Heinlein (himself a medically retired U.S. naval officer) spins a yarn about a radiation-blinded, unemployable spaceship engineer crisscrossing the Solar System writing and singing songs.
(Quoting from memory): We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth To rest our eyes on fleecy skies and the cool green hills of Earth. "]
The song "The Green Hills of Earth" is mentioned three times in Farmer in the Sky as a piece that Bill Lermer plays on his own accordion.
At an early point in the novel, Lazarus Long bemoans the fact that he cannot "pray for one last landing" because the "Green Hills of Earth" have deteriorated and the planet is uninhabitable.
Later, Lazarus tells the story of a blind accordion player who temporarily took residence in a bordello that he owned on Mars almost two thousand years ago.
"Since the Pusher Met My Cousin" and "That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal" are both referred to, but no lyrics are provided, in Heinlein's "Logic of Empire".
In Stranger in a Strange Land, writer Jubal Harshaw dictates a poem also named Death Song of a Wood's Colt.
[12]: 00:09:55 The songs were composed and sung by Tom Glazer in a manner akin to Woody Guthrie; Kenneth Williams played Rhysling as a backwoodsman from the Ozarks, an area not far from Heinlein's Missouri birthplace.
Everett Sloane played Rhysling, Berry Kroeger narrated, and other cast members included Jackson Beck, Danny Ocko, Ian Martin, Louis Volkman, and Bill Lipton.
The 1951 – 1952 television series Out There (episode aired December 2, 1951) had a loosely adapted version of the story (Rhysling is on a mission to the asteroids with a crew which includes a beautiful blonde biologist) which starred singer John Raitt.
[15] The story "The Green Hills of Earth" was read at Symphony Space by Kathleen Chalfant on 6/8/2001 and broadcast on the radio program Selected Shorts.
[16] In his 2005 book Learning the World, Ken MacLeod pays homage to this song: Chapter 17 ("Fire in the Sky") ends with a scene where a spacecraft evades an attack.
The chapter ends with the background intercom blaring: Anthony Boucher, who was a close friend of Heinlein's in the 1930s in Los Angeles, in his short story "Man's Reach" makes reference to Rhysling's "Jet Song", stating, "The familiar words boomed forth with that loving vigor of all baritones who have never seen deep space": In Randall Garrett's short story The Man Who Hated Mars, the song plays in the Recreation Building of the penal colony on Mars, reminding all of what they've left.
In "Islands in the Sky" (Season 1, Episode 3, 1965) of Lost in Space, Dr. Smith says he wishes to return to the "green hills of earth."
[19] Heinlein credited the title of the song, "The Green Hills of Earth", to the short story "Shambleau" by C. L. Moore (first published in 1933),[20] in which a spacefaring smuggler named Northwest Smith hums the tune.
Moore and Henry Kuttner also have Northwest Smith hum the song in their 1937 short story "Quest of the Starstone," which quotes several lines of lyrics.
Heinlein revealed in the liner notes to the Leonard Nimoy album The Green Hills of Earth that he partially based Rhysling's unique abilities on a blind machinist he worked with at the Philadelphia Naval Yards during World War II.