What I would like is a list of the best 101 books that really are the absolute best books everyone should try to read. And I’m talking from 2000BC-2008AD and from all over the world.

Jim

I’m like most hardcore Heinlein fans which are willing to read anything by Heinlein just for the hope of finding more great SF stories. Have you heard about Project Moonbase? It’s a new book that contains teleplays Heinlein wrote for TV back in the early 1950s. I’ll get it home to find a few more gems. See
http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring-2008/

Even though I don’t like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls I did get a lot of thinking about Heinlein out of it. We can’t expect any author to hit a home run every time they go up to bat. Utlimately, I rate the book low, but I give Heinlein a lot of credit for trying out a new idea - the World as Myth. I just wished he had pulled it off.

Jim

1 book per month = 83.5 years

1 book per week = 19.3 years

(1 book a day = 2.74 years)

I’m going for the book-a-week plan, hoping that they don’t replace more than one additional book every few years or so.

Or that someone invents the time machine so I can go back and just have to read a few hundred instead!

I’m glad to see you read and reviewed this book, going against what you described earlier as your better judgment of Heinlein’s later novels. I know you weren’t second-guessing yourself, so kudos to you for giving this one an honest effort and evaluation.

I do agree that this book, more than any other besides “Number”, goes to a cherished place in RAH’s fans’ hearts and exploits many beloved characters for seemingly trite and selfish reasons: namely, an apparent last-ditch attempt to revitalize or re-invent those characters for a new generation.

I loved this book when I first read it, namely because it was the first Heinlein book I ever read. But after backtracking to his juvenile fiction and reading him as chronologically as possible, I feel your pain.

(I now own a collection called “To The Stars”, which contains some of his best from the 1950’s and is delightfully pure in plot and characterization.)

I agree that this book would have worked better had Heinlein stayed away from the Long and Stone families and kept the characters new rather than re-hashed. I also agree that Heinlein was obsessed with sex in its most free and uninhibited forms as an entire lifestyle. Anything and anyone seems up for grabs and thankfully the future has solved all of our cultural and medical taboos for the characters…let the games begin!

I can’t defend this book as art or anything approaching Heinlein’s best works. What I can say for certain is that this book opens a door for readers who might be new to not only Heinlein but SF as well [an upcoming inflammatory opinion>>>], much more effectively than a Clarke or Asimov novel could do these days.

What “Cat” succeeds in doing is introducing a plethora of characters who are better available and much better written, if the Reader chooses to seek them out, as I did. And be rewarded for their efforts, as I was.

So forgive Heinlein for smutting up his beloved characters with 80’s-style sex and plot. He was nearing the end of his days and obviously desired to breathe new life into old classics.

Or maybe he just wished to spend some care-free time with old friends who get to live forever.

Many of my friends claim internet friendships aren’t real. I even know lonely people who complain about not having enough to do and enough friends who look down on cyberspace activities. I think that’s strange. Of course I have a lot of friends and I socialize a lot so maybe my need for cyber communication is in addition to the other kind of human contact, but if I didn’t have that face to face socializing maybe computer socializing wouldn’t be appealing. I don’t know.

I do get a sense that this new world of social networking is something special, like the invention of the printing press special. It’s weird, but when I was a kid I was socially handicapped by not knowing how to dance, or being afraid to dance. I brushed it off as not important, but I think now, it was. The same thing is happening with blogging. It’s like knowing how to dance so you have another way to interact with people. If you can’t blog you’re missing out on a new kind of personal interaction.

Jim

My family know I have a blog. I’ve given the url to them all but a couple of them still aren’t sure exactly what it is, let alone ventured into it to read. They have the same reaction to my writing. It’s all a bit vague to them. Not real.

My daughter, who has grown up in an age of technology and owns a whole heap of electronic stuff with bells and whistles, still doesn’t want to know about some things.

I think a lot of it comes down to time. Learning new things takes time and with everything changing at such a rapid rate there are a limited number of things you can keep up with. Everything else just gets dropped by the wayside. And we settle into our comfort zones.

I also thought it fascinating that you had your own alternative “Big Three” authors with Bradbury, Simak and Bester. I’m a big fan of those guys too, and they do represent a special kind of science fiction. It would be fun to think of other triples that represented various tributaries of science fiction, like Fredric Brown, Robert Sheckley and William Tenn. Or Roger Zelazny, Samual R. Delany and Ursula K. LeGuin.

How come your site doesn’t have an RSS button? And what are your other two sites?

Jim

as for the 1% challenge, it sounds worthwhile when i retire in a few years. right now i’m struggling just trying to keep up with sf books. but i would love to buy a copy of “1001 books”.

i love your blog, james, and read it faithfully. if only mine (or my 3 now that i’ve added a third for posting original fiction) was half as good.

bob