posted
I read *most* of this book. I'd say I had a good 5th of it left to read...
And I stopped.
I couldn't stand it. It was one of the most boring books I have ever read. I mean, no offense to anyone who loved this book, and this man's work (I haven't read anything else by Heinlein), but holy crap this guy goes off on tangents that are completely irrelevant!
For example, there's a chapter where he's going to meet his father, and from what I remember (its been a good 3 months since I stopped reading) Heinlein went into this story about how his father decided to join the army instead of saying a simple "he reconsidered and then joined later on". Then he goes into a flashback where a college/academy Professor is talking math with him. Just.. talking math. It has nothing to do with the story.. they are just talking MATH.
Anyway, I found the book so extremely boring that I had to stop.. Does this make me a bad person?
Posts: 317 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I could see how you wouldn't like it. I just picked it up about 3-4 weeks ago - because of some thread on Hatrack - and didn't like it at first. However, once I got used to the style, I couldn't stop reading it and ended up loving it.
I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land now and I've enjoyed it so far.
Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Never read Starship Troopers myself, but if you want to read some good Heinlein you can't go wrong with The Door Into Summer or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I thought The Martian Chronicles was a little boring when I read it 2 and a half years ago for school. Does that mean I'm not really a SF lover?
Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
If you read Starship Troopers not so much as a story but as an explanation of Heinlein's view of the appropriate government set-up, then the tangents might make some sense.
You might try his Citizen of the Galaxy, which is the first book of his I read.
Though I firmly believe that, like Tolkein, if he were writing now he would not be published. And if Jean M. Auel were just trying to write her first book now, they would assign her a slash and burn editor and her books would be less boring.
I mean how many times does she have to explain the same medicinal uses of the same plants over and over and over? Or explaining the whole everyone-was-totally-awed-that-Ayla-had-discovered-the-domestication-of-animales bit like ten times in two chapters.
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
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posted
Starship Troopers is not a book about story. If you are looking for that, you'll be disappointed. If you want Heinlein that's pure story, but no theory or commentary, read something like Methuseleh's Children or somesuch.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
No, just that that is *not* the book's focus. It's there, and it's a decent story, but if that's the one thing you find important, it's going to feel like you're wading through a lot to get there.
It's like watching Waking Life for plot. Sure, there is one, but that's not the primary focus of the movie.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
This is actually kind of odd, I was planning on starting to read Heinlein sometime next week. Never read him before. There are 4 books of his that I want to read: 1) Citizen of the Galaxy 2) Tunnel in the Sky 3) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 4) The Door into Summer
Is there any specific order in which I should read those 4? I was planning on reading them in the order listed, but Icarus's post made me reconsider. Help? (Sorry for temporarily borrowing your thread, Pun)
Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I liked Stranger in a Strange Land until the middle. When he had that whole awakening experience thing and afterwards I didn't like it so much.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I liked Strangr, but ifd thge whole free love thingt turns you odff you might want co pick a different book to staret with.
Door into Summer is a nice read, I think, though less ambitious thjan his other works.
[/i]Starchip Troopers[/i] is also good, IMO, but if you are turn4ed of fby t the polityics/philospphy in it, you won';t enjoy it so much.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Wow. Starship Troopers has been in my top 5 for years and years. I don't remember much of the philosophy in it, but I love the soldier story and the way Heinlein handled the structure of the book.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
It's been years since I read Stranger, but I loved it at the time. I'll have to try it again sometime and see how it holds up from an older POV. I loved Door Into Summer. I remember liking Puppet Masters okay but thinking it nothing special.
I'll even admit to liking such horribly un-PC books as Sixth Column and Farnham's Freehold. I just figured he was a product of his time and experiences, and ignored the stuff that was distasteful, and enjoyed the story underneath. Ditto for his weird sex elements. None of that bothers me as long as there is still a story going on under all of that.
Which brings me to his two worst books, IMO: The Number of the Beast and Time Enough for Love. Both thin excuses for him to fantasize at length. And Time Enough for Love is so freaking long!Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I can definitely understand loving and hating Friday. On the one hand, the whole super-strong courier running around killing people and delivering things was cool. On the other hand, what is the point of all her sexploits?
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
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posted
This is a mildly inflammatory first post, but I've been around hatrack for years now, variously, so I'm sure it won't get too bad a reception. And it needs to be said.
Stranger is a terrible book. Terrible. It's often touted as his best, but far from that, it is very nearly his worst. It's the excess of a writer with too much prestige, and not enough editing, a wallowing lump of a book that doesn't deserve reading.
Don't get me wrong, The Number of the Beast and Glory Road are far worse. But in comparison to his earlier, 'juvenile' novels, it's just unreadable. And no it's not the free love that gets me, I'm down with the free love. It's just a rubbish story, with rubbish characters, and screw grokking, it's a stupid concept.
Good Heinlein includes : Citizen of the Galaxy, Between Planets, Red Planet, Space Cadet and if you're someone who can forgive people for the time in which they write their books, The Day After Tomorrow ('The Sixth Column')
I've been interupted writing this, but will come back and validate my opinions with reasons, later.
quote:Originally posted by dean: If you read Starship Troopers not so much as a story but as an explanation of Heinlein's view of the appropriate government set-up, then the tangents might make some sense.
You might try his Citizen of the Galaxy, which is the first book of his I read.
Though I firmly believe that, like Tolkein, if he were writing now he would not be published. And if Jean M. Auel were just trying to write her first book now, they would assign her a slash and burn editor and her books would be less boring.
I mean how many times does she have to explain the same medicinal uses of the same plants over and over and over? Or explaining the whole everyone-was-totally-awed-that-Ayla-had-discovered-the-domestication-of-animales bit like ten times in two chapters.
I found Heinleins government setup facinating in this book. The movie was extra cheesy but I liked it.
And did Auel ever 'finish' the cave bear series?
Posts: 38 | Registered: Jul 2005
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As for Stranger, it was the fourth Heinlein book I read, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Of course, I read the abridged version, so maybe that made some difference with regard to the editing comment.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Nobody has mentioned Podkayne of Mars. I always liked it for some reason. His adult books have all blurred together in my head so much I can't keep them straight anymore and I don't feel the slightest urge to read them again.
Posts: 1014 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I liked that one too, except, am I misremembering, or doesn't she give some boy fellatio? (Not that I'm criticizing fellatio per se, but its inclusion in an apparently juvenile novel.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I read the "full" version of Stranger. I think I probably would have prefered the edited version.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I, too, found the full version of Stranger rather bloated -- unfortunately, I didn't like it enough to want to give the edited version a try. Product of his time or no, the way he writes female characters leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Hated Starship Troopers. Hated every Heinlein book that was written after Starship Troopers. Loved every Heinlein book that was written before Starship Troopers. So, PUNJABEE, I would say no, you're not a bad person, you just exhibit good taste.
posted
Yeah, Theaca, Podkayne of Mars is one of my two favorite Heinleins. The Heinlein juveniles version: they've released the "uncensored version" of many of Heinlein's books.
Frankly, Heinlein needed "censoring" by a good editor, which he had for his "juveniles". Not for blue writing -- sex doesn't bother me either way -- but for rambling all over the place, past the point of the story being being buried in verbiage. Admittedly some of the meandering is "sexual". But I hadda put quotation marks around sexual cuz Heinlein's take really is juvenile, reads like the fantasies of an adolescent who's still wondering if he'll ever lose his virginity.*
And the lack of a good editor is why most of Heinlein's writing after Stranger in a Strange Land are so errrm... whatever the proper descriptives, they aren't synonymous with 'good'.
However, good or bad or indifferent, Stranger in a Strange Land is to the commercialization of the scifi novel what Lord of the Rings is to the commercialization of the fantasy novel, for much the same reasons.
Which is a good point at which to end this posting and begin another.
* As irritating as reading an author (eg AynRand, JeanM.Auel, etc) who keeps pointing out that his/her protagonist/s is/are genius/es when it is obvious from the storyline that the author ain't bright enough to understand the concept of genius. And all too often, apparently believes so much in his/her own "genius" that s/he expects the reader to be unable to follow the "complex" storyline, and so repeats&explains the plot points over and over, and over, and over...
posted
Not liking the book "Stormship Troopers" does not make you a bad person.
Liking the movie "Stormship Troopers" does!
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I've found form the movie that the government was tyranical, brutal, totalistarian and downright facsist. It again and again ignored or tainted the very concepts that makes democracy great and replaces it with a vile militeristic regime. The result is a government that constantly uses propaganda as a tool to reinforce "military values" as a means of insuring its power base among the military by oppressing the basic individual rights of all human beings. And as George Orwell had brilliantly examined and as the Bush administration is currently doing, Heinlin's government if the movie is any indicator uses the war against the buggers as a means to keep the proleteriate distracted from current issues and allows the "government" to pass what are quite possibly outragous laws that limit the basic freedoms of the individual.
posted
Nope, the movie pretty much missed everything Heinlein except the title, the bugs, and the flogging. All that other stuff is the director, and even the flogging is Nazi-fetish rather than Heinlein.
posted
Robert Anison Heinlein...one of my favorite writers, has written some of my least favorite books.
RAH's views on sex became more and more perverted as he got older. The pinnacle of his "dirty old man-hood" has to be To Sail Beyond the Sunset. A book so rife with detailed incest (and little more) that after struggling through it, I stopped reading entirely for nine months.
In Friday **SPIOLERIFIC** the heroine ends up with an agent of the other side who rapes her towards the beginning of the book.
Try as I might I have never been able to finish The Number of the Beast. The constant bickering and jostling of four people for command of a craft designed to fit two made me never want to be in a small craft with a military personnel just in case. *shudder*
Stranger in a Strange Land is really three books, one I love, one I tolerated, and one I hated. *shrug*
Glory Road is one of my all time favorites. It's a romp of an adventure, it might not be great literature, but it's hugely enjoyable.
Anyone interested in my opinion on Starship Troopers should click here...
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Bump. Sort of. I happen to be a fan of Heinlein although I've only read a handful of his books.
I've been recommending Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to people for a few years now, with reserved comments on Stranger in a Strange Land. I was just reading the dust cover of another of his books which stated that Heinlein had won the Hugo (I think) four times, for the three books mentioned above and for Double Star (which my library doesn't have ). I seem to have started with his most accredited.
Moon hasn't been given enough credit on this thread IMHO. I loved the story and I was drawn in by the characters, but what captivated me the most (much as with Starship Troopers ) was Heinlein's own commentary on politics and government. I love that he writes social commentary into his Sci Fi -- I think that's one of the reasons I keep coming back to the whole genre, and generally one of the things that endears me to an author.
And Pun, I have to say I thought the math was cool.
I just finished The Cat Who Walks Through Walls] and I'm having some serious reactions to it . . . but I think I'm going to give that topic it's own thread.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Oooh, try The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for sure. It's short and there's this description of an organization that has eerie parallels to current terrorist cells. Also Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Love it love it. And then read Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome and THEN read Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog and your life will be complete and wonderful.
Jaime - Bradbury wrote Martian Chronicles, not Heinlein. Bradbury is a beautiful writer. Chronicles is one of his more fragmented works; Try Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is Heinlein's finest work, and one of my favorite novels of any type.
I disagree that Heinlein got more perverted as he got older. He was like that pretty much from the beginning, but due to limitations for juvenile works and censorship issues through the 40's, 50's, and 60's, he toned himself down. His very first comppleted, previously unpublished novel from the 30's was published last year and it's rife with sex and political opinion.
I don't have a problem with the way he writes women, largely because I've read a great deal of sf and other fiction written by his contemporaries. Heinlein was years ahead of his time. His women were consistently intelligent, highly skilled, and generally deadly. They read as unrealistic now, but that's because social awareness of women's equality finally caught up and passed him.
I love Stranger for all its faults, although I prefer the shorter version. I like Time Enough For Love as an epic story over hundreds of generations, even if it's about the same guy. The peek into frontier life and turn of the century America is wonderful.
Every few years I go on a Heinlein jag and read everything he wrote, in order. It keeps me off the streets.
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). I seem to have started with his most accredited.
