Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Oh well, if you are going to delve into SF's back catalogue, you might as well go for The Master.

Actiually, by this stage of his writing, RAH was far too interested in showing how clever he was, and how well constructed his philosophical arguments were.  So the story itself is episodic, disjointed, and less than satisfying by modern standards (but in its day won, I think, a Hugo for Best SF Novel of the year).

It is astonishing the extent to which Heinlein's world of 5000 years in the future has changed so little from the world of 1960, but RAH isn't there to construct a future technology, merely a future quasi-stratocracy (not actually a military rule per se, but a democracy where only ex-military can vote) and a vehicle for his less than right-on views.  Sometimes I think the only liberal view RAH had was concerning intra-familial love;  Time Enough For Love and Farnham's Freehold both have characters and situations which espouse (*ahem*) "close and loving family relationships".

Never mind.

Don't read this expecting all the excitement of the Vehoeven movie, or the CGI cartoon "Roughnecks" that graced breakfast TV about 15 years ago - don't even expect all the characters to have the same gender.  And take it all with a pinch of generous salt.  Thems was different days, after all.

Unputdownability:  Another day, another chapter.