Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Sorry, but I disagree entirely. In my opinion, Heinlein's work did not start getting better until Stanger in a Strange Land. Everything that came before was fairly rudimentary in my opinion. Competent, but not nearly as thought-provoking as his later stuff. I'm assuming there's some reason they label his earlier works "juveniles" ? Not having been a juvenile when I first went about trying to read them, perhaps my opinion differs from those who first experienced them at the proper time in their development?
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The juveniles are so labeled because they were nominally targeted at what is now called YOUNG ADULT.
He openly admitted that the only thing juvenile about them was that the protagonists were nominally 17-19 though he wrote them like any other adult. The one exception being PeeWee who is pre-teen but preternaturally smart *and* mature.
Heinlein is a tough author to pigeonhole because while his personal politics were nominally 50's conservative it rarely intruded into his writing and his characterizations were often more liberal than the times. For example, in his Juveniles he featured a deep array of strong females:
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/w...swomendeb.html
He also enjoyed playing role reversals and going against expectations and social conventions from his earliest stories. If anything, he was more subtle in the early works and juveniles. (His first novel, BEYOND THIS HORIZON, had the action hero archetype protagonist comparing nail polish with his BFF. He also made a living designing casino games. And he designed a wholly different economic and political system, almost in passing.)