[B-Chan]

Great post.

My affection for RAH's works has diminished over the years, but my respect for the man has not. By all accounts he was a true Amercan great -- the Mark Twain of science fiction.

Even though I only like his juvenile books (his adult fiction, with all its incest and libertinism and irreligion and speechifying, leaves me cold), I consider RAH to be the best science fiction writer of all time, and I am a better person for having read him in my youth. I re-read his juveniles each year and always find something new to enjoy in them. Along with Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, and John Brunner, Heinlein was among the greatest writers of the 20th Century -- not just among SF authors, but among all writers in English.

My favorite RAH work is the short story "The Menace From Earth" (1959).

[alfa6]

Yes, I too remember this story. it was an outer space version of the "Puddin" stories. Have you had a chance to read any of those?

I too found that his later works, say after about 1970, got to be a bit warped for my taste. I did like the first half of the "Number of the Beast" and I thought "Friday" could be a pretty chilling prediction of what the USofA could turn into.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Quietly]

Even though I only like his juvenile books (his adult fiction, with all its incest and libertinism and irreligion and speechifying, leaves me cold), I consider RAH to be the best science fiction writer of all time, and I am a better person for having read him in my youth.

My take exactly. I loved Heinlein in my youth, but as time went on and he kept writing, I found myself more and more uninterested and eventually just turned off. I tolerated Asimov for considerably longer, but eventually got tired of his "message." But they both got me reading SF, and while I'm no longer a SF fanatic, I still enjoy good SF as much as any good literature. I credit these two with that.