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Heinlein's Last Novel Coming in September
Frightened_Turtle writes "Robert Heinlein's last novel, Variable Star , will be released in September. Completed by Spider Robinson at the behest of Heinlein's estate, the novel is based on the notes and outline created by Heinlein for the novel over 50 years ago. It was set aside and forgotten when Heinlein went to work on other projects. The story follows the life of Joel Johnston who — after having a fallout with his girlfriend and going on a bender — wakes up on a starship bound for the stars. Spider Robinson has done an excellent job maintaining Heinlein's style and flow throughout the novel. Want to check out the story for yourself? You can download the first eight chapters online from the 'Excerpts' link on the site as they are released over the next few weeks."
While I haven't had the chance (obviously) to go read the first eight chapters of the book, these always feel to me like I'm going to end up with something like the recent "Tom Clancy" books -- some sort of author-inspired but mostly-ghost-written things that, despite being written in the STYLE of the autor, will just fall short.
(Insert gratuitous joke about Tupac and Biggie albums here...)
The Variable Star project is intended to help the Heinlein Trust continue to fund the $500,000 Heinlein Prize for commercial manned spaceflight
It's worth buying just for that!
I'm really looking forward to this.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Plot line over 50 years old? Does that mean no sex scenes?
ed
A new play by Shakespeare? Poems by Poe? Nonfiction by Carl Sagan?
So it will be full of gratuitous sex in every possible combination of the following?
Hetrosexual
Homosexual
Incest
Self
2-way
3-way
Orgy
And occur with in the realms of:
This universe (now)
This universe (time travel, forward and backward)
Parallel universes
Between people who are:
Real
Imagined
Living
Life-After-Death
Multiple people sharing the same skull
And that's just with the human characters. Heaven knows what interpsecies liasons will occur.
Boy did I read too much Heinlein when I was young.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'm the biggest Heinlein fan ever, but "To Sail Beyond The Sunset" left a pretty bad taste in my mouth as his last novel. Maybe this one (even though he wasn't really involved) will help me remember him more fondly. (although there's always Lazarus...)
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
...there were very few sex scenes in his novels prior to about 1968-ish. Then, it was like he was on literary Viagra.
ed
"What's the odd of someone screwing up a relationship, going on a bender, and ending up on a starship?"
They must be fairly low. I've never ended up on a star ship.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
So I am really sceptical this would reach the quality of other Heinlein's books.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Heinlein was a right wing libertarian type. Spider is a lefty hippy anarchist type. Both are great writers, but if you can't stand reading political views that don't agree with your own, I suggest staying away from one or the other.
Just guessing, but you're a libertarian type, aren't you?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...or does this sound a lot like the premise behind the TV show Red Dwarf ?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I guess that Spider Robinson truly groks Heinlein... Has anyone checked his corpse lately?
Of the dozen or so Heinlein style writers extant today, it's a shame they picked the feckless hippy of the lot, Spider Robonson. I'd have vastly preferred one of the hard science Heinlein style writers (such as Varley, or maybe VInge) to the hippy dippy, dated, peace love dove style of Robinson, who wouldn't know real knowledge of physics if it knocked the bong out of his hand and spilled it all over his hand knotted macrame rug, inside his dome house.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
First it was Douglas Adams' Salmon of Doubt, where in Douglas Adam's own words his final manuscripts were published.
Then it was the final book of the true dune series that was originally envisioned by Frank Herbert is now published (I don't know the name but I've heard more then enough about it).
And Now we have this.
What is it with people who have now basically gone around and robbed the grave? I mean Douglas Adams' salmon of doubt wasn't good but it was at least his work. Frank Herbert's son basically is robbing the grave here, and of course now this person's estate is now just asking for more money. It would be one thing if the person was dying and needed the money to go to a fund to save him from some sickness or cure other people, but in the end it's really just greed. I will give props to Brian Herbert, he at least has worked in his father's universe long before the final book was released, but even then his work has been far below his father's that to see him work on his father's last manuscript must be like watching a guy who shoots paint from his butt touch up a Picasso.
It's not that these people arn't well intentioned, they want to be loving with their work, but the fact is they will always change the work that they work on because it's the nature of the creative process.
Every time I see a post mortem release, whether it be a play (of course the script not being good enough or not being finished at the time of his death), a movie, a Cd, or even a book, I always feel a little sick and a little disgusted at the ultimate greed of man, especially when it's one of those platnium covered memorial copies that some groups try to sell fans.
I'd go even farther and say that Heinlein's last few novels were awful. As he went further along the protagonist became an older and older man who was having sex with younger and younger women. In my (humble) opinion he peaked at around "The Moon is Harsh Mistress".
I loved Heinlein as a kid, but re-reading him as an adult, he's just too absolute, too certain... "this is the way things are, anyone who disagrees with me is a fool". If I want to see that, I can read slashdot.
"For US, the Living" www.heinleinsociety.org/newsFUTL.html Very interesting, with a forward by Spider, and an afterward by Robert James. You can definitely see the seeds of many of his best works in this novel - highly recommended...
In no particular order (except that #1 is the one thing I hate the most):
1. Posthumous "collaborations." I make a very small exception for Chrisopher Tolkein's scholarly works. Otherwise, it's just crap they think they can sell. Sadly, there are enough idiots buying the crap that they continue to make it.
2. "collaborations" with elderly authors. Yah, maybe Andre Norton or Marrion Zimmer Bradley wrote part of that book. Maybe all she did was nod off during plot discussions. Honestly, it's hard to tell. Seems there are a few authors who are so crappy that they can't come up with ideas on their own.
3. Trade paperbacks. I'd mind less if they would get together and decide on a single standard size! As an owner of thousands of books, I have a real need to keep size to a minimum. If I have to adjust my shelves to buy your book, I'm not buying your book. My "oversize" storage has gone from four or five shelves to a whole stack, and it's really pissing me off.
4. Cover blurbs comparing every fantasy novel to Lord of the Rings. If I wanted to read another Lord of the Rings, I'd read Lord of the Rings again. Ditto for every Harry-Potter wannabe ripoff with cover blurbs claiming it's just like Harry Potter. Frankly, if I saw a book with a cover blurb that went "nothing like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Interview with the Vampire or any other commercially viable work," I'd have that thing at the register in ten seconds.
5. Cover blurbs from authors who are too old to wipe their own asses. Maybe that drooling nod meant "Most promising young author since Harry Potter!" Or maybe it just meant "I've soiled myself and you have to take care of it." Either way, it's a crappy recommendation.
6. Listing authors "other works" but leaving out works done with another publisher and/or distributor.
7. Massive series based on popular movies. Just because you can hire 10,000 monkeys to write Star Wars "novels" (and I use the term with much more generosity than they are due) doesn't mean it's right to do so. When an entire 1/3 of the book store's sci-fi shelving is wasted on this kind of crap, it makes me wonder how many good new authors could have their works on that 300 linear feet of retail space.
8. Collections of short stories, in which one is set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, marketed as a part of that series. If you're such a great author, your short stories won't need the prop. If you're not, don't bother writing them. Moron.
9. Collections of short stories, in which one is written by the author and set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, and in which the rest are written by other (sometimes wannabe) authors. If you can't find the time to write your own stories, don't make some talentless schlob do it for you.
10. Direct-from-publisher "signed" editions. Do they really think we're that stupid? Those signatures are about as original as a painting from the Thomas Kinkaid "gallery" next to Sears. I'm not going to pay you $10 extra so that Skippy the Intern and his sidekick Amazing Pantograph Bob can crank out ten of these at a time. Especially when you sell it in size-of-the-month-club trade paperback form.
I really really did not believe I wouldd read this book and think "wow this is a Heinlein novel." I never liked the NY Times quote "I'd nominate Spider Robison as the new Robert Heinein." quote. I did not fully believe John Varley's quote that it Robert Heinlein was at Spider Robinson's side.
It is now obviously I was wrong; very very very very wrong. I would put more very's in but it wouldn't get to the point. Heinlein outlined the journey; Spider followed it. Only a few points disappointed me (IMO Heinlein never pun'd that much; and I didn't like reading 'googled around' 2 or 3 times).
The following is early spoilerish material
The book is a story of a boy, Joel, who was in love with a girl, Jinny. They complete junionr college and start planning for the future. She wants to marry him, he wants to finish college to support her. When he finally accepts that he would marry her if he can support her, she takes him to "her home". Turns out this is a hidden house buried in a glacier. The house is home to Conrad of Conrad (I don't recall this in other Heinlein novels, but from what I can gather think Harriman Enterprises, but bigger; much bigger). After meeting Conrad of Conrad and telling him where to go stick his money/fortune/plans for Joel's with Jinny, he escapes back to his apartment with the help of Jinny's little cousin Elelyn.
After a major bender, he is reminded of a ship leaving to start a colony on a distant planet. He spends the last of his money to ge to FL and tries to get on. He's told that he's too drunk to make the decision but he could come back in a few days if he's sober and still wants to go. He of course returns and gets on the ship. This is where most of the story happens. I'm not going to get into many of the details because that would spoil the fun. There is talk of line/group marriages; there's music; there's science; there's romance and despair, and of course there's hope when all hope is lost.
Some of you may hate me for saying this, but if Heinlein had written this book he would have had a hard time improving on what was written.
In the Future History timeline, there was one unwritten novel, "The Sound of His Wings", the story of the rise of southern backwoods preacher Neremiah Scudder to the Presidency of the United States, whereupon he suspended the Constitution, declared himself dictator under God's Law and declared himself the First Prophet.
Heinlein decided not to write the novel because he detested the bastard. But the fall of the U.S. into religious dicatorship (written in 1941!) as chronicled in "If This Goes On --" and subsequent FH stories needs to be completed, I've thought, since I first read it in 1976. Hell, it let me recognize Jerry Falwell and Robertson in 1977 in their march on Washington for what they were. Heinlein grew up in Missouri and knew what the people he came from were capable of. The story is being written every day, as preachers get special White House briefings and all personnel in the WH are expected to attend Bible class every day. Bush's core 30 percent truly believe he was selected by God (as Bush himself has stated, although more guardedly that his supporters) to convert the US to a Christian nation and prepare the way to the end of days as described by St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelations. The US as always been primed for a religious dictatorship, and will be so even after this bunch of clowns are voted out. This tendency needs a good thrashing out in a novel.
I've just finished a new chapter in the Bible by God. I worked from notes God had almost created on the 4'th day of creation but got distracted creating the slugs. It's The Book Of Slugs and goes in the Old Testament.
I kept God's original style rather well.
-pyrrho
Toward the end, RAH was so famous that nobody would edit his copy, not even correct the spelling.
There were some good novellas lurking in his final few door-stoppers.
And yes, I have read RAH serials in Astounding, and all the sad long stuff that came toward the end.