A new Heinlein book is due out in September!

[thewayne]

Apparently he started it, set it aside for other projects, then died. His estate contacted Spider Robinson, and Spider has finished it! Spider's a very good writer, though I haven't read much by him of late, I'm confident that he did a very good job. Quoth the article: "the novel is based on the notes and outline created by Heinlein for the novel over 50 years ago". So hopefully this is more early/mid-career and not the late stage of his career, or as I like to refer to it, his Dirty Old Man phase.

I have no problem with sex in books, but I just didn't care for it when Heinlein included it. Though it's been a while, I think that now I wouldn't consider it erotic enough. (Though I recently read an amazingly erotic scene in Cory Doctrow's Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town: the main character meets a woman with wings...)

Anyway, info on the book is here: http://variablestarbook.com/, and the ever-present Slashdot thread is here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/29/1746219. The cool thing is that you can download the first eight chapters!

Comments

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Friday had a good enough story that I could overlook his sex scenes, but IWFNE and Cat Who Walks Through Walls, much less Number of the Beast just didn't do anything for me.

But I love his pre-Stranger In A Strange Land stuff.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, I love To Sail Beyond the Sunset even though it is way over-the-top with the sex. I think it's because Maureen is a far more dimensional character than any of the heroines in the prior books— Deety and Hazel and all. (I do, however, tend to skip from point to point so that I'm following her history rather than her bizarre present.) When Heinlein gets a character down his writing is at its most interesting. (I like Time Enough For Love for the same reason— Lazarus is a cantankerous cuss and that comes through clearly— many of his later hero types weren't deep enough to be good.)

My favorite Heinlein is The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. That's generally considered his best work, and I agree.