatre/MacBeth Lady MacBeth]] but Rod shows a lack of creativity and names his Colonel Bowie.
* InSeriesNickname: Caroline brands Grant "Hizzonor".
* JustAKid: [[spoiler:When the rescue finally comes, the adults treat the surviving students like they're still children, ignoring that they survived an alien world and formed a civilized, self-governed, and thriving colony there]]. On getting home, Rod finds his father expects to resume raising him, despite the fact that he's been functioning as an adult for three years and is nearly 21.

* ICallHerVera: Rod follows in his sister's footsteps and names his Bowie knife. Helen's is [[Theatre/MacBeth Lady MacBeth]] but Rod shows a lack of creativity and names his Colonel Bowie.

* AmazonBrigade: A literal version; Helen Walker is an assault captain in the Corp of Amazons.

* EarthAllAlong: Subverted. When the recall never comes, Rod conjectures that the students are actually on Earth, and part of the test is figuring out that fact and making their way to safety. This is not actually the case, as proven when Jack shows him a constellation that doesn't resemble anything seen from Earth.

* AmazonBrigade: Helen Walker is a captain in the Amazons.

* SchizoTech: Settlers travel through portals to other planets with animal drawn wagons. This is justified, as they are equipped to settle untamed worlds.

* TrainingAccident: The test was only supposed to be a week and a half. Early after the recall fails to appear, they consider the possibility it's meant to be late and the test is secretly longer. Eventually, it becomes obvious that the recall isn't coming and they're stranded.

* ThereAreNoAdults: For most of the novel. A rare sci-fi variant in which this is not due to some irreversible apocalyptic tragedy.