"Time For The Stars" by Robert A. Heinlein

I recently finished the book "Time For The Stars" by Robert A. Heinlein. This author writes a lot of science fiction books. This book is about 2 teenage twins, Tom and Pat. The book follows Tom as the narrator, and it is first person limited. Tom and Pat sign up for this program in the LRF (Long-Range Foundation), a non-profit company devoted to ideas that are worthless at the time that become practical in the future and largely benefit humanity. LRF has built 12 starships meant for exploration to find planets for humans to emigrate to, due to the fact that the Earth is severely over-populated at this point. In fact, Tom and Pat live in a family of 7 who could potentially emigrate for free, but due to their father's stubborn attitude, stay on Earth in a small house where the twins have to sleep on the couch because there aren't enough beds. Anyway, Tom and Pat have this way of speaking that no one else can hear that they call "prison yard whispering". What they had believed was simply a special way of talking turned out to be telepathic communication between the two. In this age, some twins are able to do this. It is considered normal for twins to be able to do this, at least in the scientific community. The not-so-normal ones are known as mind-readers. They can telepathically communicate with anyone, which is a very rare thing in this book. The point of the program that they join, called Genetics Research, is to send one of them out and keep one on Earth, allowing instantaneous communication between the ship and Earth. The major problem that they face is this: Who will go? Due to relativistic travel, the twin who goes up into space will not age much at all, while the one on Earth, known to the people in the ships as being "Earth-side", will age normally. In the case of the two twins by the end of the book, Tom has aged about 3 years, while Pat has aged about 60 or so. They are like strangers. The thing that I have noticed about Heinlein books is that they not only tackle scientific advances and scientific wonders of the future, but they also tackle problems in modern day society, whether social, scientific, or otherwise. One other thing that I have noticed about Heinlein books, in particular this one and "Starship Troopers", is that they have an element of telepathy or mind-reading in them; I believe that this adds a sense of magic, even in this strange, scientific land from far in the future.