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The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana

The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $13.57
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Must For Heinlein Fans
Review: A superb interview plus fine reviews. Mrs. Heinlein is right. This interview is done with intelligence and intellectuality combined with a deep knowledge of and love for the subject (RAH's oeuvre and by implication RAH). It is an interview worthy of Heinlein, whose depth of thought is underappreciated. It was a great pleasure to read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Must For Heinlein Fans
Review: A superb interview plus fine reviews. Mrs. Heinlein is right. This interview is done with intelligence and intellectuality combined with a deep knowledge of and love for the subject (RAH's oeuvre and by implication RAH). It is an interview worthy of Heinlein, whose depth of thought is underappreciated. It was a great pleasure to read.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Truly awful. More about Schulman than Heinlein
Review: As some one who's read just about every word Heinlein has ever written (Ginny just won't let me have the grocery lists!) I absolutely had to have this book. Unfortunately, Schulman is more interested in discussing his political views than truly telling us about this great writer. There is nothing here that is not better told in other of Heinlein's books. If (like me) you MUST read it download it from pulpless.com for free. If you want to learn more about Heinlein look instead to "Take Back Your Government", "Expanded Universe" or "Tramp Royale" If you want to learn more about Libertarian politics Harry Browne's books give much more information and better supporting arguments.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: waste o'money
Review: Considering the hype, I really expected more.
** The interview is only half the book, and the type is HUGE -- despite being a trade paperback, there are only about 80% as many words per page as with your average mass market paperback.
** The interview was unedited, so a non-trivial portion of it consists of, e.g., Heinlein saying "What was that? How do you spell that?" and then Schulman spelling it out.
** The interview itself is about what you would expect from a 20-year-old with a political axe to grind.
** The rest of the book is filler, e.g., letters that Schulman wrote Heinlein, Schulman's reviews of some of Heinlein's books, etc..
** All of the above are spiced with the expected libertarian rantings and hyperbole, e.g., anyone who thinks Heinlein was a Fascist is a Marxist. (Heinlein was NOT a fascist, but AT BEST such rejoinders show the same lack of intellectual depth and integrity displayed by some of Heinlein's critics.)
In short, this is a short, expensive book that is more about Schulman than it is about Heinlein. My copy is going up on eBay in the near future.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spend your money on RAH's works instead
Review: I consider Robert Heinlein one of the great moral and intellectual guides in my life. His science fiction and essays were guideposts as I grew up. However, I can't recommend J. Neil Schulman's compilation of his interactions with RAH.

The book is rife with typos and is printed in a typeface big enough to qualify for a "Large Print Edition," stamp. ... I should have realized the amateur quality of the publication from the cover photo: a snapshot taken in dim light without a flash. The publisher couldn't even make the effort to color-correct the picture.

Most of the content is Schulman name-dropping and pushing a Libertarian agenda. Not that Libertarianism is a bad thing, it's just Schulman harps on it relentlessly. The foreword by Brad Linaweaver, another flaming Libertarian, intimates that Schulman is a master author, only reined in by Organized Media because of his hard-hitting, challenging, Libertarian-based efforts. If the work in this book is any indication of Schulman's other writing, it isn't a Libertarian stance that's holding him back, it's talent.

The Q&A interview between Schulman and RAH show, to an embarrassingly degree, how shallow Schulman's questions were. Many read like something Comic Book Guy from "The Simpson's" would ask. Granted, Schulman was in his early 20s when he conducted the interview, but most of the interview devolves down to political discussions with a tolerant old man showing a vertically-educated young turk how to think beyond his narrow outlook.

Sadly, you won't get much insight into RAH's thoughts on writing or his creative process; Schulman's too busy asking RAH what he thinks life will be like in a 24th Century inhabited by Lazarus Long.

Spend your money on RAH's own works and you'll get a much better idea of what the man was like and what he thought.

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: Praise for The Robert Heinlein Interview
Review: I've been encouraging Neil for years to bring out his interview with Robert as a book. To my knowledge, this is the longest interview Robert ever gave. Here is a book that should be on the shelves of everyone interested in science fiction. Libertarians will be using it as a source for years to come. --Virginia Heinlein

Once in a while you find a writer who says with almost perfect clarity the things you have been thinking. The interview with RAH is the crown jewel of the book. On my scale of 0 to 5, this is worth reading, worth rereading, and worth keeping to read again.--Darryl Kenning, Reading For Pleasure

Schulman's book helps put the great master's work and life in context, helps us to see the magnitude and beauty of Heinlein's accomplishments.--Stephan Kinsella, Genie Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: if you want to grok Heinlein, read this book
Review: If you want to understand the thought-processes of the man behind the fiction - and if you want to share some of that view of life yourself - read this book.

You may have thought you knew "all about" Robert Heinlein, but if you want to slip inside the Master's skin and see through his eyes, READ THIS BOOK.

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: Back cover of The Robert Heinlein Interview ...
Review: In 1973, Robert A. Heinlein was sixty-six, at the height of his literary career; J. Neil Schulman was twenty and hadn't yet started his first novel. Because he was looking for a way to meet his idol, Schulman wangled an assignment from the New York Daily News -- at the time the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S. -- to interview Heinlein for its Sunday Book Supplement. The resulting taped interview lasted three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the longest interview Heinlein ever granted, and the only one in which he talked freely and extensively about his personal philosophy and ideology. The Robert Heinlein Interview contains Heinlein you won't find anywhere else -- even in Heinlein's own Expanded Universe. If you want to know what Heinlein had to say about UFO's, life after death, epistemology, or libertarianism, this interview is the only source available.

Also included in this collection are articles, reviews, and letters that J. Neil Schulman wrote about Heinlein, including the original article written for the Daily News, about which the Heinleins wrote Schulman that it was, "The best article -- in style, content, and accuracy -- of the many, many written about him over the years."

This book is must-reading for any serious student of Heinlein, or any reader of his seeking to know him better.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not much insight on Heinlein
Review: Not recommended unless you are interested in hearing Schulman expound on the virtues of libertarianism. You'll learn more about Heinlein from Expanded Universe and Grumbles from the Grave.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spend your money on RAH's works instead
Review: Obviously any Heinlein fanatic like myself should own this book. The interview is very interesting and adds some insight to what Heinlein was really like. The draw back is, in both the filler material and to some extent the interview, Schulman has a political axe to grind. This detracted from the interview and other material in the book.


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