Late Period RAH

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Tim Hall

Am I correct in assuming that I’m not missing anything vital in my life from having not read any late-period Robert Heinlein?

This entry was posted in asides, Science Fiction and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Late Period RAH

  1. Serdar Yegulalp says:
    March 12, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    Other than a roaring good argument with rabid Heinlein fans, no, not really.

  2. Amadan says:
    March 12, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    Yeah, I liked his early stuff, up until about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. His later stuff ranges from interesting but wanky to unreadable.

  3. John P. says:
    March 12, 2014 at 8:58 pm

    You’ve previously made clear you don’t like his stuff so I’m not going to bother trying to change your mind but since you ask …

    No idea what period they fall into but the ones I like are (in no particular order) Puppet Masters, Friday, Starship Troopers, Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Space Family Stone & Tunnel In The Sky. Then there’s Between Planets, Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit Will Travel & Man Who Sold The Moon which are OK but not something I will hurry back to. The other ones that I’ve read have the occasional nice feature but are otherwise uninteresting as far as I am concerned.

    As the saying goes … YMMV. :-)

  4. Tim Hall says:
    March 12, 2014 at 10:02 pm

    I have actually read a few of those (Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Tunnel in the Sky) as well as some of his early short stories.

    Which late-period RAH was Stross’ “Saturn’s Children” inspired by?

  5. John P says:
    March 12, 2014 at 11:45 pm

    I’ve not read Saturn’s Children but according to Wikipedia:
    Stross has said that it is “a space opera and late-period [Robert A.] Heinlein tribute”(specifically Heinlein’s Friday)

    So apparently Friday is late period RAH in which case you may be missing out on something. But then again maybe not. You’ll have to read it and find out. Mind you, I’m not sure I’d use such a strong word as “vital” for the work of any author either way.

  6. Tim Hall says:
    March 13, 2014 at 10:24 am

    It’s entirely possible that Stross has read “Friday” so that we don’t have to, then gone and written a better book, for given values of “Better”.

    There’s a sequel, “Neptune’s Brood” (which I haven’t read yet) which is all about mermaids in space, and has a plot about a massive financial scam,