MemeMachineGo!

Bookfinder provides a list of the most requested out of print books . I’m surprised to find Heinlein’s Time for the Stars on the list — it’s one of my favorites of the Heinlein juvies. Of course, half of Heinlein’s juvies are among my favorite Heinlein juvies, with Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Tunnel in the Sky and The Star Beast in the top tier, with The Rolling Stones, Time for the Stars and Red Planet in the next. The others I haven’t read since I was a juvenile, but don’t seem to have left much of an impression.

One reason I haven’t blogged much lately is that I’ve been spending more time reading books than the web. One of them was John Varley’s Red Thunder, whose existence I noted some weeks ago. I like Varley’s writing a lot, chiefly for his short fiction — some of the stories collected in The Persistence of Vision and Blue Champagne are some of the best in the genre. I haven’t liked his novels as much. I read the Gaia trilogy recently and found it to have aged badly — I probably would have enjoyed it much more if I’d read it when it and I were younger. The Ophiuchi Hotline was interesting; Steel Beach was good, and one of the best things about it was its talking back to Heinlein.

Cory’s raving about Red Thunder, calling it the lovingest, bestest Heinlein tribute evar pushed it to the top of the stack. And it was a hell of a lot of fun — thoughtful good old-fashioned science fiction, with engineering problems to be solved, and all the rivets showing. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Varley’s just plain a better writer than Heinlein (in matters of prose and character.) I could have done without the persistent implication that animal rights activists, environmentalists, and pretty much anyone who had ever protested anything was an idiot, but, hey, it was consistent to the oeuvre to which Varley was paying homage.

I consider Heinlein to have been a very great influence on me, but it’s altogether unclear to me whether he’d be pleased to hear it. While I’ve read all his fiction, I haven’t read the posthumously published non-fiction or the works that have been published about him. Unlike so many people who have read 0-2 of his 45 or so fiction books, I don’t claim to know his political beliefs in detail. When you consider all the books, there’s a lot more ambiguity than they’re usually given credit.

But not so much that I think there’s any great chance that many of my attitudes, beliefs and values wouldn’t have revolted him.