david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (10/27/85)
A new book by RA Heinlein! This is one of those books you can't say anything about or you would totally RUIN it for the reader. Suffice to say that it is similar to a number of his other works (Glory Road, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Number of the Beast (though better organized) and so forth). It is set about 100 years AFTER the revolution in Moon. The only thing I'll say further is that it will only be interesting to people who have read a few of his books and understand the Furture History and so forth. It would be telling, though, to say more of why. -- David Herron, cbosgd!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET. English is a second language to me -- Baby talk was my first language.
slg@ukma.UUCP (Sean Gilley) (11/01/85)
***SPOILER SPOILER*** I finshed Heinline's _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, A Comedy of Manners_ early yesterday. Let me clarify one fact here. I am a Heinline fan. I don't think there is any Heinline book prior to this one that I haven't read at least three times. Including _Number of the Beast_. But I didn't like this one. I came out of reading the book feeling cheated. The entire latter part of the book disappointed me. And I wasn't real thrilled with the first half either. The book got really interesting about a third of the way through, but didn't stay that way very long. This is where the spoiler starts. In the first half of the book, our hero was a typical Heinline hero. He has a typical latter Heinline women to go along with him. And the book was ok, nothing special, but ok. And I wanted to know about Gwen. She said she had grandchildren, which could almost make sense if she grew up on Luna, or if she were a member of the families. (I know, wrong universe.) And I enjoyed it when they went to the Raffles and received the same room that the revolution started in. And then(!!) we find out that Gwen is really Hazel, the little girl in _Moon is a Harsh Mistress_!! And I got really interested. (We also find out that she is Hazel Stone of _The Rolling Stones_, which I hadn't caught before.) And I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what's going to happen next..... And they get picked up by the spaceship _Gay Deciever_, from _Number_. The rest of the book is down hill. Most of it concerns trying to convince our hero that he should help on a mission to `rescue' Mike (the computer from _Moon is a Harsh Mistress_). About the last 7-8 pages of the book are actually devoted to the (obviously predeteremined) `rescue' mission. And they certainly aren't satisfactory. This whole bit about the `multiverse' gets real boring real quick. Heinline can call on any character from any book ever written, so he choses his favorites and conjures them up. I don't remember his name right now, but the hero from Doc Smith's `Lensman' series. The hero of Burroughs' Mars series. One other that I didn't recognize. (Anyone know where the one that was killed was from?) And that's in addition to all of his own characters that proliferate throughout this section of the book. And they say they need to rescue Mike. Why? Cause not only is Mike a self-aware computer, (like many in _Time Enough For Love_), he's a *smart* self-aware computer. Smar- ter than anything they can come up with in Lazarus' time. And they need him to predict what their meddlings in the time/space continuim will do. What? They're meddling with that? Yup. And they make mistakes, which is why they need Mike. And almost nothing is resolved at the end. It's worse than the ending of _Number_, because there it didn't matter what happened. Here you have three people (well, two people and a cat) dying, and you want to know whether they managed to live or not. You don't find out. Nor do you find out whether Mike lives again. I was unhappy, though I saw it coming. I don't have much more to say about it. But I didn't enjoy it. I don't think you should buy the book. Wait 'till it come out in paperback, then if you are a hard-core Heinline fan, go ahead and buy it. Or wait a little longer, it should show up en mass in used book stores. Sean. -- Sean L. Gilley Phone: (606) 272-9620 or (606) 257-4613 {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!cbosgd!ukma{!ukgs}!slg, slg@UKMA.BITNET Watches are a conspiracy by Swiss confidence men.