Robert A. Heinlein

Today, July 7, is the birthday of Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988). It’s become fashionable to slam him now that he isn’t around to defend himself. It seems the words of Marc Antony still are true “The evil men do live after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 2, lines 3-4).

Granted there are some Heinlein works I have no intention of rereading or even reading in the first place, but there is no denying he cast a long shadow over the genre. When you still have detractors over thirty years after your death, you have had an impact.

I still remember the first Heinlein novel I ever read. It was Have Space Suit – Will Travel. I checked it out of the junior high library. It was a mind blowing experience. The other juvenile titles they had followed: Time for the Stars, Tunnel in the Sky, Citizen of the Galaxy. They didn’t have all of the juveniles, but I read the ones they had. We moved at the end of the school year, and I read the titles in the new middle school library and whatever I could find at the second hand bookstores in town.

Some years ago, I toyed with the idea of reading through all the juveniles in order and doing a series of posts on them. I even got as far as the first one, Rocketship Galileo. Sadly, time constraints and other reviewing commitments kept me from reading any of the others.

Maybe things will slow down this fall when my son goes to college and I can work them back in.

Regardless, I want to try to include more Heinlein in my reading over the next year.