It is just an odd place to start with R.A. Heinlein’s works because some of the later characters are from his previous works, like you should know the past before you read the future. It has been many years since I read it, it is still on the shelf. I will keep it for the novelty.
I have read a substantial amount of his works and you can see the progress in both style and his developing history. He tries to bring it all together in Number of the Beast and wrap it up as some kind of ‘fantasy creates reality’, but it doesn’t work.
I was and still am a big fan of his. I blame this book on his advancing age or possibly medical marijuana.
Oh yeah, I forgot Farnham’s Freehold, a much bigger piece of dreck.
I agree for the most part. The beginning of the first book was one of his first attempts at a novel. He finished it later but didn’t do a full rewrite and it shows. I still like the concept of the first book and remember being shocked at the twist in the middle. I enjoyed the middle books. The last few seemed rushed as I think he realized he might die before finishing what he wanted to be his magnum opus. Inserting himself into the story was terrible. I really wish he would have skipped that.
I know some people liked it but I couldn’t stand Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I’ve still not finished it.
I don’t like to pile on when there’s not much point, but I have to agree with all the people listing Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. Part of the reason is that just about everything else Heinlein wrote – even his “bad” stuff – was pretty good. NOTB was the very first Heinlein I read when it was Brand New, and I was really looking forward to it. To be given this meandering piece of fluff with its pages upon pages of arguing about Rules of Order and the like, followed by downright wish-fulfillment was just too much. I was grateful that his later books were much better than this.
By the way, I was just at Boskone 2020, and found that Arc Manor books is releasing an alternative text version of NOTB entitled The Pursuit of the Pankera this year. They gave out copies of “A Side by Side Comparison of two Chapters between The Pursuit of the Pantera and The NUmber of the Beast, the two sister parallel novels”. Having read this, I have now been bored by two different versions of the text. Completists will want the book, but I’m not sure if anyone else will really like it.
For something besides NOTB, let me not recommend Frederick Forsyth’s The Phantom of Manhattan, his sequel to Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. I’ve been a fan of Forsyth since The Day of the Jackal, and have read all his books (except the nonfiction The Biafra Story), many of them multiple times. But he should have stayed away from this book. It’s not his subject matter, or his time period, or his milieu, and it’s simply awful.
Neill Stephenson’s Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. His books can get a little slow at times, and he can’t write an ending for shit. But all his other books I enjoyed reading and loved to have read. This one I put down not quite halfway in, and won’t pick it up again.
Arthur C. Clarke’s sequels to Rendezvous with Rama progress from poor to execrable as they go on. It’s worth noting that Gentry Lee is mostly responsible for them, and Clarke’s name was mostly just on them for sales.
I’ve read a fair numberl of John Grisham books, and I generally finish what I start, but I couldn’t get even halfway through Gray Mountain. Preachy twaddle. YES WE GET IT STRIP-MINING IS BAD. Bleh.
Alistair MacLean started off well (HMS Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, etc.), but his later works are dreck. By the time he got to Athabasca or Seawitch, he was apparently deep in the throes of alcoholism and just didn’t care anymore.
I wasn’t able to finish Stranger in a Strange Land, either, but enough people love it that I’m willing to entertain the notion that it’s not bad, just not for my tastes.
The Road to Little Dribbling made me wonder if Bill Bryson had lost his magic. It’s just a reboot of his much better Notes from a Small Island., and not a very good one. I know we Bryson fans like his withering scorn, but here the bitching just got tiresome. Okay, we get it, modern celebrities and litterbugs suck. Fine, you don’t like transportation systems. You can afford a goddamn car by now, can’t you?
I’m so relieved his new book The Body has him back on point.
I have never finished FF, but I wasn’t sure whether that was because of the format. I never had a copy until after I lost my site, and the narrator of the audiobook was so irritating I couldn’t stand to listen. The same thing was true of “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress,” but I knew that one before I was blind and thus could distinguish between narrator & authorial incompetence.
While I wouldn’t call Ira Levin a favorite author of mine, nobody could deny that A Kiss Before Dying And Rosemary’s Baby are classic thrillers. The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil are only a few steps lower.
Then he came out with Son of Rosemary. Not only abysmal, but it reached back in time and ruined Rosemary’ Baby for me.
Brandon Sanderson may be my favorite author, but his followups to Steelheart were not great. Steelheart is a really good superhero book, but both sequels disappointed. **Firefight and Calamity **were overlong and very slow moving.
I ranked Faust(Eric) as his worst book. Equal Rites was bad, too.
I don’t feel a need to spoiler box a book that old. I liked Sphere and I liked that in the end, they gave up their powers…except for the woman who clearly held on to her powers and is now kind of all powerful over everyone. Kind of an evil ending, but I didn’t mind.
I’m glad I read it, although that was quite a read for a 6th grader (age 12 or so) quite a change from the juveniles I read as a child. I like that I know the pop culture references from Stranger but I also learned that I dont enjoy adult Heinlein and never had much of an urge to return.
My dad was a heavy sci reader and I think he gave me good advice to not use it as a book report.
Nobody should ever judge Heinlein based on Stranger. Like I said, I didn’t like it either, but I do like most of Heinlein’s adult works.
Oh, and I’ll agree with Unseen Academicals as Pratchett’s worst work. Monstrous Regiment was only bad if you were expecting it to be comedy just because it’s Discworld-- It’s mostly not, but I thought he did serious pretty well, too. It’s not his best work, but it’s OK.