Really? huh.
It made sense to me, because it seems like the first half and the second half of Cat are entirely different books. Stranger has a fairly dramatic change to examining the implications of someone raised outside of human culture to hippy love fest, but it’s not as jarring, or as mostly incoherent as the second half of Cat.
I would include Orphans of the Sky on that list, but not Starship Troopers. The juveniles aren’t completely well-defined. Oh, and a word of warning: Don’t expect to learn anything from Time for the Stars: He completely botched all of the relativity in that one (which was pretty much the entire point of the book). I guess I’d consider that one to be the exception to “all of Heinlein’s juvies are good” (though it’s still better than the second half of Cat).
And why the heck are all of the Google ads for mystery books?
How did he botch the relativity?
Yeah, I’d like to know that as well.
Ender, I look forward to the email!
Actually, Heinlein claimed that he plotted out Stranger In A Strange Land beforehand (and it was one of the few, if not the only novel, he ever plotted out in that detail). The breakpoint is deliberate and intentionally jarring, just like Janet Leigh’s “premature” death in Psycho or Orson Welles’ appearance half-way through The Third Man, and the subsequent change in tone from a pulp mystery to a moral conundrum.
Don’t mistake a deliberate shift in tone for sloppy, inconsistant writing. In this case, at least, it was all part of the plan.
Stranger
Orphans was serialized in Astounding, so it is really a part of the Future History Series - the ship was the first of the series the second of which was hijacked by Lazarus Long and company.
More about juveniles - if you grew up in the '50s, you read juevenile sf, some with rocket ships on the spine so you knew what it was. 
Some were crap, but much of it was written by people like Lester del Rey and Wollheim. Many of these could be found in your school library and the juvenile sf ghetto that my library, at least, had.
I believe Starship Troopers was meant as a juvenile, but was not released as such.
Starship Troopers was written as the 1960 submission for Heinlein’s annual juvenile novel published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. It was unanimously rejected by the firm’s editorial board, despite the fact that a precis of what he’d be doing with it had been submitted and accepted.
G.P. Putnam bought the book on the open market from his agent, and published it without promoting it as a juvenile, though they were well aware that it was written as a juvenile. (“There’s a Heinlein juvenile available? Grab it!” – Verbatim instructions reported to Heinlein by his editor as having been given him [the editor] by his boss) My understanding is that Heinlein was one of a very few authors whose juveniles sold as well on the open market as they did in specialized children’s books marketing (which of course accounts for the majority of juvenile-book sales), and Putnam intended to pick up on that by placing it in their general list.
I believe Troopers was meant as what was at the time called a “cadet”–a novel for middling-upper teenagers. Although the tone of the novel is jingoistic (Heinlein claimed to have wrote it as a response to people disappointed in the nonresolution in Korea and the nascient peacenik movement), the reason his then contracted publisher (Scribners) elected not to publish it was because they didn’t think that particular segment of the market was a profitable one, what with televison, drive-thrus, drive-in movies, three-two beer, et cetera. That’s their sucks, I guess; despite the controversy it still engenders it remains one of Heinlein’s best-selling novels, probably second only to Stranger. Putnum took option on it instead, and the rest is history. (We’ll consigned that dreadful Paul Verhoeven movie adaptation to the rubbish bin of lost history, thank you.)
Stranger
Hmnmm…
Someone could make an argument that it’s the first stab at World-As-Myth. Remember the whole bit with John Sterling: Hero of Scourge of the Spaceways/The Galactic Overlord? Remember when they had to put their cargo into orbit and when they came back and got it, there was a note from The Galactic Overlord? Someone could argue that that was one of the first appearances of it.
I wouldn’t, but someone might.
You could make a stronger case for the short story “Assignment In Eternity” where a character walks into a world where the Biblical heaven exists (more or less)
And before this gets me pitted, I mean the stuff about streets of jasper and walls of gold and gates carved from humongous pearls and like that*. Weirdly, the character gets it wrong, btw: she becomes an angel after her death. She appears in Heaven as an angel, but IIRC, people don’t become angels.
*Sorry folks, if Heaven really does look like John described it, and it’s not just a metaphor for “Really, really kewl”, then God lost his sense of good taste after he built the earth and the universe.
A couple of comments: Farnham’s is not a Drakka parallel, IMO. It was intended to be a “How’d you like it if the shoe was on the other foot” novel. It fails at this miserably, but the intent was to show his (predominately white) audience that racism and slavery suck by doing it to whites.
Technically, neither Starship nor Podkayne are juvies. The “cannonical” juvies were A)published by Scribners (bye-bye Podkayne and B) Marketed by Scribner’s as such–including library submissions/marketing (bye-bye Troopers). I’d agree that Podkayne almost feels like a juvie (except for the ending–and the compromise ending is the only one that works, IMO) but, to me, Troopers doesn’t feel like a juvie. I’d never heard the term “Cadet novel” before, but that makes a ton of sense.
Someone did. See post #58. 
OK, folks.
Ender contacted me. I’ve Amazoned him up these titles:
The Door Into Summer
Have Space Suit Will Travel
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
They didn’t have a copy of The Past Through Tomorrow Available. Can you guys believe that?
Ender…you should have them by the end of the week or so. Maybe Monday at the latest.
Keep us posted!
Thank you very much Jonathan Chance! The only one I’ve heard of is the last one. It’s won a few awards, hasn’t it?
Behold, the power of the internet. The Hugo award. That’s probably where I learned of it.
I’m looking forward to the package.
Moon is absolutely great, Door is awesome and Have Spacesuit was the second RAH book I read after Rocketship Galileo.
Enjoy. You are now in for a real treat.
Jonathan Chance, I got home today and found a box waiting for me upon arrival. I thought these were just books you had around your place you were willing to give away. There was no need to go to such troubles for me, but I thank you all the same. I’m looking forward to reading them.
I just finished Mort yesterday, one of the few Terry Pratchett books I’ve read. As an aside, I really enjoyed that and I’m going to have to pick up more of his works in the future.
So I have nothing on my sci-fi fantasy list until mid November when A Feast of Crows comes out (which I simply must get as it hits the bookstores). This will be perfect to fill the slot in between.
So what order would you all recommend?
In order of my title recognition:
Moon
Spacesuit
Door
In order of publication:
Door
Spacesuit
Moon
Alphabetical:
Spacesuit
Door
Moon
I could keep going.
I’ll start reading your choice on Sunday.
Good choices, Chance. The Door into Summer is my personal favorite, though it’s not precisely to everyone’s tastes (I’m a sucker for happy endings). And Spacesuit seems to be the most popular of the juvies. Enderw24, I would recommend reading them in age-level order, Spacesuit first, then Door, then Mistress. Spacesuit (the juvie) will be a quick read, and that’ll let you sort of work your way into Heinlein.
Quoth Sam Stone:
In a word, completely. He correctly calculates the dilation formula, but he misapplies it. I understand that he was trying to simplify relativity to make it easier to understand, but his simplification is to introduce a privelidged frame of reference, which completely chucks relativity out with the bathwater. While it’s true that the homebound twin (I can’t remember their names) would regard the travelling twin as aging slowly, the travelling twin would also regard the homebound twin as aging slowly. This state of affairs, with each twin older than the other, would continue until and unless one of them turned to rejoin the other. At which point which one was older would depend on which one turned.
It’s truly no trouble, Ender. I hope you enjoy them. Give us all here some feedback.
Like Chronos, I recommend Have Space Suit Will Travel first. The Door Into Summer can move you into a more mature writing style. Then The Moon is a Harsh Mistress can move you into his adult fiction.
Enjoy the books.
I second Chronos’ order. Work your way up. Moon is the best of the three, so save it for last. (Best of the three: like picking the most attractive of triplets!) Besides, I think it is my all-time favorite book. 
First off - Enderw24, I am jealous. You’re going to get to read, for the first time, some great novels.
As for order, I’d endorse that proposed by Chronos and all the others.
Enjoy!