Variable Star – Robert A Heinlein

Like Spider Robinson, I cut my science fiction teeth on Library Heinleins. They made it onto the school library shelves, they had to be good. And wholesome.

So it was a pleasant surprise in Books-a-Million in Kansas City to find a new Heinlein. I snapped it up at the bargain price of $4.93.

Written from an outline left by the Master, this is classic RAH. A juvenile as he would have written it now. A few surprises, a few twists, but it’s familiar and well-loved territory, all of it. Maybe a bit racier than the juveniles of my youth, but so am I nowadays, i guess, forty years later.

A bit of a follow-on from “Time For the Stars”, one of my favourite SF books ever. An interesting melange of RAH’s Future History and the real world – for instance Nehemiah Scudder and 9/11 co-exist.

There’s an afterword by Spider, explaining how it came to be, which is good to read. I bought this one, thinking I’d BookCross it, but I’m going to keep it. With all the paperbacks of my youth, still treasured.