Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I'm currently re-reading Heinlein's Starship Troopers and ...
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Man ... I've always just assumed that many people preferred Heinlein's earlier books because they were more story/plot oriented and less vehicular (as in polemic delivery systems), in nature than his later stuff seemed to become. But I'm beginning to think many people liked them better simply because they read them for the first time when they were much younger, and their literary subtext/proselytism detectors weren't quite as evolved/refined/sensitive as they were when reading some of his later work. Because I gotta tell ya ... when I read
Starship Troopers as a youth, I certainly don't remember being beat over the head with socio-political and moral treatises. But re-reading it now for the second time ever (
first time as an adult)—I'm feeling the lumps and bruises from an unsubtle heavy-hand, let me tell you.
It's not that I'm not enjoying it, but, sheesh!... I think I'm more inclined to forgive an old man his later, freaky-deaky sexual fantasy/confusion, taboo exploration, and/or moral thought experiments veiled as scifi, than I am some of the earlier attempts at what feels like, at times, a flat-out indoctrination attempt.
Anyway... I think I'm going to be sticking with my juvenile
memories of Heinlein's earlier stuff from now on.
