A New Robert A. Heinlein Book to be Published.

[MicaelS]

https://www.arcmanormagazines.com/six-six-six

Phoenix Pick recently announced that, working with the Heinlein Prize Trust, they have been able to reconstruct the complete text of an unpublished novel written by Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein wrote this as an alternate text for THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST. This text of approximately 185,000 words largely mirrors the first third of the published text, but then deviates completely with an entirely different story-line and ending.

The alternate text, especially the ending, is much more in line with traditional Heinlein books, and moves away from many of the controversial aspects of the published THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.


There has been speculation over the years about a possible alternate text, and the reason it was written, particularly since one book is not just a redo of the other ─ these are two completely different books.​

Really looking forward to this. Beast started out great, but then went sideways.

[ChazInAz]

1. He lost me.

That book confirmed my suspicion that Heinlein's career had ended several novels previously.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I likewise doubt I will be interested in reading it.

His last few books were very disturbing. He comes across as a pedophile in more than one.

[Wolf Frankula]

3. Number of the Beast is one I read once

and have not picked it up in more than thirty years. It kept switching from plot to plot as if he no longer had the ability to finish one work.

Wolf

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. I long ago got uncomfortable with Heinlein.

Take another look at his later books, and he comes across as a pedophile. It's truly creepy.

[Codeine]

6. Piers Anthony has the same issue.

Seemingly innocent stuff I read when I was 11 or 12 by him is, upon re-reading, just a series of frightening red flags.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. I haven't ready any of Anthony.

The other night, out with some friends, someone brought up the book Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Debris of a near-miss of a comet cause widespread destruction and chaos. Like the friend, I'd originally read it when it first came out in 1977. Some years later my s-f book club read it, along with Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, published in 1959. That's about a limited nuclear war and how a small town in Florida survives for the next two years. We did the two books the same month for a compare and contrast, which is always very interesting.

Both books are essentially survivalist books, but in the reread I was utterly shocked at the overt and nasty racism in the first book. Wow. I hadn't recognized it the first time around.

The second book also has racism in it, which I'm going to label benign, with apologies to any non-white person who reads this. I'm calling it benign because, unlike the Niven and Pournelle book, the racism in the Frank book is one of patronizing to the few blacks in the town. It's not nasty and vicious, but one of everyone knowing their place. Yes, I do recognize that's still racism.

It's astonishing how much our perceptions can change over time.

[Codeine]

9. I had the same experience

when I reread Lucifer’s Hammer. It wasn’t just racism, it was weirdly blatant and obvious racism that somehow I missed when I was a teen reading it the first time. Pournelle was a relentlessly shitty human being.

I read Alas, Babylon so long ago I don’t remember anything about it at all, but I’m sure it would dismay me.

As for changing perceptions, watch that Eddie Murphy comedy routine you laughed your ass off at in the 80s.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. I think you would not be very dismayed at all with Alas, Babylon.

The racism simply isn't front and center, the way it is with the other book. It's more when the "colored" maid is on stage. 95% of the book is about the struggle to survive.

[Iggo]

5. I liked him when I was a teenager.

I tried to reread him in recent years, but my eyes rolled so far back I was lookin' at my ass.

(Maybe I shouldn't have started with Time Enough For Love. )

[Codeine]

7. I grew up on Starship Troopers,

Between Planets, and a few other juveniles. Then I picked up a few of his later works and was distinctly confused.