I was 10 in 1957 when I read my first Heinlein novel, Citizen of the Galaxy and I couldn't put it down. It had me hunting down and reading every piece of Heinlein writing I could get my hands on for years and years and years. Hungrily awaiting each year as new works came out or did not due to his health issues.
You could say I grew up into maturity with Bob Heinlein and his writings influenced me and gave me a lot of my political thinking. Since it dovetailed nicely with the political beliefs of my father (a Conservative Democrat who had he lived longer than 1971 would have been a hard core Tea Partite long before Obama rebirthed a Tea Party), I found my nitch.
I have to admit some of his work did not always hit the target dead center with me. Stranger in a Strange Land had more religious pro & con and sexuality that I could fully grok even though I was as hormonally induced horny any other 14 year old male in 1961. I was 23 when I Will Fear No Evil came out in 1970 and it sat me back a notch or two. While Time Enough for Love, three years later in 1973, was a time ripping adventure yarn [make that yarns] of the oldest man in the known universe and a favorite character of mine from 1958's Methuselah's Children. Time Enough's Lazarus Long's incest a couple of thousand years in the future was troubling for myself, 26 years old at the time. Even today reaching into the second half of my sixties, I am still not comfortable with it even as a plot point in a work of science-fiction.
Perhaps my upbringing in the 'I Lke Ike' 1950s could be to blame, having today's over sexualized kids calling me an old prude and they would be mostly right even as my irrelevant, off-the-wall humor does not always show it.
Yet even with these above exceptions, Robert A, Heinlein writings made a major impact on me and the way I view this old cock-eyed world we try to survive in-- Like he said so eloquently in his 1940s novelized story Beyond This Horizon: "I've got a twisted sense of humor, and everything amuses me."
And it continues... 
to do so!
You took the words... 
right out of my mouth, Bendy--