First off, I’d just like to say I’ve become a HUGE Heinlein fan. I’ve read (these are all from Audible, but it’s easier to say I read em) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers and The door into Summer in the past couple months. All have been great.
My questions are about Door are:
When Dan is in Colorado after seeing Ricki (I hope that’s how the book spells it) in the paper isn’t it made clear that she wasn’t alone, and was getting married? Kinda fucked up for Dan to go back in time and try and change it.
Should I feel creeped out that Dan’s main objective eventually is to marry a girl he only knows as an 11 year old? And one who sees him as family?
Are there any time travel paradoxes in the book that Dan fails to mention? I’m not very good at pointing those kinds of things out so I figure I’d ask you all.
What RAH book would you recommend next?
Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, but those first two things strike me as a bit…off. It was pretty funny how RAH described what to him was the future, but to me was 8 years ago.
It’s been a while since I’ve read Door Into Summer, and my copy is buried so I can’t verify this, but IIRC when Dan saw the announcement of Ricki’s impending wedding what impelled him to go back in time to change things was that (as we found out later) she was going to be marrying him.
I don’t remember any time travel paradoxes, or at least none that ruined the story for me.
Among my favorite Heinlein books are Double Star and Citizen of the Galaxy. But that may depend on what kind of story you like.
Not fucked up at all. He sees who she married: Daniel Boone Davis. He doesn’t go back to change it; he goes back to fulfill it.
Meh. Up to you, but he leaves her alone (quite literally; he takes the Long Sleep when she’s 11 and she take her own Long Sleep when she’s 21). Certainly she’s an adult at that point. And (see question #1) he knows he marries her as an adult before he arranges to marry her.
The two books I’d suggest you choose next have both been mentioned.
Double Star, which has one of the greatest opening sentences for a novel I’ve ever encountered: “If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he’s a spaceman.”
With that one sentence you get: a capsule summary about the world; a thumbnail description of a character who will become pretty important; and some blazing neon sign insights about our narrator. And I always want to see why the narrator feels this is a logical statement.
Have Space Suit - Will Travel, which I think of as the high point of his juveniles. It’s a great book.
I’d add one more, just because I was in the mood, recently for a bit of adult fiction: The Puppet Masters. For a novel written in the beginning of the Cold War years, it holds up incredibly well. The cosmology of the book is common for the day, and utterly implausible, now. But it’s fun, fast-paced, and chock full of thrills and surprises. Not to mention one hell of a lot of sex - without ever being explicit.
I felt sure you had started a thread to rip on Heinlein :p.
Speaking of which, to hijack a bit, I just started The Puppetmasters, the only major Heinlein I think I never read as a youngster. It just isn’t working for me and what seems to me that isn’t working more than anything else is the “Heinleinisms” - i.e. his characteristic style. Especially the interpersonal stuff. And I was always a Heinlein fan.
It makes me want to go back and read some past favorites and see if it’s the book or just me having lost my taste for his writing. I know I re-read The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathon Hoag a year or two ago and still liked it. So maybe it’s just the book, classic or no.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were just the book. There’s a lot of sexual roles in Puppet Masters that are dated. (Spoilered for the OP) Not as badly as many works from that era - because for the time it was hugely revolutionary to talk about women the way Sam/Elihu does. But seeing Mary going from superwoman to demure/compliant was jarring to me as a teen when I first read the book, and is even more so, now. I like it - don’t get me wrong, but it’s got some jarring moments to it. I think, too, that it works some of the same waters that Heinlein worked with Friday and Gulf. For me, the secret agent stuff is better in Puppet Masters and Gulf, but I’ve known a number of people who read Friday first who found it better there.
I suspect that is a lot of it. Mind you, it’s a consistent problem with Heinlein, particularly in that period. But this one just seems more egregious than usual, maybe due to the nature of the protagonist’s character. Heinlein obviously genuinely liked and respected women ( in his own way ), but he still dates badly at times. Also…
The genuflecting before the brilliant “Old Man” and the meme of the ever-perfect commanding officer who knows best grates a little. I haven’t finished the book, so that might improve, but Heinlein’s trope of hero-worship of the wise, old commander has always bugged me a bit. It seems more forced here, for some reason. As does the whole father/son/military dynamic.
But I suspect you’re right that it’s just the book. I never did love every single Heinlein - this might just fall into the less favored category for me.
Haha once I noticed it I was afraid someone might think that.
What I like most about his books so far is that in general people act rationally and are generally good. Even in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress I don’t recall the Terra Fed being nasty and evil. They just had differences of opinion. Of course in real life people don’t always act rationally. But if I’m going to read about a fictional world it’s nice to have Heinlein’s world. As opposed to, say, the world of (HBO’s) Trueblood where everyone is scum and the characters do random shit as the plot requires. I don’t mean to pick on TB but it was the most egregious offender I could think of off hand.
But, I am a big fan of his politics too. I’m sure that has a big bearing on why I like his characters so much.
I think I’ll go with Double Star next.
Quick aside: Anyone listen to Mistress or Starship Troopers from audible? The narrator is fantastic. Especially in Mistress. My inner monologue would adapt Manny’s accent after 20 minutes or so of listening.
I just got Double Star from Audible (hurray for having a credit left) and it is the same narrator I mentioned above. His name is Lloyd James if anyone cares.
You already read his best (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) and perhaps his most controversial (Starship Troopers).
I love Have Space Suit - Will Travel, Puppet Masters, The Rolling Stones (You get to meet Hazel again and the inspiration for Tribbles), Red Planet is a great juvenile, Citizen of the Galaxy and eventually you need to Stranger in a Stranger Land just so you can fully Grok “Grok” if nothing else. I actually love the book, many others do not.
Well, most of what I came in to suggest have already been suggested. I too think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is his best though (points to forum name).
The only one I would add that I don’t remember seeing mentioned is Glory Road, if for no other reason than to see how Heinlein handles fantasy.
Heilein was a good scifi writer;but a lot of his stuff is seriously dated. It was written in the 1950’s-so it inevitably reflects that mindset. That said, i always liked DIS-it raises a lot of inetersting questions (should we be able to boost lifespans in the future).
I’m still banking on “coldsleep”-I hope it is viable by the time I’m ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Both parts of that are recurrent themes in Heinlein fiction. (Lazarus Long, of course, can’t hook up with any woman without, comparatively speaking, robbing the cradle.) Either you can stomach it or you can’t.
BTW, Spider Robinson’s novel Variable Star, based on a recently discovered Heinlein plot outline and set in, more or less, the Solar System of the “Heinlein juveniles,” also features a girl (the baby sister of the protagonist’s original intended) who meets the protagonist when she is a child and marries him when she grows up.
