[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Heinlein may have been somewhat weak on plots in general, but Mistress, at least, had a very strong plot. I would say Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was another strongly plotted book. Perhaps I just held his other works to too high a standard. His own damn fault!

_Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ is marred for me by the bit at the end, when one of the kids blows up at the aliens. I found the outburst embarrassing, is a "Geez, he's making us look bad!" sort of fashion. I'll have to reread it and see if I still get the same reaction.

Agreed that Citizen of the Galaxy is another of Heinlein's finest, and probably the most "mature" (whatever that's supposed to mean) of the "juveniles."

I define that as "If it had been published as adult SF, no one would have noticed anything unusual.

I can't quote a citation to prove it, but I believe _Starship Troopers_ was originally intended to be one of the YA line, as well.

Starman Jones is interesting partially because of the analog computers, I've always thought. (But then, I taught myself to use a slide rule based partially on Heinlein's descriptions of them.)

I learned to use a slide rule about the same time I was learning square roots. I never did learn to do square roots by hand. It was too easy to whip out the slipstick and get one to three places.

And The Star Beast is such a funny and revealing look at politics and bureaucracy, I still refer back to it when I want to remind myself how things "really" work.

I was tickled by a lot of that. Especially when we find out what Lummox really is, and that she thought of raising John Thomases as her hobby.

The least memorable of the YA books, to my mind, was Time for the Stars. Not that it was a bad book, just not one of the favorites I come back to over and over. Rocket Ship Galileo was another slightly wobbly one. Not bad, just not as good as Farmer in the Sky or The Rolling Stones (weak plotting in both of these, I think, but great characters).

Indeed. An old friend recounted hearing another SF writer advising people not to have characters talk like Heinlein's characters, unless you are Heinlein, "because people don't talk like that". "People used to talk like that!", said my friend.

Dennis, your suspicions about Willis being a Martian nymph are confirmed in the uncut version of Red Planet, I think. (Though there was some very strong hinting even in the earlier release.)

I was reasonably sure I was right, and a bit bemused that no one else seemed to have noticed it.
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Dennis