Since I fit that category at the time, I rather enjoyed them, but I realized even then what a total dirty-old-man chauvinist pig Heinlein was.

I suggest that the only way to get through the book is to pretend you're a 14-year-old sci-fi freak who's just discovered girls -- but whose idea of girls comes from 1950s sitcoms, girls who can be counted on to say "gosh" and "golly" and giggle a lot when you, Junior Geek-man, comes by.

May the force (or something) be with you on your quest.

It is pretty darn sludgy stuff, though. Can't say I've followed it up with a re-read. I think a case can be made that the book prepped me for a) reading Dhalgren (which led directly to Joyce) and b) having an open mind about, um, oh, let's say childhood gender assignment disorder.

Do you think you can read the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers? Because I couldn't get past the first few chapters.

Trust me that this book is so terrible, it will make you long for the wonderful clarity and feeling of shit making sense that suffuses his adolescent books, like Farmer in the Sky. Hell, Friday, Farnham's Freehold, and Sixth Column are all way better than this book. And Friday sucks.

For me, he's worth it for the science part, and for his examination of the possible socio-political ramifications of that science.

More than that, Heinlein's works are his ongoing conversation with himself about the relationships between the sexes, and between the individual and institutions.

Yeah, a lot of his stuff repeats itself, and a lot of the characters begin to run together after a while because, hell, they're all Heinlein himself.

But the scientific concepts he examines, like the Howard Families, the infinite number of universes in "The Number of the Beast," and others stamp him as one of the giants of sci-fi.

Most of all, I like Heinlein for the same reason I like Henry Miller and have read almost all of his stuff. Both of them reveal the essentially contradictory nature of the human experience. How they got it all down on paper is beyond me.

But I like Heinlein, a lot. And it doesn't bother me a bit that others don't.

Not worth it. Give up, and pay the $50. You will be happier for it.

RLH's polygamist/libertarian/redhead thing is pretty difficult to swallow...unless you're also a libertarian fantasizing about a harem of Mensa babes.

I don't see it your way. I rarely do. Heinlein certainly did not "view all women as hysterical whores." You are welcome to your opinion, but I consider it the rankest bullshit.

Paul - Please continue with the Book Club of the Damned. Almost every poster hear has already read the book so was not spoiled. I would love to see what discussion questions you come up with.

And yeah, he's dated, but I don't fault him for the times he grew up in. There are other things about his books that I find entertaining. :)

1. Joan Eunice didn't die in an auto accident, she was murdered during a mugging -- her skull was broken but she was otherwise uninjured, enabling her body to be used for the brain transplant.

2. Johann Smith wasn't aware that she was his body donor; in fact that was kept from him as he cared enough about her that the discovery that she had been killed was traumatizing to him.

3. The only recreational drug indulged by the characters in the book is alcohol, in the form of champaigne.

4. Two of the major characters, an attorney and a judge, are gay men. That there is no male/male sex is because the viewpoint character is both elderly and desperately ill, unable to sexually function in his original body, and in a female body afterward. By the nature of how the novel is constructed, there can't be that kind of sexual expression portrayed.

5. Advising Mr. Constant to win the bet by cheating his boss is just plain stupid.

There's no denying that as Heinlein novels go it's relatively weak compared to his other works, but that has to do with the fact that after finishing the draft as published he became severely ill with peritonitis, spending something like six months in a hospital -- he had to sign a power of attorney to his wife Virginia for the book to be published and for the two of them to have the income it represented to pay the hospital bill; he very nearly died. Even he agreed it could have used another draft -- but the book has gone through repeated editions, never out of print in the 38 years since it was first published, so there has been a continual stream of readers buying new copies. Obviously there are a lot of people who don't think that the book is so awful, willing to back up their opinion with hard cash.