Re: Robert Heinlein [View all]

[Wolf Frankula]

RAH is one of those authors I often disagree with, but enjoy reading. I also met him a few times. He was a personable and very civil man. As for his work, which I have read a good deal of, I have to say it varies widely in quality. He wrote a large number of very good short stories, some very good juvenile novels, four of the best sf novels ever (Glory Road, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Time Enough for Love and some other good novels.

Unhappily, he also produced one of the worst books ever in Farnham's Freehold. It is boring, preachy, the characters are cliches, badly plotted, and stupid. It is the worst Heinlein novel. To add to that, it is the worst sf novel ever. To continue, it is one of the worst American novels of any type. I place it with Atherton's Black Oxen, Thomas Dixon's Comrades, Marjorie Cooke's Bambi, (not the one about the deer), and Rand's Atlas Shrugged as one of the truly horrible American Novels of all time.

Now for some more opinions. I believe Heinlein would have been a better writer if he had never read a word of Ayn Rand. She infected him with the bacillus prædicans, the preaching bacillus that taints much of his work. Also he was harmed by his sheer popularity. He stopped being just an artist, producing stories meant to amuse and written to buy groceries, and became a MAN WITH A MESSAGE. That is perilous to writer. You stop being a an artist and become a tin-pot messiah.

And there there were his illnesses. This spoiled The Number of the Beast. He starts on one story line, zips to another and then another, leaving them undeveloped. It is hard to believe it's a Heinlein novel. It reads like something written by a new writer, bursting with ideas, but with no ability to develop them.

And to the last, Job: A Comedy of Justice. When I first got this, I couldn't put it down. Once I had read it, I never had the desire to pick it up again. Reason: It's a bad imitation of two works by much better writers, Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain, and Jurgen by James Branch Cabell. Sorry Bob, You weren't Twain or Cabell.

Wolf