Robert Heinlein		The Puppet Masters The Door Into Summer Stranger in a Strange Land Glory Road Farnham's Freehold Time Enough for Love The Number of the Beast Friday

Charles Daney's Being and Nakedness site provides information about Robert Heinlein and several of his novels, although he omits the information that Robert Heinlein was an occasional nudist - there was even an obituary in BN. Robert Heinlein is another of SF's prolific authors, producing an astonishing amount of work. In my opinion, as he produced fewer (but generally much longer) books - for which he was probably paid much more than in his earlier days - the quality declined. It wasn't just the ideas, plots and characters that had less freshness and originality, the brilliant story-telling also tailed off. Another factor, for me, is the emergence of an unhealthy arrogance about the sort of people he regarded as those truly deserving to inherit the earth. These are normally survivalists - the weak and the gentle go to the wall, which is a less subtle attitude than is found in books such as The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Revolt In 2100.

It's clear that Charles Daney has little regard for Robert Heinlein, since the very brief coverage appears to be damning with faint praise. I think this is being too hard on good material purely because it was written by the same person who wrote rather more forgettable doorstops.

In particular, I take issue with Charles Daney over Glory Road - described by him, in full, as "Boy meets girl on a French nude beach, and they go off to slay dragons and share other sundry adventures, occasionally in the buff." - which is not inaccurate as a synopsis. A colleague once described this book as "A splendid example of sixties sf with a big-boobed woman on the cover", which is also true, but hardly the whole story. Naturists might well be interested in the description of the "French nude beach", which is on the Ile du Levant (also the setting for Leslie Charteris's The Reluctant Nudist). Glory Road is set almost a decade before it was written, so if Robert Heinlein was writing from personal experience of that time, he and Leslie Charteris might even have encountered one another in that long-established naturist Mecca. But maybe not, as by then Charteris was established and widely-read, taking advantage of the resultant income, while Heinlein - like the hero of Glory Road - was still young and taking care to spend as little as possible. Consider how the extracts of Glory Road and The Reluctant Nudist compare. And also see if you think the former deserves rather more than a single sentence for its treatment of nudism.

One of the books covered by Charles Daney is The Number Of The Beast. The heroine of this tale is named Deeja Thoris - a direct and explicit reference to the heroine of A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

An edited version of this review appeared in the 2005 August issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Ratings:
(a vague attempt to cover all eight books listed by Charles Daney)

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Authors A:Z		Titles A:Z		Publication date
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