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With MS. Ricky's permission, I would like to weigh in on the thread.
To get a good view of RAH as a writer, I highly recommend reading his posthumus book of letters. They tell more about the business of writing than anything else I've read. In addition, several of the letters are just gems, by anybody's standard. (The letter about his retiring in 1940, and the letter about the two wheelbarrows are great reading. I and my brother quote them to each other all the time.) They also describe the headaches (from a writer's perspective) of the writer/editor interactions. It's P-book only, unfortunately. It ends in 1969, when he retired from answering all correspondence, even to his agent. (Ginny took over.)
The timing and details about his carotid bypass (1978) are in the article he wrote concerning NASA spinoffs, based on his Congressional testimony in July 1979. The article is in his book Expanded Universe, available as an e-book at Baen, for 6 dollars.
The TIA was a separate issue in 1980.
Preferences - I, too, found the later works (post surgery) unappealing. The prose was there, but the story was not. (Number Of The Beast - was a transition book. I suspect that it was plotted (as a story) before the surgery, and the writing after.) To Sail The Sunset was the closest to a coherent story, and it was the last. Perhaps the highest level mentation was slowly healing. Or maybe he was trying to stuff too many ideas into one place, figuring he might not get another opportunity again...
When you read his letters, you find out the he wanted to write bleak books, but the marketplace required happy books. And he was always concerned about the business of writing. And the late books sold so...
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