Number of the Beast

I too read everything I could get by hienlien until I started this one. It is the only book I never finished. Hienlein was one of the true greats, but this book left such a bad taste, I'll never read his work again. It is sophmoric. If you like "Married With Children," of Jerry Springer, you'll love this book

I dont have anything bad to say about Heilein - out of respect.
He made a living writing, I just read whatever there is by him.
This just wasnt much to my liking.
I have read the re-interpretations trying to say this was meant to mean certain things.
I dont really buy it, so let's just say, if you aren't compelled to read EVERYTHING Heinlein, you can probly give this one a pass.

Okay! Heinlein is a great author, with such books as Door into Summer, and Stranger in a Strange Land, but this book just got a little too weird for me. While some of his stories had a lot of free love going on, this one didn't use it to make the story better. I finished the book, but the ending just made the story weirder. I will continue to read Heinlein until I've finished everything by him, but this story was just a disappointment. The stories I thought would be dull (Sixth Column, Job!)were actually interesting, and most of the ones I thought would be interesting were very much so. I would suggest this book only if you are really into Heinlein, but not as your first taste of him.

I first read this book when it came out in 1980 (I was a *huge* Heinlein fan at the time), and I remember being vaguely disappointed with it at the time. Now, having read it again 20 years later, I'm no more impressed with it.
Part of Heinlein's charm to me has always been his ability to make his characters so likeable, regardless of where his plots took them. He's managed that early on with this book - but he soon gets bogged down with trying (and never really succeeding) to be clever. The convoluted 'storyline' soon takes over, but never goes anywhere satisfactory - or even particularly entertaining. It's just one literary reference/gag after another, none of them particularly clever or satisfying to this reader. Even the Heinlein in-jokes and references don't have the charm to pull this book out of the mire it's stuck in.
Not his best, not by a mile.

Very Cool Premise Brutally Executed.
I'll even give the die-hard Heinleiners the fact that he wrote it as a joke and in doing so tried to see how many of his other works (and those of others) he could include.
But Man!!! How much of his hyperbole and preaching can one take? Further, he jumps between fine technical detail and generality often, sometimes within the same sentence. He tries in many places to tell the story through the characters dialog which he recreates in painstaking detail and never gets the point across as a result.
The book follows form with his older stuff in that he becomes an ardent free sex advocate, and kind of perverted about it too.
Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of his work. But this isn't his best.....it isn't even close. A waste of several hours.

I read this for the first time about 30 years ago. At that time it was one of the most thought provoking sci-fi stories I had read. The Number of the Beast challenges a readers pre-conceptions of the world. I find it funny that "libertarians" call this novel right-wing while "right-wing" readers call it libertarian. Actually, it is solipsistic. Furthermore, a true solipsist can be liberal, conservative, or otherwise, and perhaps all three at the same time. Now, that is something to chew on.

I've read most everything Heinlein ever wrote. I have read many of the books he refers to in this novel. I have tried this novel on for size three times. Each time I bog down between 60% & 80% of the way through. Each time I finish it anyways. I find this his most disappointing novel.
He begins to develop a great story line, valiant intellectual warriors running from an unknown menace. They demonstrate their ingenuity and adaptivity to rapidly changing situations. As the pages turn, the story departs further and further from it's beginnings and mutates into a reality hopping, story jumping house-that-Jack-built of a book. The characters become less interesting as we realize that little new about them will unfold as Heinlein indulges his fascination with hopping through the space-time axes into alternate fictons. I also find him a bit preachier than he is in most of his novels, especially about gender roles. Sigh.
This book is only for the die-hard Heinlein fan. There are plenty of other great reality tweaking books out there. Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat comes immediately to mind. Jack Chalker has written a number of them.
(If you enjoyed this review, please leave positive feedback. If you feel it besmirches the Master of SF, then email me. Click the "about me" link above for more of my reviews & my email address. Thanks!)

i really wanted to like this book really. sure i was aware of the criticism but hey, who would not glorify the return of lazarus long adventures. but the book is just bad, so bad i had to force myself to finish it.

RAH wrote this one to amuse himself and did not take this book, its plot or the protagonists very seriously. this is obvious from the first chapter. the protagonists keep on with aimless and annoying conversations. i read time enough for love before, and thought this book formed, more or less, a sequence.

well it did not. lazarus appears only towards the very end of this book, and the protagonists go on a mission rescuing maureen, his mom. even this part which was supposed to be good, was a great disappointment.

the last chapter l'envoi was the worst of all. RAH gathered all his protagonists ever created (and some others such as himself and his wife) for a convention. i understood nothing of this chapter, and i seriously doubt that anyone else did. probably RAH wrote it to amuse himself and nothing more.

i strongly recommend every RAH fan (such as myself) to stay away from this book even if u read a lot of his books before.

it is simply written badly and u will be left with bitterness asking your self: how could the master publish such a thing?

I love all of Heinlein's works but this is one of my favorites! Now, mind you, I don't want those kinds of bad guys chasing me but I do want Gay Deceiver! I do not understand why we don't have this kind of technology!!!!!!!
I always enjoy Heinlein's strong, smart women and the strong smart men who treat them with love and respect!

This book was so good, I've read it over 5 times! Everything good about Heinlein and his writings is all put into this book. I'm not a prude or anything close, and the sex and other adult themes in this book don't bother me the slightest. Heinleins ideas have almost become my very own, and his thoughts on adultery (OK if prudent) I support utterly. If I had a ship like Gay Deceiver, I would get in and go to THAT universe, to meet Zeb, Lazarus, Hilda, Deety, and the rest of them. The end was one of the most interesting things I've read. The book also helped tie up many of the loose ends in Heinlein's other books. It also explained how they rescued Maureen. I've read as many Heinlein books as I've been able to get my hands on, and this one stands at the TOP!

If I didn't KNOW that Heinlein is a fantastic author, I would never believe it after reading Number Of The Beast. This book is exceptional - in it's boredom. After the first few pages which are at least exciting, although they don't make a whole lot of sense, the novel dissolves into pure boredom. A maddeningly slow storyline revolves mostly around the fact that people should spend their lives naked, no matter how old they are. The worst book I have read in a long, long time. If you want to read Heinlein, read some of his other (and excellent!) stuff such as Glory Road, Starship Troopers, or Stranger In A Strange Land.

I first picked this book up when I was thirteen or so, and had a great deal of trouble getting through it. I recently grabbed it again, in an attempt to make sense of the Heinlein-craze. While I enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, I found the many flaws in those books magnified massively in The Number of the Beast.

The primary fault I found in this novel is its plodding, incomprehensible plot. For the first two hundred pages, basically nothing happens. The characters create the dimension jumpers and then jump. And that's it. There is a meager attempt at setting up a "Bad Guys Out To Get You" plot, but it plays virtually no role in the actual text. Perhaps this is what kept me off the book when I was thirteen.

Heinlein attempts to repair this flaw by inserting what he considers "character interaction." Unfortunately, "character interaction" is not what makes a good novel. "Character DEVELOPMENT" is what creates good writing, and Heinlein's characters are neither developed nor interesting. Another reviewer referred to these characters a pedantic, which I think is a rather generous term for them. The book is filled with so called witty banter, which seems more like semi-intellectual rants about everything that Heinlein dislikes ranging from Russian novels to government. In reality, it seems to me that each of the four main characters are bizarre reflections of Heinlein's own personality: Jacob is who he sees himself as, Zeb is who he wishes he was, Deety and Hilda are sexual fantasies.

This opens up perhaps the most disturbing facet of this novel: Heinlein reveals (as he did in Starship Troopers) a deep appreciation of what can only be referred to as fascism. After a hundred pages of arguments about how to properly manage a group of FOUR people, the characters decide that a dictatorship of one is the only way for things to get done. Tack on a little (a lot) sexual dysfunction and a distaste for a government that can provide anything better than violent "protection" of the people, and you have Heinlein's ideal world.

All in all, this book's primary flaws are its lack of well developed characters and interesting plot. But behind that, there is a frightening political viewpoint which, if it were slightly interesting, might make good reading.

Do not, under any circumstances, make this your first Robert Heinlein book. Don't make it your second or third, either. (And don't make it your _last_.)
Heinlein wrote this book right after recovering from a carotid bypass. Those of us who had been reading his stuff for a while were thrilled to see it (I remember lapping it up when it was serialized in _Omni_ magazine), largely because it meant he hadn't been permanently rendered unable to write.
And there's certainly stuff here for Heinlein readers to appreciate. Some readers don't like Heinlein's dialogue, but I like it just fine and I enjoy the interplay among the four main characters in this one. (Nor do I have any trouble telling which of the characters is narrating at which point.)
This is also the novel in which Heinlein sets up the concept of the World-As-Myth. Apparently tired of listening to his characters invite one another to 'have a go at solipsism', he finally has a go at it himself -- and comes up with a 'multiperson' version of it, in which various 'real' universes are 'fictional' relative to one another, yet accessible via six-dimensional rotation using a nifty device invented by protagonist Jake Burroughs. (At the very least, this clever trick allows Heinlein to bring together lots of his characters from his various fictional worlds and let them all have free-love open relationships with each other.)
The downside is that it's somewhat self-indulgent. First we visit some of the fictional worlds created by several of Heinlein's own favorite writers. On top of that, the name of every one of the 'bad guys' is an anagram of some variant of Heinlein's own name, or Virginia's, or one of his several early noms de plume. Then, in a very confusing ending, we're sort of given to understand, more or less, that all of them are Heinlein himself, somehow, maybe. My, what a powerful fabulist he must therefore be.
Back to the plus side. Readers of _Time Enough For Love_ -- those who liked it, anyway -- will cheer the return of Lazarus Long, as this novel not only brings him back (together with some new members of the Long family) but sets up two further novels in which he appears (_The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_ and _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_; don't start with _those_ either). Of course this is a plus only for those of us who _did_ like _TEFL_; those who didn't won't care for this book either.
Interesting late-period Heinlein, then, filled with what Heinlein fans will regard as great characters and great character interaction -- but somewhat bloated with some stuff that doesn't make very good sense and shot through with some extremely trivial intellectual puzzles. (Most of the anagrams aren't very hard; even the one or two comparatively difficult ones won't pose major problems for anyone who knows anything about Heinlein's [and Ginny's] naval service.) The casual Heinlein reader probably won't like it and won't grok it.
It's not my favorite either, but I don't think Heinlein wrote any _bad_ fiction. (His nonfiction is another story.) He _was_ a powerful fabulist, and I don't mind indulging him while he celebrates the return of his power in this novel.

I have read and enjoyed a number of other Heinlen books. However, there was something about this book that struck me wrong. The charachters are poorly drawn; all are classic ubermensh. The plot drags on and goes nowhere. The whole story seems to revolve around the charachters value system and their constant bickering over their minute differences with one another. Much of it comes across as Heinlen preaching once again about the benefits of nudism and open relationships. If you are looking for a not too subtle conflict of the sexes veiled in flowerchild philosophy, this may be the book for you. However, if your looking for more thought provoking entertainment that actually has a plot, look elsewhere. I could barely get through this book. I was extremely disapointed with an otherwise noteworthy author.

I read this book when it first came out. It is certainly the worst, by far, that Papa Heinlein ever produced. Very disappointing. Should have never made it to print. Maybe Spider could have fixed it, but he wasn't given the chance, as far as I know. I tried to return the book to the store (long before the store even existed) for a refund, but they wouldn't take it back. I've had an aversion to throwing away any book since I read 451F in 4th grade, but I made and exception for this one. If you like Heinlein, don't buy this book. If you don't like Heinlein, I have no advice for you whatsoever.

I was lost in this book. The characters were in and out of focus. It started out with a feeling that it would be great. But it did not work out that way. Of all of his books, this one was the most confusing in overall direction.

Ok, I'm not a Heinlein expert, but I couldn't take this book. I thought Stranger in a Strange Land was excellent. Time Enough for Love was very good but was starting to get annoying. But Number of the Beast was intolerable. The main characters are supposed to be geniuses but they act like not-terribly-bright self-indulgent spoiled children. (Example: They whine and whine because they they don't like to stay anywhere that doesn't have a bidet. Give me a break.) Slight spolier: At some point they have the brilliant insight that 666, the well-known "number of the beast", is really 6 to the 6th to the 6th, i.e. 6^6^6 (but of course it was written with nested superscripts rather than ^). Well, as any bright kid who's made it through 8th grade math can tell you, exponentiation groups right to left, i.e. a^b^c = a^(b^c). Why? Because the left-to-right grouping (a^b)^c is just a^(b*c), so you'd never write it as a nested exponentiation. But Heinlein's geniuses apparently never made it through the eighth grade, and decided that 6^6^6 must be (6^6)^6. Weak. The true value of that expression, i.e. 6^(6^6), is *incredibly* larger (it's a 36,306-digit number, compared to a mere 29 digits for (6^6)^6 (which is just 6^(6*6))). At this point I just couldn't take it anymore and stopped reading. Whether or not they eventually figured out their mistake I don't know. I lost the remainder of whatever sympathy I might still have held for them, put the book down, and never opened it again.

RAH takes highly intelligent characters, treats men and women as equals, and puts them in a one-of-a-kind time-travelling science fiction adventure. If this sounds like your kind of book, then do yourself a favor and buy The Number of the Beast.

Heinlein has created a rich tapestry of ideas that continue to this day to push at the limits of science and literature. New ideas and twists in the story line were popping up every few pages throughout the book. Now about that disturbing undercurrent. Did anybody else get the feeling from the sexual dialogue that maybe Mr. Heinlein would have liked to have sex with his daughter. Even so, I think that this is a prime example of the work of one of the finest Sci-Fi authors to ever breath life into the printed page. I welcome comments.

This books brings together many characters from many different books and allows them to interact in very interesting ways. Not the best book in the world but definitely one of my favorites, some of my favorite characters of all time reside in this book.

RAH takes highly intelligent characters, treats men and women as equals, and puts them in a one-of-a-kind time-travelling science fiction adventure. If this sounds like your kind of book, then do yourself a favor and buy The Number of the Beast.

Heinlein has created a rich tapestry of ideas that continue to this day to push at the limits of science and literature. New ideas and twists in the story line were popping up every few pages throughout the book. Now about that disturbing undercurrent. Did anybody else get the feeling from the sexual dialogue that maybe Mr. Heinlein would have liked to have sex with his daughter. Even so, I think that this is a prime example of the work of one of the finest Sci-Fi authors to ever breath life into the printed page. I welcome comments.

This books brings together many characters from many different books and allows them to interact in very interesting ways. Not the best book in the world but definitely one of my favorites, some of my favorite characters of all time reside in this book.

If you have never read any of Heinlein's novels before, don't start here. It might get confusing... If you are a fan of Heilein's later works and are intimately involved with Lazarus Long and his family - then this is a good one for you.

The majority of this book revolves around a "new" group to Heinlein's Universe - Doctor Jake Burroughs and his Daughter Deja Thoris (D.T.) Burroughs and their respective "dates" for a university Gala. It all goes downhill from there when someone tries to kill the good doctor and then effectively "erases" hin from his own planet. It then takes the reader on a fascinating journey through many literary worlds - finally joining up with the Long family and starting the basis of what would eventually become the "Time Corps". In the process, they visit worlds created by many of Heinlein's contemporaries and other "classic" fantasy authors, as well as other worlds created by Heinlein himself.

I found many of the topics discussed to be great commentary on society, social mores, and the nature of writing itself. If you have problems with sexual scenes, "group marriages" and other such concepts, then this is NOT the book for you. If, however, you have an open mind, a love of great Fantasy / Science Fiction and a tonge-in-cheek attitude, then The Number of the Beast should be a great read for you.

While I have not read any of his other books, Robert A Heinlein's Number of the Beast is one of the few books that I have read that can be considered true science fiction. Unlike Star Wars, which is commonly and also incorrectly labeled science fiction, this book relies on scientific principles and theories to tell its story. (And if you must know Star Wars is science fantasy -or more correctly, Mythology.)

The Number of the Beast was a bit difficult to grasp in the beginning with the exposition of how the machine worked. Obviously this was necessary for explaining how the story was possible, but it was hard to grasp. I suppose that people who are familiar with Heinlein or other true science fiction authors would pick up quicker than I did, but for the casual reader it could be daunting.

The premise was interesting. Being able to travel to different fictional worlds through this machine. Very cool concept, although all of the incest and relationships that these characters seem so incredibly comfortable with is disturbing. Unless Heinlein had relationships like this himself, then I have no clue as to how he wrote about these things so casually. Its pretty sick if you ask me. I had to give this book at least 2 stars for originality and creativity, but its characters are not the types of people I would want to meet in real life, and not being a fan of incest, I couldn't relate in the least.

having read nearly everything by heinlien that exists, i can honestly say this book is not only the best but that it manages to bring in all the best of all the previous works. the first 2/3s of the book are nearlt independant of the end- a cosmic get together heinlien fans dream of! everybody shows up- characters and historical figures and even the auther himself. :) let me also state how much i love the actual story itself- zeb and deety will always be my favorite heinlien characters. this book represents the pinaacle of so called heinlienian space opera- and i love it!

Way back in the late 70's, my mother took me to a yard sale to spend my allowance. Against her advice, I insisted on buying a book entitled "Stanger in a strange land". I have been hooked ever since!

To all whom care to be transported backward,forward,up,down and sideways in time and space, you must first buy a teleportation device known as the book "Number of the Beast". Then find a comfortable, quiet place to leave your physical self behind, because once you open this book, you won't want to return home for your 80th birthday (or even your 8th)!! Once again, the awesome mind of Heinlein will introduce you to a completely believable and totally loveable cast of characters! After this book, I spent years wanting my very own "Gay Deceiver" and hoped to marry a real version of "D.T.(Deety)Carter"!! Well, I never quite got my space-yacht, but I did manage to find my "Deety"(Please don't tell my wife that she just happens to be a fictional character---she may get upset!!!!).

Long live the Master of Sci-Fi, Robert A. Heinlein!!

Although I myself confess I am no great fan of Heinlein's, I found it hard to believe this was written by the author of "Stranger in a Strange Land" which is a masterly work. The idea behind "The Number of the Beast" is appealing: a vast number of alternative universes, endless possibilities for exploring mysteries and opportunities for a real sense of wonder. Unfortunately this is all wasted as heinlein trawls seemingly without purpose through an interminable series of unfunny jokes and mundane inanities. For example he invents a universe just like ours except with no letter J. He indulges his predeliction for creating middle aged women referred to as "Auntie" and adopts a writing style which actually manages to parody his own already flawed and overly jaunty mannerisms. The satire is lost in a tale that is quite simply, utterly lifeless. In short , "The Number of the Beast" is a disaster and caused me to avoid Heinlein for years until I read "Stranger in a Strange Land." Even though I don't really like his works as a whole, even I was able to recognise the extent to which he has fallen below his own standard with this trash.

I ~love~ Heinlein. I couldn't make it though this one, it was so revolting. The book was okay until it turned into a mastubatory fantasy for Heinlein... I dont object to sexual content in and of itself, but it came across like I was reading a novelation of a sci-fi soft porn flick rather than a legitimate sci-fi novel. I might go back and try and read it pretending it's an author other than Heinlein. Maybe it won't be so bad then.

Marginally better than Friday. Although that is not saying a lot. I bought this at a second hand bookshop discovered while camping by the beach as a teenager. Luckily, there were plenty of other distractions of various types, as if this was the only entertainment things would have been very bad indeed on that holiday.

But none of your friends are acting quite right. I won't say it's not fun, but it's a little off of the master plan. It gets even weaker at the end, where quite honestly, I was waiting for the author to personally drop in and start shagging the guests. Sssself indulgence....

While I agree with most reviewers that this is not his best work, it is my personal favourite. The characters are likeable, and I love that Heinlein uses this to pay homage to some of his favourite writers, from Lewis Carroll to his contemporaries. This book introduced me to Edgar Rice Burroughs, convinced me to read the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, and sent me on a mission to discover the identities of the other authors into whose worlds Heinlein's characters jump.

True, this book is not for everyone, but I found it delightfully funny with wonderful dialogue between the four main characters. I also thoroughly enjoyed the interplay with characters from other eras and novels. If you are leary of spending the money to buy a copy, run down to your local library and check it out. It's worth the time, and you may find you really like it.

I am seeing ALOT of bad reviews for this book....most based on biased readers that are full of 2000's "best seller" glorified trash that they are forgetting that this book was FIRST published in 1980.

This book is a 2007 REPUBLISHING of the book created for a 1980's reader base. Not for the so-called "sophisticated" reader of the 2000's. Those that are used to reading over rated sci-fi fantasy books full of hyped-up stephen speilburg movie magic mumbo jumbo.

Rating this book based on THAT mentality is like comparing the original 1953 H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" with the hyped-up 2005 version and saying that they could have done a better job on the 1953 version.

You can't do it and expect to have your reviews taken with ANY creditibility.

With that being said...

This book is an awesome book when you keep in mind the style of writting in the 1980's.

I started reading this book in 1985 then lost it in a fire before I could ever finish it....I spent the 26yrs...yes..26yrs looking for this book because I could not remember the title of the book and kept looking over it in all my searches of libraries and web sites.

THAT should tell you the quality of this authors writting.

If you can keep in mind that this book came out not long after the REAL Star Wars came out...you will throughly enjoy this book as well.

Good but way too dirty. Heinlein can be one dirty old man sometimes, in fact quite often. This is not bad in and of itself. However it is when it detracts from the storyline which it does in the case much too often. In this book he will often interupt the fast paced story for a nice little orgy or sex romp. Reads like a porn movie at times. He should have just stuck to hardcore sci fi, I mean hard sci fi AHHH! YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN =/

Snore, snore, snore... infinity squared snore making. I am a Heinlein Fan, have read loads of his books and found some of them tough going but usually found nuggets of fun and enough to keep me interested in all of them. Until now.

There is one good bit when someone defines Phd as 'Piled Higher and deeper' apart from that Snore.....

I have got over 10 good nights sleep so far from trying to read this in bed and never managing to stay awake for more than ten pages at a time. This is the first book I have failed to finish.

I will read and re-read this one - and save a fortune on sleeping tablets.

In the Number of the Beast, a scientist builds a device that transports four people to parallel worlds. I enjoyed the adventure in the first half of the book better than the last half, but, as usual for Heinlein, he provides a novel rich in characters and ideas, thus making the reading very entertaining. I learned many new words from reading this book, like amphigory and floccinaucinihilipilification.

This is the book that got me hooked on RAH and is the first book of an excellent three-part series. It starts out as a good story all on it's own, gets better and better and through a very clever plot merges with another of his excellent storylines and other books of his. All my life I wished for a story like this!

Number Of The Beast
Cat Who Walks Through Walls
To Sail Beyond The Sunset

I've been a Heinlein fan since I was young(er), and it was this book that lead me to so many other great works of his. I always come back to this one, tho...And his inclusion of Oz was wonderful too!

I really enjoyed the alternative lifestyle concepts implied by the characters in this book. All of the conversation did make reading a burden at times, and hard to follow alot of the time, but the story was interesting and the characters were great! I really look foward to reading more Heinlein in the future.

What might be the most surprising thing about NUMBER OF THE BEAST. Is the release of information that the Heinlein's lived the lifestyle written in this novel, and TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE. Definitely NOT for the children

This was the fourth and last Heinlein book I've read. I am now thoroughly sick of Heinlein's self-assured I'm-smarter-than-you-are characters. Having four of these characters banter back and forth about how great they are just got really tiring. The book starts off with a plot which is moderately interesting, and then completely abandons it, just so we can meet more people who Heinlein seems to think know all the answers to life. Given how smart all these good guys are, there's no worthy antagonist, no suspense, and no intrigue.
This was the worst of the four Heinlein books that I've read(Job - 4stars; Stranger - 4stars; I Will Fear No Evil - 1 star),
and they all suffer similar problems involving pedantic, egotistic characters and interesting stories that fall apart half way through.
Thus, I will no longer bother to read Heinlein.

Heinlein is the third worst writer who ever lived surpassed only by L. Ron Hubbard and the Queen of Sham herself, Ayn Rand. Only computer geeks and junior high nerds regard Heinlein's work with anything like awe. The rest of us have to go easy on the stomach the rest of the day, merely when his name is mentioned.

For one thing his dialogue is protractedly dull - like watching a fly bang against a light-bulb a hundred million times. It is worth nothing; it contains no philosophical or stylistic purpose and I am convinced Heinlein wrote dialogue that way in order to high his basically shallow view of the world behind such endless drisk.

I am convinced that Heinlein had a geek's approach to sexuality. Only a geek could contrive to write the essentially meaningless and ignorant stuff about sex he actually wrote. He lacks all of the tragedy of romance, the beauty, the heart-break, the confusion, and the fretful joy that we find in real sexual relations. It's not surprizing to me that Heinlein plays games with incest in his works- he is a man who was so completely out of touch with reality that he could write about incest as casually as he did.

His characters are as lifeless as cardboard figures touched up with just enough humor or "personality" to disguise their essentially dead natures.

Anyone who wants to read very good science fiction should read writers like Gene Wolfe, R. A. Lafferty, Stephen R. Donaldson, Jack Vance, Frank Herbert, Cordwainer Smith, or Avram Davidson.

Disclaimer: I've only been able to make it through about half of this book before giving up is disgust. Twice. It is possible that the last half is worth reading (but I wouldn't bet on it).

I have read many Heinlein books and thoroughly enjoyed them all. Except this one. The dialog between the characters is the worst I have ever read in any book. The characters' actions defy belief and the first half of the book seems to ramble to nowhere. I'm not saying I could write a better story, but at least I would have had the sense to stop. I would sell my copy to Half-Price Books, but I can't in good conscience do that to another human being.

Please do NOT make this the first Heinlein book you read. He is an amazing author with a great collection of stories, and it would be a shame to have this one book turn you away from his other novels.

In general I'm a Heinlein fan. I had this book floating around in my attic for years. I recall reading it way back in my teenage years and liking it so I thought to give it a try again. What a pointless waste of time. It lost me about a third of the way through. I tried to stay with it for another third and then gave up.

Don't read it.

You won't like it.

I can't remember any author who did such a great job of tying all their work together with one book. All things become possible and like London, if you don't like the weather (or universe)just wait a moment.

Having read this book several times, my son who is a video producer and I are trying to put together a group of like minded artists to make a video or film version of this great story. If you can't understand the story too bad. It's only fiction just like Star Wars. Get a life.

This is the worst piece of garbage I have ever read. My dad (who considers Heinlein one of the best science fiction writers of all time) couldn't get through more than a couple chapters before giving up on it; I am a little more than halfway through and attempting to finish but getting through just one chapter can be a painful task. RAH tries to make the characters likeable with "interesting" banter but they just come off as childish and annoying; there are dozens of other reasons why this book is a piece of crap, but it would take me all day to write them all.

So, so bad. Terrible writing, poor characterization, offensive and ham handed preaching about the proper role of a woman and the worthlessness of formal education. If you like Robert Heinlein, do yourself a favor and read everything but this. It will make you like him less.

I enjoyed everything I've read from Robert Heinlein. This book had lots of potential and I liked the concept but hated the voice of the story. It was like he was getting lazy, sounded bombastic and I hated it. I cherish books but this one went into the nasty garbage can at work, only ever threw away one other book and it was worse but it went in the garbage for the same reason, I read for stories not to hear an author try to show off how famous or witty he can be.

I had never read this and decided to give it a go because I still had this in my dad's books. I didn't know what to expect and if I had to explain it...well....I'm not sure I could. Parts of the book I really liked and parts I didn't like so much - the dialogue between the four started to wear on me after awhile and became grating instead of enjoyable. Overall, the story itself is original and unlike anything I had read before. It was a fun read but the last few chapters are were it really sort of lost its steam for me.