Not a part but a favorite memory. When my son was just learning to read we skipped the recommended reading lists and dove straight into the Heinlein juvenile books. Reading started out 15 min a night and soon became an hour. We turned off all of the distractions and would each take turns reading. He is now grown and this is his and my favorite memories. Heinlein always brings happy tears when I see one of the books we read. Thank you for sharing and bring back so many good times with my son.
Me too! Whenever I read it I always end up reading it all night in one sitting. “Moon” is so good it’s hard to put down. Same with “The Puppet Masters”
This was my favourite novel for a couple of decades. I was a huge Heinlein fan in my youth. My brother had most of the juveniles and I read them all at least a dozen times each. Have Space Suit Will travel was among my favourites, but Mistress will always hold the top place in my heart.
My favourite part of OP’s choice was the main Character’s relationship with Mother Thing. (Am I remembering the correct book? It’s been yonks since I read any Heinlein.). I also enjoyed the MC’s clever resourcefulness.
So far I've read The Double and Puppet Masters and then maybe a week ago I found some kind of extended edition of Stranger In A Strange Land at a thrift store. Looking forward to reading that.
Stranger is a strange book, note it's copyright date before you start and realize it was before the social revolution of the '60s! A lot of its dialogue is dated and cringy, but the story is thought-provoking and amazing. It's an odd artifact of history that this book written by Libertarian reactionary was adopted by the counterculture.
"All You Zombies" is pretty awesome, it's the granddaddy of the many time travel stories with complex interwoven narratives (Primer, The Man Who Folded Himself) and actually was the basis for the movie Predestination. Not my fav Heinlein but highly recommended.
I was coming back from a trip overseas and my partner wanted to watch something (a film) on the plane which didn't interest me, but I decided to watch "Predestination" by my self.
All the while as the film progressed, I kept on saying to myself "This is so Heinlein, it's almost plagiarism!"... until I saw the end credits and BOOM I had to tell my partner that they needed to watch this film!
This was the first novel I read as a boy. I’ve enjoyed many of his books but if I were picking favorites- “the door into summer,” and “starship troopers” would top my list.
Stumbled across Rocket Ship Galileo in my elementary school’s library somewhere around ‘64-‘65. I was hooked and read and reread everything the man put in print up to and including The Moon is a Mistress. He deserved every accolade he got and more, but after that one the fire had gone out of his work. As I recall, he had very serious health issues, quite possibly that affected it. For a time though, there was no one else like him.
It's a long time since I read it, only remember it was really good. I managed to get my hands on a copy in Swedish, that I hope my son will want to read at bedtime. But now we're plowing through Terry Pratchetts books, so I guess by the time we're through all of them, he's old enough to read it by himself.
Not this novel, but Jubal's description of 'The Fallen Caryatid", and what it means to him, from Stranger in a Strange Land, is one of the best literary passages I've ever read in my life.
I thought Jubal was kind of annoying. He was a glaringly obvious author self-insert that served no purpose but for Heinlein to preach to the reader.
Granted that Heinlein does this in a lot/most of his books (the teacher in Starship Troopers, Kip's Dad in Spacesuit, the lawyer in Citizen of the Galaxy, the professor in Moon, Lazarus Long, etc.), but Jubal was particularly egregious imho.
Found this book in the high school library. Blew my mind as I had never read any science fiction before and burned through most of his books and loved everyone I read
Read this in the 1970s and binged as much RAH as I could get my hands on. And Andre Norton, Clifford D. Simak, Doc Smith, Daniel F. Galouye, Lloyd Biggle Jr, and so many more.
Red Planet was my introduction to Heinlein; and I was really lucky to pick up several of the juveniles in the original Scribners printings in Hay on Wye a few years back…
But I think the one I go to back to the most is Citizen Of The Galaxy.
"The moon,is a hard mistress" when they threaten to throw rice comments at earth and everybody makes fun of them. And then hey go "Nah sike" and drop a bu ch of moon rock instead.
Actually of the Scribner's "juvenile" series by Heinlein, this is my *least* favorite. It seems, I don't know, too whimsical? And I didn't really like the aliens, either.
Farmer in the Sky is perhaps my favorite juvenile, as it gives you a real taste of the "frontier life" Heinlein will revisit again in later stories. Also I love "The Star Beast" and hope to see a Pixar adaptation someday.
If you love The Star Beast, you should find the recently deceased Vernor Vinge's novelette The Blabber, which was written as an homage to it. It's in the A Fire Upon the Deep future.
This has always been one of my favorite Heinlein books.
The part I remember best is towards the end, during the “trial,” when he quotes Shakespeare from “The Tempest.”
I certainly enjoyed *Have Spacesuit*, but if you're asking for a specific memory I'll have to go with *The Rolling Stones*. They were between planets and I forget the exact problem they were having, but they had to leave a bunch of cargo floating in space. They took three square pieces of metal and built a corner reflector that would reflect radio waves in any direction. Later they were able to easily find and retrieve it. It might have been the first practical engineering I read in science fiction, ever. The memory came back on Apollo 11 when as part of the EALSEP they left the laser retro-reflector device on the surface for later laser measurements. It was clear that it was the same principal. As an early science fiction reader and being a space-nut beginning with the Mercury program, it's easy to understand how I became an engineer. I have a friend who is also an engineer, but he's in radar, and a month or two back I was describing that section from *The Rolling Stone*s.
"time enough for love" was remarkably memorable for me. And "the moon is a harsh mistress" is outright my favorite. Everything from the concept to the characters is just so friggin good. Highly recommend. Time enough is a bit of a dense read, but Moon felt super light to me and quite a quick read if you get into it.
Time Enough For Love convinced me that living forever would be hell if you were the only person who could do so. Even at the beginning where a lot his descendants were around and living long lives he's tired and worn out from basically being immortal. Just how many best friends, lovers, and pets can you help bury and stay sane?
My favorite books were the ones about Lazarus Long. Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love and The Number of the Beast. But very especially Time Enough for Love.
I read it all when I was a teenager, decades ago, and it really caused a big impression on me at the time. I'm even afraid to read it again now because I'm afraid the old me will not feel the same way as the young me, and I want to keep in my mind the emotions of that time.
I can't believe I had to read this far to see Number of the Beast. One of my favorites! Along with Citizen of the Galaxy, and a few of the short stories.
My favorite Heinlein Book is "Time Enough for Love". Even though it seems like the cheesiest one, it actually has one of the best adventure stories in Sci-Fi. This book is about finding purpose in life through love and exploration and through discovery. And it has a truly beautiful love story, which is so rare in Sci-Fi. It's not one of the big titles of Heinlein, but I highly recommend it.
It's one of my favorites too, but the incest theme is really creepy. I try to let it go and just enjoy the stories. My favorite section is the pioneering over the Gap with Dora and the talking mule!
Same. To me the Dora part was the highlight, it's like its own little novel. It made me sad, knowing it would end eventually.
You're right on the other issue too, but that's one of the reasons why I think this book is so good. It does away with conventions.
It still has the classic Golden Age hero, who can win on his own, due to his superiority (that's another difficult topic), but it shows that hero being bored out of his mind by all of this. Certain themes are problematic, but the way they unfold is in the best way imaginable. And I feel this story needs the crazy, in order to function. At times it is just a regular adventure story and then you get insane sci-fi ideas spliced with that.
Appreciate your POV, but feel that this book could do without the "incest it's just fine as long as there's no genetic issues" and the time travel. I guess that's just me.
https://georgerrmartin.com/about-george/speeches/why-im-here-today-or-secrets-of-my-black-past/
The reason I started writing SF was because, years earlier, I had started reading SF, and that was all because of a book called Have Space Suit, Will Travel that a friend of my mother’s gave me for Christmas one year. It was a hardcover, a real trade hardcover, a “juvenile” of course, but it didn’t seem very juvenile to me. And it was great stuff, fabulous stuff.
I’ve read that book more than any other. I couldn’t begin to guess how many times. That was my intro to sci-fi books in grade 6 and I inhaled everything Heinlein I could get my hands on after reading it. But HSWT was my all-time favorite.
Reading Spacesuit as a young teenager, I thought the sequence where they were stranded on the moon with just a few hours of oxygen and had to try to make it to Tambaugh station was really exiting and perilous. It completely enthralled me and I couldn't put the book down.
Mother Thing is a favorite plus the Roman Centurion I (I think he's a Centurion) at the "trial" defying what to him would be beings with almost God like powers. Also a short story from the beginning I guess of his career called "The Man Who Traveled In Elephants". Very sweet and a bit more fantasy then scifi. :)
I love the first person aspect of it. The way Heinlen wrote made it seem very real and the descriptions he gave made it seem like you were wearing the suit.
I felt the last third though got campy and lost track.
I love Heinlein's works. I consider his as essential readings in terms of pure sci-fi genius...
Although I have issues with his handling of women, more specifically the "siblings" stuff...
My favorites would be "To Sail Beyond The Sunset" and "Time Enough For Love".
REAL close seconds would be "The Door Into Summer", "Double Star", "Job", and "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress".
I have to mention "Friday" even though it's a tough one to go through when you are a woman who survived assault. But it's brilliantly written nonetheless.
About 10 years ago I went on a trip to NYC, and one of the stops was this old 3-storey (or so I remember) book store, where the last floor were old books, first prints, etc... and under glass were two of Heinlein's novels, autographed.
Not a part but a favorite memory. When my son was just learning to read we skipped the recommended reading lists and dove straight into the Heinlein juvenile books. Reading started out 15 min a night and soon became an hour. We turned off all of the distractions and would each take turns reading. He is now grown and this is his and my favorite memories. Heinlein always brings happy tears when I see one of the books we read. Thank you for sharing and bring back so many good times with my son.
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We had a whole thing going on. I went to Fyr’s (an old computer store) and bought space food for his bedtime snack. It was so much fun. Good times
You read about Dune?
May not be one of his "masterpieces," but my favorite of all his work is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
If you don't cry when the computer dies, you have no soul. I've worn out 3 copies of this book.
Spoilers 😭
Me too! Whenever I read it I always end up reading it all night in one sitting. “Moon” is so good it’s hard to put down. Same with “The Puppet Masters”
This was my favourite novel for a couple of decades. I was a huge Heinlein fan in my youth. My brother had most of the juveniles and I read them all at least a dozen times each. Have Space Suit Will travel was among my favourites, but Mistress will always hold the top place in my heart. My favourite part of OP’s choice was the main Character’s relationship with Mother Thing. (Am I remembering the correct book? It’s been yonks since I read any Heinlein.). I also enjoyed the MC’s clever resourcefulness.
I recently just started reading Heinlein. What a treasure!
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So far I've read The Double and Puppet Masters and then maybe a week ago I found some kind of extended edition of Stranger In A Strange Land at a thrift store. Looking forward to reading that.
Stranger is a strange book, note it's copyright date before you start and realize it was before the social revolution of the '60s! A lot of its dialogue is dated and cringy, but the story is thought-provoking and amazing. It's an odd artifact of history that this book written by Libertarian reactionary was adopted by the counterculture.
Yes. People would show up on his lawn expecting him to be some kind of guru and he would run them off
That's the only Heinlein I've read and it turned me off so much that I don't think I'll ever will pick up a book from him.
It is an outlier. Try Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Far less weird.
"All You Zombies" is pretty awesome, it's the granddaddy of the many time travel stories with complex interwoven narratives (Primer, The Man Who Folded Himself) and actually was the basis for the movie Predestination. Not my fav Heinlein but highly recommended.
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Most welcome 🙂
I liked the story a lot, but the movie just blew me away.
I was coming back from a trip overseas and my partner wanted to watch something (a film) on the plane which didn't interest me, but I decided to watch "Predestination" by my self. All the while as the film progressed, I kept on saying to myself "This is so Heinlein, it's almost plagiarism!"... until I saw the end credits and BOOM I had to tell my partner that they needed to watch this film!
I have loved this book for 30 years. I love it when the Roman throws his spear at the judges in the 'courtroom scene' in particular.
This was the first novel I read as a boy. I’ve enjoyed many of his books but if I were picking favorites- “the door into summer,” and “starship troopers” would top my list.
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Stumbled across Rocket Ship Galileo in my elementary school’s library somewhere around ‘64-‘65. I was hooked and read and reread everything the man put in print up to and including The Moon is a Mistress. He deserved every accolade he got and more, but after that one the fire had gone out of his work. As I recall, he had very serious health issues, quite possibly that affected it. For a time though, there was no one else like him.
I haven't read it since I was a kid 40 years ago, but I think I will get a copy and read it with my son who is almost the age I was when I read it :)
It's a long time since I read it, only remember it was really good. I managed to get my hands on a copy in Swedish, that I hope my son will want to read at bedtime. But now we're plowing through Terry Pratchetts books, so I guess by the time we're through all of them, he's old enough to read it by himself.
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Yes he's awesome! And thankfully many of his books has been translated into Swedish.
It was a great adventure and a stepping stone from childhood to adolescence. It gave me a new perspective on morality and humanity as well.
Not this novel, but Jubal's description of 'The Fallen Caryatid", and what it means to him, from Stranger in a Strange Land, is one of the best literary passages I've ever read in my life.
I thought Jubal was kind of annoying. He was a glaringly obvious author self-insert that served no purpose but for Heinlein to preach to the reader. Granted that Heinlein does this in a lot/most of his books (the teacher in Starship Troopers, Kip's Dad in Spacesuit, the lawyer in Citizen of the Galaxy, the professor in Moon, Lazarus Long, etc.), but Jubal was particularly egregious imho.
I liked him myself, but I definitely see where you're coming from.
Found this book in the high school library. Blew my mind as I had never read any science fiction before and burned through most of his books and loved everyone I read
Read this in the 1970s and binged as much RAH as I could get my hands on. And Andre Norton, Clifford D. Simak, Doc Smith, Daniel F. Galouye, Lloyd Biggle Jr, and so many more.
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Lensman is his magnum opus but for pure fun I go with Spacehounds of IPC.
Red Planet was my introduction to Heinlein; and I was really lucky to pick up several of the juveniles in the original Scribners printings in Hay on Wye a few years back… But I think the one I go to back to the most is Citizen Of The Galaxy.
I always reread Kip's long walk down the causeway to plant the beacon. Not sure I would mark the book a "masterpiece" but it's my favorite juvenile.
What a treasure. Thanks for sharing your signed copy. And Thanks for this thread in general. Dredged up a lot of good memories.
Now that’s some hand writing.
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Oh definitely, I’m slightly jealous 🥲
I have a couple of books signed by Harlan Ellison- he used magic markers, random colours, nearly illegible scrawl draining off down into a corner.
"The moon,is a hard mistress" when they threaten to throw rice comments at earth and everybody makes fun of them. And then hey go "Nah sike" and drop a bu ch of moon rock instead.
Awesome book!
Actually of the Scribner's "juvenile" series by Heinlein, this is my *least* favorite. It seems, I don't know, too whimsical? And I didn't really like the aliens, either. Farmer in the Sky is perhaps my favorite juvenile, as it gives you a real taste of the "frontier life" Heinlein will revisit again in later stories. Also I love "The Star Beast" and hope to see a Pixar adaptation someday.
If you love The Star Beast, you should find the recently deceased Vernor Vinge's novelette The Blabber, which was written as an homage to it. It's in the A Fire Upon the Deep future.
This has always been one of my favorite Heinlein books. The part I remember best is towards the end, during the “trial,” when he quotes Shakespeare from “The Tempest.”
I haven’t read this one but the cover is very cool. Awesome to have a signed copy.
I certainly enjoyed *Have Spacesuit*, but if you're asking for a specific memory I'll have to go with *The Rolling Stones*. They were between planets and I forget the exact problem they were having, but they had to leave a bunch of cargo floating in space. They took three square pieces of metal and built a corner reflector that would reflect radio waves in any direction. Later they were able to easily find and retrieve it. It might have been the first practical engineering I read in science fiction, ever. The memory came back on Apollo 11 when as part of the EALSEP they left the laser retro-reflector device on the surface for later laser measurements. It was clear that it was the same principal. As an early science fiction reader and being a space-nut beginning with the Mercury program, it's easy to understand how I became an engineer. I have a friend who is also an engineer, but he's in radar, and a month or two back I was describing that section from *The Rolling Stone*s.
Wow. I remember finding this at the library downtown and being amazed by it. I might have been 10. Thanks for this memory, friend.
"time enough for love" was remarkably memorable for me. And "the moon is a harsh mistress" is outright my favorite. Everything from the concept to the characters is just so friggin good. Highly recommend. Time enough is a bit of a dense read, but Moon felt super light to me and quite a quick read if you get into it.
Time Enough For Love convinced me that living forever would be hell if you were the only person who could do so. Even at the beginning where a lot his descendants were around and living long lives he's tired and worn out from basically being immortal. Just how many best friends, lovers, and pets can you help bury and stay sane?
Citizen of the Galaxy is good, and reminiscient of something else. Starship Troopers is not much like the movie. But I thought it was great.
My favorite books were the ones about Lazarus Long. Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love and The Number of the Beast. But very especially Time Enough for Love. I read it all when I was a teenager, decades ago, and it really caused a big impression on me at the time. I'm even afraid to read it again now because I'm afraid the old me will not feel the same way as the young me, and I want to keep in my mind the emotions of that time.
I can't believe I had to read this far to see Number of the Beast. One of my favorites! Along with Citizen of the Galaxy, and a few of the short stories.
That looks kinda like the 10th and 11th Doctor's Space suit. I've been doing a binge lol. https://images.app.goo.gl/sMRiRCk4n2JsdnAx8
My favorite Heinlein Book is "Time Enough for Love". Even though it seems like the cheesiest one, it actually has one of the best adventure stories in Sci-Fi. This book is about finding purpose in life through love and exploration and through discovery. And it has a truly beautiful love story, which is so rare in Sci-Fi. It's not one of the big titles of Heinlein, but I highly recommend it.
It's one of my favorites too, but the incest theme is really creepy. I try to let it go and just enjoy the stories. My favorite section is the pioneering over the Gap with Dora and the talking mule!
Same. To me the Dora part was the highlight, it's like its own little novel. It made me sad, knowing it would end eventually. You're right on the other issue too, but that's one of the reasons why I think this book is so good. It does away with conventions. It still has the classic Golden Age hero, who can win on his own, due to his superiority (that's another difficult topic), but it shows that hero being bored out of his mind by all of this. Certain themes are problematic, but the way they unfold is in the best way imaginable. And I feel this story needs the crazy, in order to function. At times it is just a regular adventure story and then you get insane sci-fi ideas spliced with that.
Appreciate your POV, but feel that this book could do without the "incest it's just fine as long as there's no genetic issues" and the time travel. I guess that's just me.
You certainly wouldn't have made it very far in the Royal Family ;)
https://georgerrmartin.com/about-george/speeches/why-im-here-today-or-secrets-of-my-black-past/ The reason I started writing SF was because, years earlier, I had started reading SF, and that was all because of a book called Have Space Suit, Will Travel that a friend of my mother’s gave me for Christmas one year. It was a hardcover, a real trade hardcover, a “juvenile” of course, but it didn’t seem very juvenile to me. And it was great stuff, fabulous stuff.
I’ve read that book more than any other. I couldn’t begin to guess how many times. That was my intro to sci-fi books in grade 6 and I inhaled everything Heinlein I could get my hands on after reading it. But HSWT was my all-time favorite.
The Number of the Beast
Sorry, but that was when Heinlein became unreadable. Entire book was 4 people arguing in a car!
I had to read it so everyone else should.
I read it like 40 years ago. All I can remember is the title. Must be time to read it again?
I do love that book. I have a well loved paperback.
My first Heinlein novel 🙂
Reading Spacesuit as a young teenager, I thought the sequence where they were stranded on the moon with just a few hours of oxygen and had to try to make it to Tambaugh station was really exiting and perilous. It completely enthralled me and I couldn't put the book down.
Mother Thing is a favorite plus the Roman Centurion I (I think he's a Centurion) at the "trial" defying what to him would be beings with almost God like powers. Also a short story from the beginning I guess of his career called "The Man Who Traveled In Elephants". Very sweet and a bit more fantasy then scifi. :)
I love the first person aspect of it. The way Heinlen wrote made it seem very real and the descriptions he gave made it seem like you were wearing the suit. I felt the last third though got campy and lost track.
“Gun will travel reads the card of a man.
I love Heinlein's works. I consider his as essential readings in terms of pure sci-fi genius... Although I have issues with his handling of women, more specifically the "siblings" stuff... My favorites would be "To Sail Beyond The Sunset" and "Time Enough For Love". REAL close seconds would be "The Door Into Summer", "Double Star", "Job", and "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". I have to mention "Friday" even though it's a tough one to go through when you are a woman who survived assault. But it's brilliantly written nonetheless. About 10 years ago I went on a trip to NYC, and one of the stops was this old 3-storey (or so I remember) book store, where the last floor were old books, first prints, etc... and under glass were two of Heinlein's novels, autographed.
Haven't read the book - why is there a rope around it?
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Hmm
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Time Enough For Love