The Number of the Beast (original 1980; edition 1982)

I feel very conflicted about this book. It's one of the ones that I've re-read every year or two; it's large, and once you start it it's very hard to put down. Heinlein, whatever his faults, was a storyteller - and a gripping one.

But his faults are largely on display in this book.

When I was a young teen, my brother and I used to torture each other by reading particularly ripe and painful passages out loud to each other. This book, and the "Notebooks of Lazarus Long" excerpts from Time Enough For Love, comprised our list of pain. They were truly retch-inducing.

But that damned Heinlein really WAS talented. Witness the fact that I've read the book more than ten times in the past couple of decades.

The flaws are many? He gets really creepy on the sex. The "old man Heinlein" voice is particularly noticable - it's a bit jarring and weird for everyone to banter and quip like someone from Kansas City in the 1930s. The incest angle gets really sickening, to be honest - why does he glory in it in so many books? I have to wonder.

And towards the end the whole thing basically falls apart. I'll avoid spoiling it, but basically reality sort of falls apart and things just get weird. There are lots and lots (and lots and lots) of obvious in-jokes, some of which I get, and some of which I don't. That gets old and tired after a while. I'll also say that there's something of a loss in the book; it starts out first-person in the voice of one protagonist, but then starts rotating between viewpoints in each chapter. Towards the end, when the original lead is "speaking", it feels as if he's somehow lost. They're all just merging into a single Heinleinian superman/woman.

Which reminds me of a parody of Heinlein that my teen-aged self wanted to write, come to think of it. His later characters are all sex maniacs, and all act, think, and talk the same - like an idealized Heinlein, I presume. If he hadn't had a gift for storytelling on a par with that of Rudyard Kipling, he would never have gotten away with it.

I've gone back and forth on this book. I hated it the first time I read it (shortly after it was first published), warmed up to it again...and now, decades later, I find myself more repulsed by the sex and incest angles than I used to be. Maybe I'm just getting old. Nonetheless, I'll likely end up reading the book again in another year or three. ( )

This is the last Heinlein book I read to the end. I was probably about 18, finally legal yet really not an adult -- but working on it. Heinlein's books had informed a lot of my teen age thinking and I expected little different in this particular tome, which was supposed to tie up a lot of the dangling threads from his "big" novels.

I can't remember now what failed for me then, but I liken it to that moment in one's life when one is offered a handful of cheap Halloween or Easter candy and find the same stuff devoured with eager relish at the age of 8 is, at 18, sickening, flavorless, and sticks to one's fillings in an uncomfortable way. It just wasn't wonderful. It didn't have that sensation of "new" and "edgy" I'd come to expect. Even the sex (one of the really mind-blowing parts of the novels for my sheltered adolescent brain) had a tired, "done before" feel to it.

I feel sad reflecting on it now, but then I was just irritated. ( )

this book started off so strong, but its like at the end he just sort of got tired... and ended it. i loved it right up until the end. ( )

Heinlein shoves as much as possible into the gallimaufry of a story.

I got tired of the sickly sweet dialogue and dull story in this book.

I was looking forward to reading this and it started off quite pleasantly, I was enjoying the story, such as it was, but then it got dull, quickly, that is about a third of the way in, and its a 500+ page book-drop this on your toe and you'll be hopping round the room!
Basically a scientist invents a dimension jumping machine cum time machine, based around an old Ford car, and he comes up with a theory of the number of universes based on the number 6 raised to the power of 6, 6 times - 6 6 6. A group is assembled, a kind of family group, off on their jollies, but I began to find the characters incredibly annoying and twee. I hate that word twee, its such a, well, twee word, but it is quite apt with this book, apart from its size! "Oh John I SO love you, youre such a remarkable man, my hero, Daddy will be happy to have you as a son" If thats not bad enough the young lady is known as DT, which I discover is short for Deja Thoris. Anyone who has read Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books will know that name! But also her erstwhile husband just happens to be called John Carter. And guess what planet they land on-its red and ends in 'ars'! For Christ's sake, could it get any more twee? Its like eating a really sweet candy bar, so sweet it makes your teeth itch!
Enough was enough, life is too short etc
Moving on..... ( )