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| Author |
Message |
| 12 new of 56 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 45 of 56:
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Sep 21 08:17 UTC 2003 |
Since this seems to be the Heinlein item.. Slashdot recently reported
that an unpublished Heinlein manuscript from early in his career had
been found and was going to be published (later this year, I think..)
Anyone know more about this?
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aruba
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response 46 of 56:
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Sep 22 22:16 UTC 2003 |
Sounds very interesting. I wonder if it's a forgery?
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mcnally
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response 47 of 56:
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Sep 22 22:48 UTC 2003 |
That thought had crossed my mind as well..
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jep
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response 48 of 56:
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Sep 22 23:48 UTC 2003 |
From http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002083.html:
"For Us, the Living" was written by Heinlein about 1938-9, before he
wrote his first sf short, "Lifeline." The novel, "For Us, the Living,"
was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was
the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally
shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher
rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined
for his later stories and novels. A fellow named Nehemiah Scudder even
appears in "For Us, the Living." It's important to point out that
according to those favored few who have thus far read this long lost
Heinlein novel, it did not go unpublished because it was bad--they say
it's quite good, though clearly a first novel by the author (it has a
two and a half page footnote!). It was unpublished because the mores
and culture of the time would not allow it.
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jep
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response 49 of 56:
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Sep 22 23:55 UTC 2003 |
I have been a devoted Heinlein fan for most of my reading life. I
still like re-reading a Heinlein novel when I want something familiar
and comfortable, but not most of his later books.
After "Time Enough For Love", which was published in 1973, I think, he
wrote one other good novel. That was "Friday". I'd say "Job: A Comedy
of Justice" was readable in parts; "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls"
and "The Number of the Beast" were bad and equal to one another, and "I
Will Fear No Evil" and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" were truly abysmal.
I've read some of the re-releases of his "unedited" works. "Stranger
in a Strange Land", in particular, is a dazzling example of just how
much an editor can do for a good novel. The "unedited" version is okay
but rambles. The original released version is a spectacular science
fiction novel.
Mark, "Time Enough For Love" is not one of Heinlein's best works. I
pretty much agree with dbratman; resp:43.
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jep
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response 50 of 56:
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Sep 23 00:09 UTC 2003 |
If you're looking for a good forgery of Heinlein, skip Spider Robinson
and John Varley, who were often compared to Heinlein in their day. Get
a copy of Alexei Panshin's "Rite of Passage". It is unquestionably the
best non-Heinlein Heinlein book out there.
Panshin was a literary critic, I guess, who wrote a biting criticism of
Heinlein called "Heinlein in Dimension". He then apparently took
everything he criticized about Heinlein's juvenile novels, and wrote
what he thought Heinlein should have written. He made it work really,
really well. It's a terrific book.
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gelinas
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response 51 of 56:
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Sep 23 02:57 UTC 2003 |
Hmm.... Heinlein claimed that he wrote his first short story in response to
an advertisement of a contest. He doesn't _quite_ indicate it was the first
thing he had ever written; he says, "I could do better than that." Still,
the title is very close to an Ayn Rand novel. Interestingly, that novel seems
to have been published in 1959 (I'd thought it was about twenty years earlier
than that). Does Virginia claim this is one Robert's works?
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anderyn
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response 52 of 56:
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Sep 23 18:14 UTC 2003 |
I love "Rite of Passage". I recommend it to all the mothers of teenage girls
I know, because it's one of the best young-adult emulations I've ever seen.
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flem
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response 53 of 56:
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Sep 23 20:03 UTC 2003 |
Slightly off topic, but for young-adult emulation, Peter Beagle's _Tamsin_
blew my socks off. It was hard to believe that it was a middle-aged man
writing it; it sounded and felt disturbingly like a teenage girl.
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dbratman
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response 54 of 56:
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Oct 8 04:15 UTC 2003 |
And to flip the sexes, my candidate for the best depiction of a teenage
boy written by a middle-aged woman is "Very Far Away from Anywhere
Else" by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is not fantasy or SF at all.
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asdfg
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response 55 of 56:
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Jan 24 23:42 UTC 2005 |
Well, the fourth of Heinlein's predictions has proved sadly, sadly wrong,
hasn't it?
Pre-emptive wars are now part of the aggressive US foreign policy.
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aruba
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response 56 of 56:
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Feb 15 20:24 UTC 2005 |
indeed.
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