The Number of the Beast

This book is one of the quirkiest, perfectly complicated, sexually liberated, libertarian multi-multi-universe romps in SF literature. Few have dared to come even close to this kitchen sink of a novel, but that may be because this later-career novel of Heinlein is a great example of a writer at the h......more

There's this terrible thing that happens to some science-fiction writers near the end of their careers: they want their oeuvre to make sense, with all the books related to each other in some complex structural way. I mean, who do they think they are, Balzac or Powell or someone? Get a grip, guys. Yo......more

This morning I was perusing book reviews at Goodreads that, for the most part, lambaste Robert A Heinlein's 1980 novel The Number of the Beast, which I haven't read in years and years. This poor treatment of this particular novel surprised me somewhat, as I remembered TNotB to have been a rather ext......more

This book is to science fiction literature as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is to cinema: a big, fat, sloppy, self-indulgent love letter to everything its creator holds dear. The first time I read it I hated it, but a few years later I got into an argument about it with someone at a party and decid......more

Fair warning: this is going to be a contrarian review. The Number of the Beast is roundly recognized to be one of legendary sf author Robert A. Heinlein's very worst novels, right down there with I Will Fear No Evil and his final living works, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the S......more