The reason I don't like Friday is different. It's because the narrator marries her rapist. I was enjoying it up to the last few pages.
I think it is more complicated than that.
Heinlein's attitude to women is really creepy.
I disagree. He had strong and competent women throughout his works, starting when that wasn't the thing to do. His women may not match the current "feminist ideal" but that doesn't mean that his version was "creepy." There are dozens of examples that could be cited, from early characters such as Betty in
The Star Beast to multiple characters in
Time Enough for Love.
quote:
I'm also puzzled about why you don't put Starship Troopers in your "Author Avatar" category. Surely, the school instructor, Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, would fall squarely in that concept.
Well, in the first place there isn't that much of him, and in the second place Heinlein doesn't so blatantly make it clear that he's advocating such a society, he's just postulating it. I can read Asimov and not think that he's a monarchist ...
The character of Jean V. Dubois actually appeared in numerous novels, in greater or lesser degree. You can find that going back to
Space Cadet and
Tunnel to the Stars. It was probably most prominent in
Starship Troopers, but that strong and principled educator was a significant theme. You can even find that in his first novel, published only after his death,
For Us the Living (1938 if I remember correctly).
But what really annoys me is that Heinlein has this massive gift as a natural storyteller which I couldn't acquire in a hundred years and so often he wastes that ability by being the most colossal bore. What I object to is not so much that he has a point of view that he wants to incorporate into his fiction as that his characters will spend page after page explaining it to me.
I think the number of successful books, reprints, and foreign editions suggests that he was not a bore to that many readers. He sold literally millions of books. It might be close to a hundred million in all editions. Certainly some found him interesting.
Perhaps you disagreed with his point of view, and that made his books more objectionable or boring?
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