Jon wrote: [snip] >I've suddenly found myself reading lots of Heinlein. [snip] >Anyone on the list have any thoughts about what >his best work is?
I'm a big fan of his short stories. There's a great collection called The Unpleasant Profession of Johnathan Hoag (also published under another title which escapes me). It includes a really cool story about a house designed as an exploded tesseract, which then implodes... As far as the novels, I'm very partial to Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but for a long time my favorite was the uncut version of Stranger in a Strange Land. The uncut version was submitted for publication by Mrs. Heinlein (Virginia is her first name, I think...) after her husband's death, when it came time to renew the copyright. It's really interesting and instructive to read the originally published version (which won a Hugo, by the way, as did both of the other novels I mentioned above) and the uncut version side by side. Some of the cuts are a word here or a sentence there, but there are entire sequences missing from the original that add a lot to the book. Of course, the Lazarus Long stuff is cool too, as is Puppet Masters. As far as his later stuff, you might want to check out Job: A Comedy of Justice. A lot of people blow it off as being light fluff, but it has a lot of the good ol' Heinlein metaphysics such as you might find in Stranger or Hoag. I enjoyed it a lot, despite the somewhat chauvinistic outlook. If you have any interest at all in his stuff written for the younger crowd, I'd recommend The Rolling Stones. It has quite a bit more hard science than Job, and is less chauvinistic. I know you asked for a favorite, but it's really hard for me to pick just one. You can probably tell from this email that Heinlein is one of my favorite authors, right up there with The Killer B's, Vernor Vinge, Isaac Asimov, and (dare I admit this) Anne McCaffery (I really like her Pern books). Enjoy, Reggie Bautista [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
