As far as I know, I’ve read all of his works and not one disappointed me. Some were better than others, but each and every one I consider a gift!
My favorite was and still is Starship Troopers and I will forever be sporting a ‘Shoot on Sight’ attitude towards Paul Verhoeven (Director), Edward Neumeier (Screenwriter) and any other of those unmentionable bums that birthed that 1997 bastard Starship Troopers flick. I cannot even bring myself to call it a film or even a movie...
The only saving grace of the whole sad effort was Brenda Strong’s Captain Deladier. That was the only character that even came close to what I saw in my mind’s eye when I read the novel. I also liked her Sgt. Dede Rake in 2004’s Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, another POS, too, but better than the original Verhoeven attempt
Okay, Okay! I like Brenda acting ability and she is also easy on the eyes... Plus her Sue Ellen Mischke was my favorite in “Seinfeld,” especially when she wore the bra over her sweater!!!
Like Kramer, I’d have run off the road too if I saw her like that while driving!
From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697666/
Jackie Chiles: So you’re driving in the car, you’re with your friend, minding your own business?
Cosmo Kramer: Yeah.
Jackie Chiles: Then what happened?
Cosmo Kramer: Then we saw this woman, and she was wearing a bra with no top.
Jackie Chiles: No top? She didn’t have a top on?
Cosmo Kramer: No. So I got distracted and I crashed the car.
Jackie Chiles: Well how would you describe this woman? Would you say she was an attractive woman?
Cosmo Kramer: Oh yeah!
Jackie Chiles: So we got an attractive woman, wearing a bra, no top, walkin’ around in broad daylight. She’s flouting society’s conventions!
Cosmo Kramer: She was flouting.
I second the motion, she was flouting!
Okay, back to Heinlein...
I shall go to my gave with two regrets that I will never be able to change. One, I would have cast George Peppard as Career Sergeant Zim had I been able to make the film in the 1970s when I was hot-to-trot as a wan’abe filmmaker...
The other regreat is not seeing Ed Asner play Pug Henry in Herman Wolk’s “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” but that is for another thread on Liberal Actors you hate for their politics but love for their acting ability!
as to what Robert A. Heinlein wrote, here is a listing from http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/heinlein_biblio_991101.html
Over his half-century career, Grand Master of Science Fiction Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) produced some 40 book-length works and collections of shorter material, much of which has remained in print over the decades.
For younger readers
Rocket Ship Galileo - 1947 (juvenile)
Space Cadet - 1948 (juvenile)
Red Planet - 1949 (juvenile)
Farmer in the Sky - 1950 (juvenile)
Between Planets - 1951 (juvenile)
The Rolling Stones - 1952 (juvenile)
Starman Jones - 1953 (juvenile)
The Star Beast - 1954 (juvenile)
Tunnel in the Sky - 1955 (juvenile)
Time for the Stars - 1956 (juvenile)
Citizen of the Galaxy - 1957 (juvenile)
Have Space Suit - Will Travel - 1958 (juvenile)
Podkayne of Mars - 1963 (juvenile)
The Future History series
The Man Who Sold the Moon - 1950
The Green Hills of Earth - 1951
Revolt in 2100 - 1953
Methuselah’s Children - 1958
Orphans of the Sky - 1963
The Past Through Tomorrow - 1967 (omnibus edition)
The Adventures of Lazarus Long
Time Enough for Love - 1973
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long - 1978 (aphorisms)
The Number of the Beast - 1980
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls - 1985
To Sail Beyond the Sunset - 1985
Other novels
Beyond this Horizon - 1948
Sixth Column - 1949
Double Star - 1956 (Hugo winner)
The Door into Summer - 1957
The Menace from Earth - 1959
Starship Troopers - 1959 (Hugo winner)
Stranger in a Strange Land - 1961 (Hugo winner)
Glory Road - 1963
Farnham’s Freehold - 1964
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 1966 (Hugo winner)
I Will Fear No Evil - 1970
Friday - 1982
Job: A Comedy of Justice - 1984
Unrelated short fiction and marginalia
Waldo and Magic, Inc. - 1951 (short stories)
Assignment in Eternity - 1953 (short stories)
Expanded Universe - 1980 (essays and short stories)
Grumbles from the Grave - 1989 (posthumous, letters)
Tramp Royale - 1992 (posthumous, previously unpublished travel memoir)
Requiem - 1992 (posthumous, marginalia and tributes from other writers)
I must say there are only two people I think of and actually miss each and every day. They are my late Father George Bedford Lee and Robert Anson Heinlein...
And, amongst all that, he invented the waterbed.
Thanks! I never realised that Brenda Strong, who also played Sue Ellen Mischke on Seinfeld, was in the abominable Starship Troopers; if ever I see it again I’ll have something else to look for beside the shower scene. ;-P
Your list of Heinlein’s works omits the novel “For Us The Living: A Comendy of Customs,” which was his first novel, written in 1938 but unpublished ‘til 2004, long after his death. It’s an interesting read — very unlike the polished writer we came to know, but rich with ideas fleshed out in later works.
Wow ~ you were/are a Heinlein fan!!
So far my personal Heinlein collection consists of the following (in no particular order):
The Star Beast
Farnham's Freehold
Glory Road
The Puppet Masters
Between Planets
The Worlds of Robert Heinlein (short stories: Free Men, Blowups Happen, Searchlight, Life-line, Solution Unsatisfactory)
The Rolling Stones (concept for Star Trek's "tribbles" shamelessly ripped off from this story)
Friday
Tunnel in the Sky (always wondered if the "stobor" mentioned in the story was just "robots" spelled backwards??)
Space Cadet
Waldo & Magic, Inc.
Citizen of the Galaxy
Time for the Stars
Starship Troopers
Time Enough for Love
Expanded Universe
Revolt in 2100
I Will Fear No Evil
Methuselah's Children
The Menace From Earth
Podkayne of Mars
6 X H (short stories: The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, The Man Who Traveled in Elephants, "All You Zombies", They, Our Fair City, "And He Built a Crooked House")
Red Planet
Assignment in Eternity (short stories: Gulf, Elsewhen, Lost Legacy, Jerry Was A Man)
Stranger in a Strange Land
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Farmer in the Sky
Job: A Comedy of Justice
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Orphans of the Sky
The Number of the Beast
The Man Who Sold the Moon
Starman Jones
Rocket Ship Galileo
So not quite a complete collection yet, but it gives me something to do when I have a chance to prowl around used book stores. I take my list with me and if I find something by Heinlein that I don't already have, I nab it.
I’m going to have to start searching the Brooklyn Public Library catalogue and start reserving some books ...
You were very lucky to start there.
“Stranger in a Strange Land” is his best Satire. It will be the “Gulliver’s Travels” for the late 20th Century.
Bump to the book list.
I have read each at least once.
I was not interested in reading until my brother gave me a copy of “Red Planet” when I was around 10 - I still consider it one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t care much for Heinlein’s other juveniles, except for “Rolling Stones”. Also liked “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” - I still think it would make a great movie.
Don't feel too bad, these illiterate hacks didn't even know about the novel when they started making a cheap sci-fi action flick called "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine." For me the saddest thing is that Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside, both good actors, sullied themselves by being in that movie.
Mr. C. is tremendous Heinlein fan. I liked Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Didn’t care for Stranger in a Strange Land, but liked some others.