How many have read any of Robert Heinlein's work?

I have read and enjoyed everything he ever wrote, and some, I reread every few years. And, yes, they are prophetic!

Also, like @DKR I am an admirer of Jerry Pournelle, the guy is/was a genius. My only gripe was when he didn't finish his 'Janissaries' series which is one of my all-time favorites. Mr. Pournelle had a stroke so doubtful he will ever finish it; however, there was a rumor that he had complied 80,000 words prior to becoming ill again but alas he is ill. I like Larry Nivon also but his stand-alone works never resonated with me like Pournelle's; however, everything they wrote together was excellent. One of my favorite is/was the 'The Heorot' series but there was a lot of others just as good.

 

I think I've mentioned it before, but in an era of see dick, see jane, see spot, I couldn't read. Then I ran across Heinlein. It was "The Black Pits of Luna". All of a sudden I could read. In stead of punishment reading became a reward.

 

My dad got me addicted to Heinlein in junior high and I still credit him for turning me into a geek. I'm glad he did because I started hanging with the geeks and I'm sure that influenced my decision to major in stats rather than just poli sci. I miss my dad, but reading a little sci fi always makes me think of him.

 

Arguably, based on word count, RAH's Searchlight was his best work. 1000 words, written on spec.

"Searchlight" is a very short science fiction story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a little blind girl whose spaceship crashes on the Moon. The search for her takes advantage of her prodigious musical ability to locate her.

It was originally written in 1962 as part of an advertisement for Hoffman Electronics. Heinlein says that because it was so short it was much harder to write than writing novels. Perhaps because of this, it was the last short story Heinlein wrote; the remaining quarter-century of his career was devoted to writing novels and non-fiction essays.\

Plot summery
Blind child pianist who was lost on the moon after a crash landing in which her pilot was injured. She directed researchers to her by identifying a musical tone generated by laser beam scanner.

this in 1962......

Some of the reviews/summaries are almost as long as the story itself

Betsy Barnes is a little blind girl, & a very good piano player. She has gone to moon to to entertain men at the military bases. While going from Tycho Base to Farside Hardbase, her rocket crashes. She was the only passenger, apart from pilot - Major Peters. Major is not dead, but is indisposed enough that Betsy is essentially on her own.

When the traffic control realizes they are lost, there is a rather vast geographical area that needs searching. sf element of the story is in the rather complicated device rigged to get the wreck's approximate location; search technique is classical divide & conquer.

The search device will scan the appropriate part of lunar surface with a laser "like radar". This will be modulated into a "carrier wave in radio frequency", then modulating that "into audio frequency-and controlling that by a piano"! I have no clue to mechanics of this, but I am not an expert on the subject - so let's assume it can work. (yes, it can and does)

The idea is to repeatedly transmit a message hoping she hears it via her space suite radio. The message asks here to acknowledge that she has heard it - again via her space suite radio. This acknowledgment apparently is not enough to locate her. So she will be told that the search area is being divided such that different piano tones will be heard in different areas. She will identify the tone she hears - reducing the search area. This smaller area will now be divided up, & the process repeated - till the area is small enough to manually locate the wreck.

 

RAH saw the future. He described a water bed, he thought was for hospital use.

In the story "We also walk dogs.."

'General Services', a very successful company that provides various personal services such as shopping for you or walking your dogs or supplying a host for a party, but also proudly advertises that no job is too large (One ad campaign idea the staff discusses: "Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!"), is asked to do the impossible: enable an interplanetary conference to be held on Earth, whose strong gravity is inhospitable to many of the native races of other planets in the solar system.

Fun story, short read. in the book "The Past Through Tom morrow'

 

ahhh.... was written as a calab... with Larry Niven

Lucifer's Hammer - Wikipedia

some of the future history series stuff was also calab... or IIRC said so on some of the books????

Falkenberg's Legion Series by Jerry Pournelle

 

I have bought and read most of his books a few times during my time on this planet. It seems that my collection kept getting damaged do to floods and other problems.

The first book that read of his was The Rolling Stones. I was hooked after that.

I have noticed that some of the items that he mentions in his books have showed up in our life. Like LED lights, and the Camel Back Hydration system just to name a couple.

 

I've read all of RAH's books except for maybe the last one. I still have paperback copies of most of them on hand. He was a heck of a writer, a real talent for storytelling.
Pournelle wrote some excellent stories as well. I thought I read where he passed away recently.

 

I have been a Heinlein fan since as far back as I can remember, I do not believe there is anything he has wrote that I did not read at least 3 times or more. I tend to be a little qwerky, and a lot of people don't understand me. I tell all of them to read "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Book of Job" by Heinlein (uncut versions if you can find them) LOL

 

Actually, The Man in the High Castle just came up on my 'free with Prime' list the other day so I downloaded it and have been reading. Interesting concept and I like everything else I've read from him over the years. Writing seems a bit rough on this one though. Haven't watched the series on Netflix yet. Wanted to read it how it was written first.