When I was younger, I was delighted by the novels of Robert Anson Heinlein, who seemed to me to be gifted with miraculous insights. Even when I got old enough to realize that things worked out in his novels because that was how plotting worked, and if he didn't like the results, he could destroy whole acres of words and redo them, still, I thought his work was marvelous. To this day, I am warmed by the thought of Stranger in a Strange Land, and by Podkayne of Mars, and The Roads Must Roll, and The Blind Singer of the Spaceways.
Which is why I was so startled when I picked up a novel of his that I'd never read, and sat down and read it. Its so stilted! So dogmatic! So I'll use snappy slang which will make up for and distract from the lack of characterization, plot, story.... I was stunned. More than that, I was desperate. This is Heinlein! Perhaps this section wasn't one of his best...let me skip ahead...skip again...next chapter maybe? Surely the bloviating, the moralizing, will have ended by now? ...by now? By the very last pages in the book?
Sigh.
2 comments:
Yeah....good stuff. He got a little wierd in his last couple of books.
I enjoyed Friday a lot, but unlike most of the rest of Heinlein's works, I never got the urge to really re-read it.
Starship troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are two opposing but valid views of a distopia. But both are very understandable. Of course, Heinlein can make anything sound plausible.
Its when you grow up and think about it again that some doesn't sound quite as seductive and obvious as when you were a teen. Some, yes. I'm still looking for Fair Witnesses.
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