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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."
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!
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.
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Nobody seems to get the joke, which is that Heinlein's earlier books were more-or-less sex-free, or at least keeping it to a minimum, while his later books got more and more randy and referenced group sex, underage sex, incest, and other taboos. I'm not Heinlen-ologist, but it seems the turning point was Stranger in a Strange Land, which was an excellent book. Some of the later ones seem to be more dominated by the sex themes, and very light on substance. In other words he slowly transitioned from young serious author to mature exploratory author to dirty old man.
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Heinlein put plenty of sex into his adult novels (his teen novels are another thing). But he didn't seem to feel the need to describe it. Perhaps he felt that if you were old enough you could supply the details from your own experience, and if you were young enough, encouraging your fantasies would only distract you from the novel.
/. ideal for comments, +5 Sexy, that kind of thing.
He didn't even spend much time describing his men and women sexually. Few female characters were introduced with a description of their breasts, for example, although you might learn about their cup size by and by, somewhat incidentally. It's like the way you only learn late in the books and somewhat incidentally that Dr. Richard Ames is black and Lieutenant Rico is Hispanic.
Indeed, I think one of the reasons Heinlein is popular among geeky types is because he emphasized the sexual attractiveness of mind, character, and accomplishment. The fastest way to a Heinlein heroine's heart was witty repartee or a devastatingly clever and insightful argument...you know, the