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.
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.
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including For Us the Living is truly stretching the definition of “like” – but I’m also aware it was an unedited, unpublished first novel by someone just learning his craft.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.
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!
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…
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.
**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.
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.
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.
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.
