Methusaleh's Children

[BruceK]

Or do yourself a favor and pick up "The Past Through Tomorrow". That volume contains most of Heinlein's Future History writings all laid out chronologically in one book.

[Kilted Christian]

Wow, this is great to see this thread. I am a big fan but haven't read more than 4 books. I really did enjoy Time enough for love so much that I read it twice in a a row.

[cacunn]

I have one shelf in my den of nothing but RAH books. Some have been read so many times that if it weren't for rubber bands many would not be books but a pile of pages.

Great writer great stories. But don't you think that Sgt Zim, Jubal Harshaw, and L. Long are basically to same character?

I am now reading "For Us, The Living" and the main character just ordered "a pocket belt with a detachable kilt for travel and general public wear"

For those of you who had the honor of knowing Mr. Heinlein did he wear a kilt?

[fluter]

By the way, for fans who have not read Stranger in a Strange Land "recently" --- i.e. in the last 16 years:

When Virginia Heinlein was in the process of renewing copyrights, she had the blessed inspiration to get the original manuscript from UC Santa Cruz, and decided that version should be published. So you can now get his original Stranger as it was before his editor/publisher got hold of it. The published version was cut by about 60,000 words, and tactically rewritten in spots.

Alas, I have never seen a reference to RAH's being kilted.

[Mr. MacDougall]

I've actually found Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars to be worse for being read as an adult.

[emolas]

I've actually found Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars to be worse for being read as an adult.

I found I was able to better understand some of the more subtle pokes Stranger takes at society/religion/government after growing up and experiencing them. Or it could be that the version I read as a child was the edited one and the one I read as an adult was a reprint of the original manuscript.

[Zardoz]

well, Podkayne is a book for young readers, while Stranger surely is not! I'll second the recomendation to seek out the 'unabridged' version of Stranger though, it's a better novel in many subtle ways. A big part of 'Grumbles From The Grave' (which is a collection of Heinlein's letters back and forth with his agent and editors) concerns cutting on Stranger.

If you have not heard of it yet, any Heinlein fans need to get a copy of the novel 'Variable Star' it is truly the last RAH novel, it was written by Spider Robinson, from a outline and fragments Heinlein set aside in the 50s and never finished. It's a great read.

One other note, at Apollocon this year I had the pleasure to meet David G. Hartwell, who is the senior editor at Tor Books. He is finishing up editing a huge Heinlein biography due out hopefully by the end of the year from Tor.

[Mr. MacDougall]

In my opinion, RAH shined brightest when he was writing about things he believed in, like personal responsiblity, and the duties of a citizen to the state, and vice versa. Unfortunately, in Stranger in a Strange Land he wrote about things he didn't believe in, and the writing rang false to my inner ear. And in Podkayne of Mars, when I read it as an adult, mostly what I saw were his unwritten assumptions about the roles of women, which was uncomfortable to me.

[Zardoz]

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/w...rahrahrah.html