I originally read this book when I was a teenager and suspect I've not read it since. So, all these years later, I found that I vaguely remembered a bit about Waldo and absolutely nothing about Magic, Inc.

Waldo's an excellent story, even all these years after it was written, about a genius who happens to be handicapped. Magic's a well-crafted story--more about politics than magic--but I found it pretty dull. ( )

In spite of its contribution to the world of robotics, neither Waldo, nor the commercialization of Magic in "Magic Inc." hold much interest for me...The stories were printed in the early 1950's and show their age. ( )

I read the first half of this book, but found the characters only mildly interesting, the plot banal, and the added supernatural "magic" aspects poorly done. Not even close to a decent Heinlein imo. ( )

(Original Review, 1980-08-21)

My chief objection to models which suggest we will be much better off with satellites beaming down power to the ground comes in several pieces:

1. I have been told that solar flux in the bands used by solar cells is no more than twice as high in orbit as in, for instance, the American Southwest. Granted, there is some advantage to having the power available for longer periods but even a synchronous satellite would be shadowed for ~2.3 hours a day which would not be at the minimum demand time;

2. The question of the effects of the huge amounts of microwaves has never been adequately dealt with. What kind of leakage would there be from a beam carrying a useful amount of energy? (Would you believe Heinlein also considered this ~30 years ago? See WALDO (in book form as WALDO & MAGIC, INC.).) Presumably safeguards would cause the beam to shut down at once if directional control were lost, and air traffic could be rerouted (which would put a greater strain on an already
fouled-up air traffic control system) to avoid the receiver sites;

3. The energy that will be beamed down is ~90% energy that otherwise would not have been captured by the Earth at all. No matter how the energy is used, most of it will end up as waste heat. I do not know of anyone who has calculated what the effect would be of continually supplying a significantly greater amount of energy to the earth's surface/ than it would otherwise receive but I have severe misgivings, especially considering that there are meteorologists who say that we are nearing the end of a period of optimally equable climate. If Phoenix becomes uninhabitable, we'll survive; if Los Angeles has to be evacuated (a far from impossible prospect, given its water dependence) we may have problems.

These are inquiries from a relatively lay perspective; I suspect anyone with direct experience and without a stake in the matter could find others. I would also be interested in hearing what answers
to this come from knowledgeable people who again have no stake in the matter. I'm not unbiased myself; I confess to an enchantment with the devices Jesco von Putkamer has proposed to build the satellites, and I share the opinion of many SF writers and fans that it was foolish to go straight for the moon rather than building intermediate space stations, but there are questions which I just don't think have been asked [2018 EDIT: Little did I know back then...].

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )

This book has two novellas written by Heinlein in 1950. In Waldo, he describes remote handling devices used in the "fantastic 1990's". Magic, Inc. is set in the 50's but "demons, witches, elemental spirits and magical spells are a part of the fast pace of American life." It's always fun to look at early SF and see what they predicted. ( )