The Fantasy of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

A book review by Mark L. Olson

Tor, 1999, 352 pp, $27.95

Heinlein, the quintessential writer of hard SF, wrote a fairish book's worth of fantasies which Tor has done us the great service of collecting and publishing. (I'm amazed that the Heinlein Estate allowed it - they seem determined to kill his reputation for good by keeping people from reading his stories.)

Two of the stories, "…And He Built a Crooked House", and "All You Zombies", are not fantasy by any definition I recognize. But they're really good stories. The rest are fantasy in the Unknown vein: "Magic, Inc.", "They…", "Waldo", "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", "Our Fair City", and "The Man who Traveled in Elephants".

"They" and "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" are wonderful, and the others - perhaps with the exception of "Our Fair City" which is pretty minor - are very good.

And I'd forgotten how well RAH did paranoia and solipsism…

Read them!

See also my other Heinlein reviews:   The Fantasy of Robert A. Heinlein, Starman Jones, Citizen of the Galaxy

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