I recently reread Time Enough for Love and it still holds up—it’s not nearly as anti-feminist as some of his hard sci-fi. Stranger in a Strange Land is slightly less relevant, though a great deal more subversive and slightly more anti-feminist.
On second thought, I would give neither book to e.g. my 13-year-old cousin.
I probably should have mentioned that I was a teenager in the sixties, and what was available to me was the juveniles. I think my favorites were The Star Beast and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, with Citizen of the Galaxy trailing not too far behind.
I think I only read Rocketship Galileo once, even though Nazis in abandoned alien tunnels on the moon seemed wonderfully extravagant. I reread it recently, and found it had so much immediately-post-WWII material as to be rather sad and grim compared to most of the juveniles.
I liked Heinlein a lot (better than Asimov or Norton) as an early teen, but I’ve heard mixed things about how well his books hold up these days.
I recently reread Time Enough for Love and it still holds up—it’s not nearly as anti-feminist as some of his hard sci-fi. Stranger in a Strange Land is slightly less relevant, though a great deal more subversive and slightly more anti-feminist.
On second thought, I would give neither book to e.g. my 13-year-old cousin.
I probably should have mentioned that I was a teenager in the sixties, and what was available to me was the juveniles. I think my favorites were The Star Beast and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, with Citizen of the Galaxy trailing not too far behind.
I think I only read Rocketship Galileo once, even though Nazis in abandoned alien tunnels on the moon seemed wonderfully extravagant. I reread it recently, and found it had so much immediately-post-WWII material as to be rather sad and grim compared to most of the juveniles.