[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Well... it picks up and heads off in a completely different direction, I suppose.

I find Number of the Beast entertaining enough that I re-read it every 5-10 years, unlike I Will Fear No Evil or (ugh) Farnham's Freehold, which I've never re-read (and don't even own copies of). But I don't think Number hangs together very well as a story. Lots of interesting ideas, interesting characters, a great introduction to non-Heinlein fantastic fiction, but the plot just doesn't stay together well enough for me.

I have mixed emotions about _The Number of the Beast_, and concur entirely on _Farnham's Freehold_.

If there is an overall weakness in Heinlein, it's plotting. Or rather, finding the appropriate narrative framework for the story he wanted to tell. _Stranger_ was years in the making as RAH searched for the way to tell the story. _Farnham's Freehold_ fails for me precisely because of narrative framework. He wants to make points about power and race relations, so he has his protagonists catapulted into a black ruled far future, courtesy of a direct hit by a nuclear weapon in the opening stages of WWIII. He deposits them in the present by the end of the book, and we see Farnham and his ladty ensconced in a house at the top of a hill, surrounded by barbed wire, trading for books and looking for bridge partners. They are doing about as well as can be under the circumstances, but we never see how they managed it. It's just presented as a given. I wish RAH had chosen to tell the story of people surviving and rebuilding after a nuclear dust up, without the side trip to the future. If he wanted to present a black ruled future as a consequence of current policies, there were better ways to do it. The framing device simply didn't work for me, and in fact damaged my enjoyment of the story.

_Number_ had its moments. I was delighted at the ending taking place at an SF convention. And I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I realized what he had done. The fashion back then was to try to tie things together in a series, retro-fitting in some cases, like Michael Moorcock's efforts to put all of his works under the Eternal Champion umbrella. Heinlein managed to tie together not only all of his own books, but every book anybody else had ever written, as well.

Even if you include his later ramblings in the same vein (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset) I don't think he quite found the plot he was looking for. None of them stand up to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or the "juveniles," which I re-read on a regular basis, both because they are highly enjoyable and to pick up writing tips from the master.

I concur. But I think they suffer from "Master's syndrome", Because it was RAH that wrote them, higher expectations got placed on them.

Regarding the "uncut" versions, I would say Red Planet had some interesting bits in the re-release. The others that I read, not so much.

I'll have to look for that. (I have an HC library edition of the original Scribner's release.) I suspect the cuts were length related. I see _Red Planet_ as taking place in the same universe as _Stranger In A Strange Land_, and consider Willis to be a Martian nymph.
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Dennis