Asymmetrical Information

Unless it's followed by:

"A sequel to: 'I will fear no evil'"

(After reading that...thing, I could never read another Heinlein.)

Cool. Though I gotta say that really early Heinlein really isn't very good. But hey, it's gotta be better than YA Wheel of Time book.

I must be one of the few Heinlein fans who looked "I Will Fear No Evil" ...

Oops - that's "liked" ... it must be Monday...

I suspect on an intellectual level the new Heinlein book will be interesting, but I find, like most good-but-not-great writers, Heinlein becomes repetative and a bit preachy. He had a few things to say, he said them well a few times and then he said them again, and again, and again...

I've been a Heinlein fan since I discovered him in Jr. High School. Stranger in a Strange Land came out while I was in high school, and I read it in hardback several years before it was "discovered." What a great book!

I've got to admit that I like all of Heinlein, although some of the novels were getting pretty strange for awhile until the threads finally got tied together with the fuller explanations of the "world as myth" theme. About 15 years ago I explored some ideas with my son who had to write a paper for high school English and decided to write on Heinlein. He came up with Alexi Panshin's book about Heinlein, and then we extrapolated from Panshin's analysis, which as I recall, went up to Stranger in a Strange Land. So we identified the early themes as gleaned from the juveniles Heinlein wrote, the later more adult themes that he got into after the juveniles, and then the world as myth theme that really started with Number of the Beast and continued on from there. (Although I Will Fear No Evil was referred to in at least one later novel as the brain transplant that didn't work, it still didn't explore the world as myth theme.) I had never analyzed Heinlein that way before, and it was an enjoyable exercise. (And no, I didn't write any of the paper; I just helped by asking my son questions--Socratic method--that stimulated his own creativity.)

My least favorite book used to be Number of the Beast until after later books were published which used (or at least referred to) the world as myth theme, at which time I went back and re-read Number of the Beast, and it made much more sense.

So, I look forward to see what some VERY early Heinlein looks like.

My favorite Heinlein novel is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a lot of his other later stuff was either too long, too preachy, both and too often, just plain icky, especially his enthusiasm for incest .... brrrrrrrrrrr

Thanks for linking to both my sites.

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