[Pablo64]

Hands down, my favorite SciFi author. About the only book of his that I was somewhat disappointed with was The Number of the Beast. I felt kind of let down towards the end the first couple of times I read it. I felt like Heinlein was just giving up on a great plot line and making a joke of it all.

I re-read it again after a couple of years wait, and got a different take on it. I'm still not as thrilled with it as some of his other works, but I think I finally got what he was saying and I enjoy it now when I re-read it. As I said, I am a huge fan (I am probably 3/4 of the way to completing my collection of all of his stories).

[MarkL]

I felt kind of let down towards the end the first couple of times I read it. I felt like Heinlein was just giving up on a great plot line and making a joke of it all.

Same here at first, however I really liked putting Harlan (Ellison, I assume) in charge of the critics! That was a stroke of genius!

Mark

[CMAC51]

Heinlein’s one weakness was that he wrote poor endings. His message was in the story more than any author I ever read. How do you bring that to a conclusion?

The more powerful the story the more difficult it was to bring it to a finalizing climax. “And they lived happily ever after.” did not work for his story lines. It was a flaw I was more than willing to accept in his case.

[conejo99]

I just reread ‘The Cat That Walked Through Walls’. It is also very disappointing. The thing to remember is that Heinlein wrote for money. If we’re foolish enough to pay him for junk, that’s our problem.