At 16:01 14-12-00 -0800, you wrote:
>Of those three, start with Job. It is the most entertaining. Get a copy of
>Starship troopers. It is much much better than the movie.
>Basically, I feel one should get warmed up with the much older stuff, 1960
>or older. He wrote a large number of short novels that are great early in
>his carreer, when Sci-Fi came out of 'zines.
>
>I have read most everything from the master, and the best ones are the
>oldest. Friday is a fair book, and SIASL is considered a classic (but not by
>me). Read his books based on original publishing date and work up. He
>created a number of universes, were some interact with each other. To avoid
>confusion, start at the beginning.
>
>Nerd From Hell
Seconded. _Stranger in a Strange Land_ marks the beginning of his "later"
work, which some people find rather, well, strange. _Starship Troopers_,
the novel, is good, and much better than the movie. _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_ is also good. If you've never read them, many of his "juvenile"
novels are worth reading, though the science in many of them (e.g., a
swampy Venus) is badly dated.
The short stories that comprise his "future history" are collected in
fictional chronological order in _The Past Through Tomorrow_. Several of
his later books are more-or-less later chapters in this future
history: _Time Enough for Love_, _Number of the Beast_ (the last third),
_The Cat Who Walked Through Walls_, and the last novel published before his
death, _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_. Someone said several years later that
the SF community had almost forgiven him for _Time Enough for Love_, and I
wrote a review in which I said it would be a shame if the last book he was
remembered for was _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_, as it turned out only a few
weeks before his death.
-- Ronn! :)
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"Writing is nothing to be
ashamed of if you do it in private
and wash your hands afterwards."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
"The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"
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