Quote:
Originally Posted by mazzeltjes
Brilliant piece of cold war xenophobic thinking on top
interesting philosophical and moral discussion underneath
The movie slaughters the novel
Heinlein in fine preachy mood
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From where I sit, it's a coming-of-age story.
Spoiled rich kid Johnny Rico learns to grow up and take responsibility, as a member of the Mobile Infantry, against the backdrop of an interstellar war.
Johnny's moral development can be charted by the different answers he gives to the question of why the Mobile Infantry fights at different stages in the book.
I
think Heinlein originally intended this for the Juvenile/YA series he was doing for Scribners, but it was a bit too grown up for what they wanted.
Better,
don't read it. It's an early formerly unpublished work, and there are good
reasons it was unpublished.
The Heinlein Society tends toward hagiography in their treatment of RAH, and I doubt they think he ever wrote a bad word. I met him, and I don't think he'd agree with that glowing assessment. He was a working professional writer, and even the books at the end of his career are interesting, if flawed, because it was obvious he was reaching for something new, and trying to take the next step in his development.
Read "We, the Living"
last, if you read it at all. Read it first, and you might be put off of reading anything else RAH wrote.
______
Dennis