# Heinlein Complete: I think I'm gonna buy it **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 8, 2007, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181 "2007-03-08T23:17:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/21 "2007-03-11T01:45:37Z")
Am I the only one that liked all of Heinlein’s fiction? \*\*Stretch \*\* it sounds like you might join me in this? How about you **Silenus**? As it is Heinlein, I have to admit that this is tempting. As I already have far too many books in the house and as I think I have better things to spend my money on currently, I will not buy them. {yet} Heinlein is my second favorite author. I like every piece of fiction of his I have read. I own almost every piece of fiction he got published. I already have Off the Main Sequence: The Other Science Fiction Stories of Robert A. Heinlein thanks to a SDMB thread. Jim ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/22 "2007-03-11T02:00:54Z")
Oh, me, too. It’s not too extreme to say that Robert Heinlein influenced me more than any other male role model, including my father. I’ve read everything I could find by him, including some old crinkly mimeographs of some of his out-of-print stuff from way back when. I want this not because I need to read some of it, though that would be nice. I want it because it’s _him_. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/23 "2007-03-11T02:23:32Z")
You may add me to the “I liked it all” list, Jim. Although including _For Us the Living_ is truly stretching the definition of “like” – but I’m also aware it was an unedited, unpublished first novel by someone just learning his craft. Thanks to the kindness of **Silenus** , I have now read (and by and large own) all the published Heinlein I know of, with the exception of “Channel Markers.” And IMO even the relative failures are magnificent – the equivalent of composing a romantic sonata for the tuba and making it work – sorta. ---
**Author:** ![stretch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@stretch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stretch)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/24 "2007-03-11T05:24:36Z")
Yep, **What Exit?** , I love Heinlein’s fiction. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/25 "2007-03-11T05:27:59Z")
You rang? Even the worst Heinlein is better than 99% of the crap out there. Did the man have flaws? Certainly. Do I still regard him as my spiritual godfather? You betcha! ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/26 "2007-03-11T08:27:47Z")
To all you heathen Heinlein naysayers out there I have but one thing to say–PBBLLT! He was a true original, and lesser writers have been rehashing his stories for years but never anywhere near as well. The man wrote better books with most of his carotid artery blocked than anyone else has managed with a completely functioning brain. He wrote books with female characters that I could recognize as women, unlike wading through the “Foundation” series and realizing at the end that in what–ten thousand years spanned in the books there wasn’t a single female character! He was a true Renaissance man who is credited with inventing the waterbed and other technological concepts including the remote controlled hazardous material manipulators that were named for one of his characters–“waldoes.” His juvenile novels taught me more about math and science than all my teachers combined, and even as an adult I’ll sometimes catch a reference or a concept that I’d missed before–shoot, if I’d paid more attention to Heinlein I’d have known how to figure a cometary orbit or assess the likelihood of a reinforced genetic recessive long before I hit college. He inspired two of my other most favorite writers, Spider Robinson and John Varley, thereby giving me even more enjoyment over the years. I cried like a baby when he died and almost twenty years later I’d be more than willing to handpick several thousand people to die messily in order to bring him back, because he was worth it. He’d be pissed if I did that, though, so I guess I’d forbear no matter what it cost me personally. In short, if someone doesn’t like Heinlein it’s because she hasn’t read him, and it’s possible that mental deficiency might be the root cause of the antipathy… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/27 "2007-03-11T09:50:25Z")
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance] Oh, me, too. It’s not too extreme to say that Robert Heinlein influenced me more than any other male role model, including my father. I’ve read everything I could find by him, including some old crinkly mimeographs of some of his out-of-print stuff from way back when. I want this not because I need to read some of it, though that would be nice. I want it because it’s _him_. [/QUOTE] Ditto. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/28 "2007-03-11T15:19:28Z")
So that is a lot of us just on the Dope. I was pretty sure \*\*Silenus \*\* felt about Heinlein the same way I do. He summed it up perfectly. [QUOTE=Silenus] Even the worst Heinlein is better than 99% of the crap out there. Did the man have flaws? Certainly. Do I still regard him as my spiritual godfather? You betcha! [/QUOTE] \*\*Sam Stone \*\* & **Jonathan Chance** both feel very similar and have names that sound very much to be in the Heinlein style. \*\*Polycarp \*\* & \*\*Stretch \*\* fully appreciate the master of Science Fiction and one of the leading Godfathers of the American Space Program. In addition to being a great writer, I feel Heinlein and Cronkite were the two public personalities that did the most to promote the Space Race and NASA back in the early days. Anyone agree or disagree with this? I recall seeing Heinlein and Cronkite broadcast together one of the launches before I was old enough to read even Rocket Ship Galileo. Found this in Wiki. [QUOTE=wiki] He was influential in making space exploration seem to the public more like a practical possibility. His stories in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post took a matter-of-fact approach to their outer-space setting, rather than the “gee whiz” tone that had previously been common. The documentary-like film Destination Moon advocated a Space Race with the Soviet Union almost a decade before such an idea became commonplace, and was promoted by an unprecedented publicity campaign in print publications. Many of the astronauts and others working in the U.S. space program grew up on a diet of the Heinlein juveniles, as shown by the naming of a crater on Mars after him, and a tribute interspersed by the Apollo 15 astronauts into their radio conversations while on the moon.[34] Heinlein also was guest commentator for Walter Cronkite during Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 moon landing. [/QUOTE] Jim ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/29 "2007-03-11T15:29:09Z")
Have you read the transcript of his testimony before the House subcommittee on Aging? It dealt with spin-offs of the Space Race. He published a hunk of it in **Expanded Universe** (?) One of those collections, anyhow. Maybe it was in an issue of **Destinies**. In any case, his analysis and detailing of all the items we now take fro granted that were once a part of space exploration is fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![stretch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@stretch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stretch)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/30 "2007-03-11T15:31:10Z")
It’s true that Heinlein was more than just an SF writer. He had an impact that went way beyond his fictional stories. I think our love is more than justified. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2007, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181/31 "2007-03-11T19:52:02Z")
> [@](#): > > He wrote books with female characters that I could recognize as women, unlike wading through the “Foundation” series and realizing at the end that in what–ten thousand years spanned in the books there wasn’t a single female character! Not true. Arkady, the protagonist of _Second Foundation_, was female, as was the mayor at the time of _Foundation’s Edge_, and what’s-her-name from Gaia. And considering Asimov’s works as a whole, his best-developed character was a woman. Asimov’s problem wasn’t a shortage of devoloped female characters, it was a shortage of developed characters, period. **Polycarp** , what’s “Channel Markers”? I never heard of that one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-complete-i-think-im-gonna-buy-it/395181.md?page=1)