Quote:
Originally Posted by dwanthny
With 4 Hugo awards, I think it is safe to say that Robert Heinlein is not a Science Fiction author you should never read.
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If you're serious about SF, Heinlein is an author you pretty much
have to read. He was one of the defining influences of the "Golden Age" of SF, in the late '40s and early '50s when John W. Campbell at Astounding SF Magazine was in the process of redefining the field.
He gets brickbats from some folks for political views that anticipate Libertarian, though his politics are arguably not so simply defined.
He was raised in a Midwest fundamentalist "Bible Belt" environment, and a lot of his work can be viewed in part as him systematically examining the beliefs he was raised in, asking "Does this make sense?", and concluding that it didn't.
"Middle period" Heinlein is generally considered his best, but even at the end of his life he was still searching and growing, looking for things beyond those he had talked about and new directions for his stories.
I met him, years back. He was in reality a rather shy man, but felt it his duty to be available to his fans when he did appear at a public event, and was uniformly polite and gracious when he did.
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Dennis