You searched for book_author:"Robert A. Heinlein"
Second Heinlein collection in this book (the first being The Man Who Sold the Moon). Now we have two related 1940s novellae fixed-up into a single novel in the 1960s. Oh, science fiction publishing, you are so fun.
Orphans of the Sky is one of the ur–generation ship tales. Heinlein immediately seizes on the possibility that something could go so disastrously wrong during the voyage such that the entire crew forgets it is on…
More Heinlein! Not planned. It just so happened that this paperback was on the New Books shelf at the library, so I snatched it up. (In fact, it’s a double feature, with Orphans of the Sky as the second book. This edition has an afterword, two introductions to The Man Who Sold the Moon, as well as a preface from Heinlein. It is saturated. If you like Heinlein, buy this edition.)
The more I…
It didn’t take me long to understand why this book received such acclaim and is still regarded as a classic. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an emblem of political science fiction. Robert Heinlein manages to take the idea of a penal colony on the moon and turn it into a romantic story of political revolution. This is an idea that has been explored repeatedly since this novel was published, but those stories almost…
To be completely honest, boot camp was my favourite part of this book. Everything after that seemed like a long denouement until the inevitable final page; boot camp was where the real character development happens. And this is an intensely character-driven book. Some people are critical of it because it lacks a plot, and they're correct on that point. It's not short on conflict, however. The conflict is just very personal. Also, I find Heinlein's…