Asherian wrote:I dunno.. I could never get past Lazarus Long screwing the identical twins cloned from his DNA to give the character credit ever again. I love Heinlein, but I'd rather quote a character who doesn't sleep with his mother, and himself in a relatively quick order. Even Friday with the end message of 'no matter how smart, bad ass, or otherwise equipped a woman is, she won't see herself as complete or be happy until she's spawned.' was easier for me to swallow.
Honestly, I thought that most of the sex in his later books felt tacked on. He showed that he could write incredible stories without them, but then discovered that Sex Sells with
Stranger.... As for the incest/twincest thing going on with Lazarus, I never paid that much attention; I tend to skip over sex scenes because they bore me.
As per your issue with the ending message of
Friday, I saw it more as expression of the genetic imperative than anything else. If somebody with superior genes does not pass them along, the entire species suffers. Heinlein was a strong proponent of survival of mankind, so it's not an unexpected message. That said,
Friday is not on my list of books that I return to for enjoyment.
Finally, the assumption that just because one person has a couple of characteristics that you find incredibly disagreeable means that everything about them can be cast aside, I find that to be incredibly distasteful. It feels something akin to disregarding incredibly wise advice from a homeless person just because they smell bad and live on the streets. When you decide that someone cannot possibly teach you anything, you permanently cut off an avenue of learning. Besides, the Lazarus quotes are just Heinlein's personal aphorisms attributed to a character.
