Ok, so far I have gone though, on audiobook, in order of favorite to least favorite:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Starship Troopers
Double Star
The Puppet Masters
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Door into Summer
Citizen of the Galaxy
Variable Star*
*Still working on this one. As I mentioned in the Audiobook thread Spider’s narrating is distracting. Will finish it the old fashioned way.
The Green Hills of Earth
Red Planet
Starman Jones
Podkayne of Mars
Friday
The Cat who Walked Through Walls
Time Enough for Love
Rocketship Galileo (Narrated by Spider so it would be a real book version)
Farmer in the Sky
The Menace from Earth
Any Heinlein experts mind ranking those from 1-10?
To clarify, I have enjoyed all his books a lot. Citizen was enjoyable, but my assumption is that it is one of his juvenile novels, so it didn’t grab me as much.
My favorite of his though deal with libertarian philosophies.
The Green Hills of Earth (4)
Red Planet (7)
Starman Jones (5)
Podkayne of Mars (8)
Friday (2)
The Cat who Walked Through Walls (10)
Time Enough for Love (9)
Rocketship Galileo (Narrated by Spider so it would be a real book version) (6)
Farmer in the Sky (1)
The Menace from Earth (3)
That’s not my order, but the order I think you would prefer based on your previous rankings.
The Green Hills of Earth (2)
Red Planet (8)
Starman Jones (5)
Podkayne of Mars (10)
Friday ( 3)
The Cat who Walked Through Walls(7)
Time Enough for Love (1)
Rocketship Galileo (Narrated by Spider so it would be a real book version) (6)
Farmer in the Sky (4)
The Menace from Earth (9)
The Green Hills of Earth - 1
Red Planet*
Starman Jones*
Podkayne of Mars*
Friday - 4
The Cat who Walked Through Walls - 3
Time Enough for Love - 6
Rocketship Galileo (Narrated by Spider so it would be a real book version)*
Farmer in the Sky - 5
The Menace from Earth - 2
*never read 'em, I must admit.
In print and not on your audiobook list, Time for the Stars and Space Cadet are favorites of mine.
In my opinion, you’ve already read the best - and only essential Heinlein - in The Moon and Stranger. Someone on here mailed me Glory Road, though, and I thought it was pretty fun. Almost, but not quite, in the way an E.E. Smith book is fun. Maybe, now that I think about it, it reminded of a Robert Sheckley book more than anything.
To the OP: Read The Number of the Beast, and enjoy it. It is an extremely long joke mocking, in an affectionate way, several different genres of fiction.
As I get the impression you do not like the juveniles as much, I tried to order them for you accordingly.
Friday
Time Enough for Love
The Green Hills of Earth
The Cat who Walked Through Walls
Podkayne of Mars (Juvy)
Starman Jones (Juvy)
Farmer in the Sky (more YA)
The Menace from Earth (more YA)
Red Planet (very Juvy)
Rocketship Galileo (Very Juvy)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite by Heinlein. I am surprised Stanger in a Strange Land is not available. That has to be his most famous novel.
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls is only for the hard-core Heinlein fans, and even then most of us find it…lacking. You’ve already done his best works.
I would agree. It begins well, but trails off into a very strange place, even for Heinlein. It left some hints towards a next novel, but didn’t get there.
The Green Hills of Earth (1)
Red Planet (6)
Starman Jones (5)
Podkayne of Mars (2)
Friday (9) - this might be one higher, but it didn’t grab me.
The Cat who Walked Through Walls (10)
Time Enough for Love (8) - one of the better of the later works.
Rocketship Galileo (Narrated by Spider so it would be a real book version) (7) - not bad,
but a bit creaky these days.
Farmer in the Sky (3)
The Menace from Earth (4) slight, but amusing.
Time Enough for Love and Cat aren’t going to make a lot of sense before you read Methusaleh’s Children.
Are you sure? I never read The Cat but I thought I read the book that was supposed to be its sequel. Job keeps coming to mind, but I don’t think that was it.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset kinda creeped me out. It’s what happens when an author gets incestuous on more than one level. <<shudder>>
When you’re done with Heinlein, you can try John Varley. He had some fairly decent stuff (Titan, etc) before he started being a bit too derivative of Heinlein, IMHO.
The nearest thing there is to a sequel of Cat is Heinlein’s last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (itself largely noteworthy for the hot naked chick on the cover playing Aphrodite). But Gwen & Richard play only a small part in it; it’s more that the latter book makes clear that
Gwen was right about them surviving the moon battle. They had too, because Richard’s sort-of-jailbait lover was pregnant with his baby and Richard hadn’t boffed her yet.
I think the odd endings of Cat, and Number before it, are intentional.
Qadgop, how is Sunset any more creepy than Time Enough for Love? Given that
it’s clear in TEFL that the only reason Ira hasn’t had sex with Hamadryad is that she hasn’t persuaded him yet, and Lazarus has sex with both his sister-daughter-clones and his no-two-ways-about-it mother.
GildedLily, my reading comprehension is poor I guess.
David Brin has some excellent and intelligent Science Fiction. If you can find some of Poul Anderson’s older Sci-Fi he was a Heinlien fan himself. Spider Robinson and David Niven are two more.
And once you’re done with the collected works of Heinlein, I’ll be glad to steer you towards the best of Joe Haldeman, George R.R. Martin and John Scalzi, each of whom write stuff that RAH would be proud of.
