Science Fiction: Complete with Everything: Aliens, Giant Ants, Space Cadets, Robots, and One Plucky Girl (No-Frills Book) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This and three other such volumes (titled 'Romance,' 'Mystery,' and 'Western') appeared briefly in book stores during the holiday season of 1981.They were very slim--'Science Fiction' was 58 pages long--designed, as you can see in the illustration, with a white cover and black stripes, after the fashion of generic grocery items, and at a buck and a half each I though this was a gag worth supporting.

To my pleasure, 'Science Fiction' turned out to be a very well handled pastiche of Robert Heinlein's juvenile novel series.In under sixty pages the writer does a rip-roaring riff on Heinlein (blatantly lifting numerous plot elements from some of his best stuff and catching the tone of its models perfectly), and indeed doing it with such panache and energy that I long believed that RAH might have penned the thing himself.

Well, he didn't--that honor goes to somebody named John Silbersack--but it's actually quite fun (and won't take you long either).

I've long felt that most of the best Heinlein novels of the eighties were written by writers other than Heinlein.

My list:

'Millenium' by John Varley
'Ender's Game' by Orson Scott Card
'Friday' by Robert Heinlein
'A Matter for Men' by David Gerrold (I wish the sequels hadn't sucked), and
'Science Fiction'

Try it already.

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