I’ve just started this book, considered by many to be one of Heinlein’s best. So far so good; however, what am I getting myself into here?
I’ve not read a lot of Heinlein, but what I have read falls into two camps. Loved it; or hated it.
Most of the short stories I thought were good. Loved Starship Troopers.
However, I thought Stranger in a Strange Land was a bunch of New Age hippy-dippy crapola. The first book by Heinlein I ever read was The Cat Who Walked Through Walls. Ugh. That was a while ago, but I recall it being quite juvenile; and Heinlein, to me, came across as a “dirty old man” more than once in the book.
Anyway, should I give TEFL a go? Don’t spoil the plot for me, but you can give a general sense of the tone or themes. Is it worth the almost 600 pages (pbk)?
I don’t think many think of it as among his best. It’s a bunch of linked stories about Lazarus Long – fair, but not outstanding.
His best is probably “Double Star,” “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” or “Stranger” Many of his juveniles (e.g., “The Rolling Stones,” “The Star Beast,” etc.) are also very good reads.
There are some decent bits in “Time Enough for Love”…“The Tale of the Adopted Daughter”, for example. But the book overall I found quite weak…the whole is less than the sum of it’s parts.
I don’t know what you’d get out of The Cat Who Walked Through Walls as a first read – there’s a lot of subtext that wouldn’t make a lick of sense without familiarity with earlier writings - including Time Enough For Love, (which I do consider to be among his best.) I imagine that someone who didn’t know The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be pretty confused by the ending of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
I think that if you disliked Stranger in a Strange Land, the odds are that you’ll not be terribly impressed with Time Enough For Love – if only because of the “new-age hippy-dippy crapola.” (Or libertarianism, if you prefer.) Myself, I like them both.
But my all-time favourite Robert Heinlein novel is The Number of the Beast.
Difficult to describe without significant spoilers, so I won’t even try. It’s my favourite take on the many-worlds theme, though-- and the lampoon of L. Ron Hubbard at the end is the funniest thing I’ve ever read in the SF genre. (And I’m figuring in the entire canon of Stanislaw Lem.)
Heinlein can be tough to read. He has some good ideas for stories but his execution of them is poor to fair. Almost all of his lead characters are essentially the same person – different names, different genders, different time periods but still essentially the same underneath. His dialogue is often atrociously bad. He often uses his character situations as a convenient excuse for a rant on some pet peeve of his.
After writing all this, I’m sitting here wondering why in the world I’ve read and enjoyed so many of his books… but I did. So finish TEFL and let us know what you think.
TEFL is for the serious Heinlein fan. It’s another milestone in his fall from The-Greatest-Science-Fiction-Storyteller-Ever to The-Most-Self-Indulgent…
Here’s my list:
Novels/Novellas
Sixth Column - 1941
Methuselah’s Children - 1941
Beyond This Horizon - 1942
Waldo and Magic, Inc. - 1950
The Puppet Masters - 1951
Revolt in 2100 - 1953
Double Star - 1956
***The Door into Summer - 1957
***Starship Troopers - 1959
**Stranger in a Strange Land - 1961
**Orphans of the Sky - 1963
***Glory Road - 1963
*Farnham’s Freehold - 1964
**The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 1966
I Will Fear No Evil - 1970
Time Enough for Love - 1973
The Number of the Beast - 1979
Friday - 1982
Job: A Comedy of Justice - 1984
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls - 1985
To Sail Beyond the Sunset - 1987
Juvenile Novels
Rocket Ship Galileo - 1947
Space Cadet - 1948
*Red Planet - 1949
Farmer in the Sky - 1950
Between Planets - 1951
The Rolling Stones - 1952
**Starman Jones - 1953
*The Star Beast - 1954
***Tunnel in the Sky - 1955
***Time for the Stars - 1956
***Citizen of the Galaxy - 1957
***Have Space Suit - Will Travel - 1958
**Podkayne of Mars - 1963
Short Story Collections
*The Man Who Sold the Moon - 1950
*The Green Hills of Earth - 1951
***The Menace from Earth - 1959
***The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag - 1959 (aka 6xH)
The Worlds of Robert A. heinlein - 1966
The Past Through Tomorrow - 1967
Expanded Universe - 1980
The Fantasies of Robert A. heinlein - 1999
Notes
one * is good, two is better, three is highly recommended (IMHO).
no stars doesn’t necessarily mean a loser, however the novels after “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” start to go downhill. “The Number of the Beast” was, bar none, the worst book I’ve ever read.
the collections after 1959 are often re-workings of earlier collections, with some new material and some non-fiction essays.
don’t be dissuaded by the term “Juvenile Novels” - these do not talk down to the reader. The protaganist is always a teenager. There is puppy-love but no sex.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned “Glory Road” - it’s a good place to start. Or the three-star juvenile novels.
The problem with Heinlein , (other than his political, sociological stance which has been talked about elsewhere) is that he tends to have the same characters in every novel: The Young Idealist, Tough But Feminine Heroine and Crusty Old Father Figure. So, don’t try to read too many of these at a time.
Considering that Stranger in a Strange Land was published in 1961, you could think a while about cause and effect.
Not to say that it caused the hippie thing of the late 60’s, but it was certainly a part of what made the brew. I was born '61, but still remember enough of the sixties and what my folks told me to get a hunch of just how controversial this book was at the time.
I have all of RAH’s work. I have the newer editions, put out by Ginny Heinlein. Every now and then I re-read the whole lot. I always read all the L. Long books in order and find the discussions in them entertaining, even if the plots went sour over the years.
Yes, there is always the Hero, the very tough woman, who is often a jack-of-all-trades, and the father figure, a Heinlein in disguise, lecturing the naive hero, and us the readers, on Heinleins political agenda. A lot of bad things may be said about RAH, and a lot of people have said them. But…
He’s career spanned 4 decades. He practically invented modern science fiction (yes, I mean it). He always tried to stay fresh and provocative, sometimes missing the target, and sometimes doing homeruns. His books from the 80’s are a little tired, but I still think Job: A comedy of justice is RAH at his best.
A few of the so called juviniles stand out and shine brighter than many things in literature - especially Have Space Suit, will travel.
As for TEFL and the OP. Leave it for now and read some of his earlier stuff: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a good place to start and go from there to the collection The Past Through Tomorrow. If you’re hooked by then, TEFL will be a good read. If not, you might as well spare yourself.
I consider Stranger in a Strange Land , while a staggering work of genius , to be almost completely unrepresentative of the rest of Heinlein’s work. On finding out that I’m a Heinlein fanatic, a lot of people will say, “I’ve never read Heinlein. I should probably pick up Stranger in a Strange Land one of these days,” or “Oh, I read Stranger in a Strange Land and I didn’t really like it,” I always tell them no-no-no-no-no, read something else.
And, as others have said, Cat Who Walks Through Walls is part of the Trilogy of Self-Indulgent Claptrap, which also contains To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and whose most egregious member is The Number of the Beast. These are for hardcore Heinlein freaks only. Time Enough For Love is, in some sense, a prelude to the trilogy, but was written safely before. It’s probably your heaviest dose of straight-up Heinlein personal philosophy, wrapped up in a good yarn with lots of interesting (albeit ubermenschy) characters. It’s far from his best work, but it’s definitely part of the “essential” Heinlein, especially if you’re ever going to another crack at the Self-Indulgent Trilogy.
I highly recommend the juvies, by the way. They’re short, and not usually very deep, but every last one of them is a fine and enjoyable novel worth reading–not “kid’s stuff.”
For new Heinlein readers, I always recommend basically the two-and three star juveniles and early adult books. You can’t go wrong with “Double Star”, “The Door Into Summer”, “Tunnel In The Sky”, “Time For the Stars”, or “Citizen of the Galaxy”.
These books and a few others are what really established Heinlein as the ‘Dean of Science Fiction’, and the skill they display is considerable. One of Heinlein’s strongest skills was his ability to thoroughly depict a society, the people, places, and events, without ever having to resort to long, boring, expository paragraphs. He just tells a story. Along the way, you realize that you have a complete mental picture of the locations and people, but if you go back and re-read the book you’ll find that he never really describes them in detail, at least not all at once. The world just builds up around you as you read.
Unfortunately, his later books were hurt by a number of things. Heinlein had a problem with blood flow to his brain which caused him to lose a lot of his faculties for a number of years. An operation fixed that problem, but by then he was quite old and his books showed it. The books written after 1970 are of varing quality, and IMO none of them measured up to the dozens of great books he wrote when he was in his 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.
Sam Stone: I think you very much on target with the description things. What makes Heinlain so great is that you almost never get a feeling that he is writing about A/The Future. Instead he writes as if it’s a contemporary novell, and he himself is in the future, or even as a narative about what happened about ten years ago, from the writers perspective. Cat might be bad, but IIRC it’s the story where they are going to rent a skycar or whatever. They can only find one at Budget, and it’s an old Volvo clunker. By dropping brandnames, and making them consistent with a future world, where Budget still is a budget rent-a-car agency, and where a car manufacturer of today makes tomorrow’s skycars, he makes it all very believable.
What I find amazing about him, is that when the contemporary writers still did Galactic Empires, he was weaving a future with concepts of sociology, psychology. A lot of the things he ‘predicted’ has come true in one way or another.
With Stranger RAH managed what he set out to do: Break away from the pulps and the juvies, as he called them, and take Sci-Fi to a more mainstream audience, away from BEM’s and laserguns. Someone else might’ve done that, but he was first. Of all huis writing, about 20% is bad to awful and the rest is pure enjoyment. Not bad for any writer.
I started to read…um… I think it was To Sail Beyond the Sunset once… is that the one that sort of devolved into lots of incestual porn or something and sort of had no plot?
I got tired of Heinlein… used to like him, though.
A) if Number of the Beast is the worst novel you’ve ever read, you need to read more bad SF. Ever read anything by Pel Torro or John Norman?
B) The “Heinlein only had three characters” stuff comes from a hack named Alexi Panshin who’s only claim to fame is a) trying to trash Heinlein and b) trying to rip Heinlein off.
Think all his characters are the same? Let’s start with the women:
Peewee, Star: Emperess of 20 Galaxies, Whatshername from The Star Beast, Hazel Stone…these women have nothing in common outside of their gender and the fact that they’re all heroines.
Heroes? Is the hero of Double Star the “crusty old man” or “The Young Idealist”? How 'bout “Scar” Gordon? or the troubled kid from Time for the Stars: he’s young, but no idealist, he’s actually damned bitter (with some cause).
I appreciate all the replies, perspectives, and advice. I probably will go ahead with TEFL, but based on what y’all’ve said one of the juvies will be after that. Probably Tunnel in the Sky, since I’m familiar with Lord of the Flies. (See, I even read the linked thread!)
Tunnel in the Sky was a good read for me, in fact, it got me to really enjoy Henlein. I had also spotted Starship Troopers in my college library once while I was killing time before class, needless to say I was late for class by the time I had finished reading the book right there.
Just a quibble. There were two post-1970 books, “Job” and “Friday” which were very very good, and together with the first half of “Cat” constituted sort of a late Heinlein renaissance , imho.
Just to be different, I’ll try addressing the OP. What you are getting yourself into is, basically, a collection of short stories, linked by a back-story of a crusty old geezer telling his life story. So you really aren’t committed to 600 pages plus if you just don’t grok it. And be sure to read the very short chapters on “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.”
And I’ll add to the praise for “Glory Road”, my favorite Heinlein book of all time…Timmy
Quibble #2: I agree with your take on his post-70s books, but would add in To Sail Beyond The Sunset, primarily for A) a picture of turn-of-the-century life from someone who grew up then and B) seeing many of the events of Heinlein’s future history through the eyes of Maureen Long. As a novel, it was so-so. But those bits put Sunset firmly into the “good” category for me.
K364, you give “Farnham” even one star? I like most Heinlein, including the later works that so many dislike, but I just don’t like “Farnham”.
Sam Stone, good analysis. I agree, he’s great at building up a picture of a really different society without ever pausing in the telling of the story to explain stuff.
Re the OP, I agree that the book is basically a group of separate stories, most of which are well worth reading. “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter” is singled out by many as being the best, but IMO the others are good, too. I like the one about “The Man who was too Lazy to Fail,” which has to have been based on Heinlein’s own experiences at Annapolis and in the Navy.
, to be almost completely unrepresentative of the rest of Heinlein’s work. On finding out that I’m a Heinlein fanatic, a lot of people will say, “I’ve never read Heinlein. I should probably pick up Stranger in a Strange Land one of these days,” or “Oh, I read Stranger in a Strange Land and I didn’t really like it,” I always tell them no-no-no-no-no, read something else.