[Shell_Kracker]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I find it interesting that this novel is still stirring as much controversy as it did when it was first released (there was a very heated radio debate on it at the time; I've come across fragments of that in various histories of sf, or books on Heinlein, over the years).

And I wouldn't take this book as a summation of Heinlein's ideas on any of these topics; not only was this one of those books where he was wanting to gig people into discussing the topic (something which shouldn't be surprising, given the political climate of the time), but it was also the culmination of a development of various themes in his juveniles, so he was tackling a lot of issues there.

It's interesting that, the first time I read the book, I hated the thing. I was vehemently opposed to what it had to say, and reacted with a knee-jerk liberalism (but then, I was also quite young at the time). Since then, it has become one of my favorite books because it fundamentally questions a lot of my own biases, and I think that's always a good thing for helping to periodically reassess one's stance and measure how well it agrees with new facts, and/or how well such a stance has stood the test of experience....

The problem I find is that I have already questioned those knee jerk reactions before reading ST - and rejecting it always led to fanatical lack of perspective.