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
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