heinlein

To call "Friday" trashy is to insult trashy works. Personal deity, this is a book about a woman who gets gang-raped on Page 2 and her only complaint is that it wouldn't have been so bad if one of them didn't have bad breath. And it just kind of went downhill from there.

I didn't like "Fifth Column" either; although it avoids the have-sex-with-everything-that-moves mentality that pervades Heinlein's other works, I really can't think too highly of its depiction of Asians, or its use of a weapon that kills people based solely on their race.

I think I read four Heinlein novels in all. In addition to the two aforementioned books, I had the misfortune of reading "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" and the good luck to read a book the name of which I can't remember. It's about a university course where students are required to survive on an alien world for the entire semester in order to pass. There's a supernova, though, and the school can't get them back because of the resulting distortions in space/time. The book is also the source of "dopey joes," which Niven, Pournelle and Barnes used in "Legacy of Heorot."

Actually that's another good book. I'd also recommend:

• "Inferno" by Niven and Pournelle
• "The Magic Goes Away" by Niven
• "Crashlander" by Niven
• "Playgrounds of the Mind" by Niven
• "N Space" by Niven
• "Limits" by Niven
• "Inconstant Moon" by Niven

I didn't care for "Footfall." Part of it was that I was starting to recognize the stock characters and stock plot devices I've seen in other Niven/Pournelle works, part of it was that for all its hype as an alien invasion story that was done right it was still a weak story in that sense, but mostly it was because it was written from the same notes and ideas as "Lucifer's Hammer," which was a better book.

Actually, "Lucifer's Hammer" started out as "Footfall," but the editor found the idea of a meteor or comet hitting Earth (the weapon of choice of the Snouts) so intriguing that he told them to make it a natural disaster instead of an alien invasion.

"Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers" are good, as are "The Integral Trees" and "The Smoke Ring," but Niven was starting to fall into the Heinlein trap at that point in his career and gratuitious sex was starting to crop up more and more.


By Arthur C. Clarke, I'd recommend "The Fountains of Paradise," "Songs of Distant Earth" and possibly "Rendezvous with Rama" (though not its sequels), and the short story he based "Childhood's End" on).