Today, July 7, marks the 115th birthday of one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 20th Century. I’m talking, of course, about Robert A. Heinlein.

Last year (or was it early this year? times flies whether you’re having fun or not), I set out to read (or reread in most cases) the Heinlein juveniles in order of publication. The intention was to blog about them. I’d written the first post in this series a number of years ago, on The Rocketship Galileo, but life got in the way, and I never went past the first post.

I was trying to either reread or read for the first time a number of works by my favorite classic authors, and Heinlein was one of them. (Asimov, Anderson, Herbert, Varley, and Williamson were among the others.) I was partly successful.

Things have been hectic the last few months, but they should slow down by the end of the summer, and I’ll try to get started on some of the Heinlein juvenile posts. No promises at this point, though. I do want to give a quick shout-out to Heinlein, though. It was his novels in the libraries of the junior I attended in 7th grade and the middle school in 8th grade that really had an impact on me. Not all of them were juveniles, but many were.