Book Log

[mikekn]

20. Time for the Stars - Robert A. Heinlein [23 : 831/1534]
One of the many Heinlein books I've got waiting for me... The story of identical twins who can communicate telepathically over any distance. One stays on Earth, while the other joins the crew of a near light speed ship to seek out new planets to colonize. It was an ok read, not great, but not bad. Parts of it really showed it's age (written in the 1950s).

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I like that one a lot.

[alricthemad.livejournal.com]

I remember that one from long ago.

[mikekn]

It's the twin's angle isn't it? ;)

It's got a good premise and he explores it nicely, but some of the side stuff bugged me.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Oh, I liked it well before the twins. I think I tore though most of the Heinlein Juveniles in late high school.

[mikekn]

I know I read a bunch of them around middle school, but I wasn't keeping track back then. So far I haven't recognized any as being re-reads, but I've still got quite a few to go.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

Cool, one I've actually read. Of course, nearly two decades ago... crap I suddenly feel old.

I don't really think Heinlein ages well. There is an Horatio Alger quality to his early stuff that's hard to take for a modern reader. For a computer guy, it's rather quaint that he envisions future tech as overly intelligent people doing mental calculations and playing with log tables before entering things into a computer.

Strangely, I had "Starship Troopers" from Yes playing in my head today. I realized I'd never seen the movie and had it lying around, so... Obviously, nothing like the book, but Bob probably would have liked it. It did mention some of his odd sociological views that come out more in his later stuff.

[kielbasa-007.livejournal.com]

Troopers - actaully ages well if you ignore the nuke fallout. I still recommend that book as one of my favorite sci fiction

[beckishadow.livejournal.com]

Some of it doesn't age well, but then there are his better books. I re-read Time Enough for Love every other year or so. Then there's stuff like The Number of the Beast which was utter crap. He was prolific, but definitely inconsistent in terms of quality.

[mikekn]

It's been years since I've read either of those two, but I recall enjoying them both (along with the others connected to Lazarus Long)

[mikekn]

I usually enjoy his later stuff (from the 60s-80s), but it's been hit or miss with the earlier stuff. Still, there is enough good stuff there that I'll keep reading them until I run out.

Aging

[metageek.livejournal.com]

It's important to distinguish between Heinlein's juvenile fiction and his adult fiction. Time for the Stars is a juvenile, so it naturally has more of the Horatio Alger quality, because kids like to read about kids succeeding (think Harry Potter).

That said, I will admit that a lot of his stuff is naïve—for example, the economic system in Beyond This Horizon, in which everything is geared so that the economy just magically throws off increased wealth all the time, and everybody gets a basic stipend, which keeps increasing over time. But I suspect they were naïve when they were written, too; Heinlein had too much faith in his own omniscience. Even in engineering, he failed to keep pace; consider The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, from 1966, in which it's clear that Heinlein doesn't really grasp the miniaturization potential of integrated circuits (first proposed in 1952, first created in 1959). His first novel that doesn't portray computers as massive installations is The Number of the Beast; and then he skips straight to computers being small magic boxes.

[zgwortz.livejournal.com]

I remember that one fairly fondly, as I do most of his works (yes, I even somewhat enjoyed the Number of the Beast...). But my all time favorite Heinlein book will always be The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.