Why Bob Was Great - by MKeaton

1. Bob was Bob.
Robert Heinlein was one of the driving and defining characters in the writing scene of his day. His personality and support for other writers as well as his uncredited collaborations earned him a love and respect from his peers that was outside of his writing. In many ways, the man meant more to SF than his work.

2. Bob was a writer for his time.
Robert feared no evil and no man. In an era defined by nuclear fear, he steadfastly wrote against the evils of communism. In a time when every good conservative was of prurient morals, he wrote with a libertine ease that should have been impossible given his political views. To fully understand how much of the power of his writing was due to the time when he wrote it (and remember, he was the first to do many things that have since been repeated and possibly done better), take a look at Starship Troopers. Specifically, the (lack of) racism in it. The hero is black and it doesn't matter to either author or reader because of the deft skill of the author.

3. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Robert's real strength lay in his political books like Moon and Farnham's rather than (in my opinion) his more popular pieces of claptrap like Job and Stranger in a Strange Land. His ability, at a time when the nation lived in fear for the continued existence of mankind itself, to present the resilient, self-reliant spirit of humanity with all its 'never say die' swagger was like a beacon of hope on book shelves filled with dystopia.

4. Bob was not a children's author.
Except, really he was. He was one of the few writers who moved beyond a specific audience and wrote for everyone. Today, the books are lumped together under the heading of "Heinlein Juveniles" but his YA books were some of the best written (and still are).

5. Bob was prolific.
The dual edged sword of an author is that, if you write a lot, you write some bad stuff. You also write some pure gold and then there is a whole lot of stuff that hits some people right in the heart and blows past others. Robert did it all. This makes it easy for critic after critic to mischaracterize his work, and easy for a reader to overlook a great writer because of a few bad books. Job, Fear No Evil, and the like are bad books. Stranger in a Strange Land, I liked when I was in high school but now, when I reread it, I realize it's pretty shallow pap. But, the hippies who would burst into flame at the touch of MoonHM loved these books. MoonHM, in turn, is written simplistically and is not, from a purely literary stance, all that stunning, is a wonderful book because of the underlying themes. The Cat That Walked Through Walls is a puerile book until you know something of Robert and his personal life and his writing compatriots, and then you realize that the entire book is a huge Larry Niven style inside joke--suddenly a book with no point is a carnival of nostalgia and humor. Part of Robert's greatness was his ability to give something to everyone eventually.

6. Bob was one of my mentors.
He wrote simple, clean prose that worked. For this alone, he is worthy of study by any writer.

7. Bob loved his wife.
There was an intimate trust and bond with the reader in much of Robert's work that let him take the reader further than the reader would have allowed another author to go. Robert McKammon's Blue World is a modern example of this kind of trust/risk relationship with writer and reader that lets both go to darker places than either would comfortably go alone.

It's not a full list nor, I'm sure, one that everyone would agree with; but, in my humble but correct opinion, it is a fair starting point. Hope this helps.

~MKeaton doesn't blog. But his cat lets him write essays for us, from the sprawling metropolis of Hindsville Arkansas and/or Centerline Michigan