I Will Fear No Evil

Rating:
Summary: The point of a journey ...
Review: ... is not to arrive. Ponder this before you pick up this book: do the books you read have to be action-packed (defeating evil villains, fighting battles in space, encountering extraterrestrials) or is a story of human interaction equally compelling?

This is definitely a dialogue-driven book. After the protagonist wakes up and learns that he is in the body of his secretary, and that his secretary's mind is still in her body even though her brain was removed and his was implanted in its place, there is little of what might be called "action" except for a mild courtroom drama.

I've had little exposure to Heinlein; one of the first SF books I read was _Space Cadet_, which I enjoyed, although at ten I wasn't particularly discriminating. Two or three years ago I tried to read _Stranger in a Strange Land_, and was bored by it; I couldn't make it through to the end.

This book, however, was a completely different animal. The dialogue is compelling, and its frequently sexual nature challenges us to examine our notions of love and gender.

Near the end there is a surprise twist: Was Heinlein playing with our minds, leading us on, throughout the entire book? Is Joan/Johann crazy? Did s/he snap? When I finished the book I was inspired to read it again, immediately, to try and find an answer to this question.

This is one of the most intellectually stimulating, mentally engaging, and challenging science fiction books I've ever read. Judging by the reviews here, you either love it or hate it, and there isn't much middle ground.

Rating:
Summary: Good; should have been great
Review: I probably like this book far better than it deserves; if so, it's because I imprinted on Heinlein's stuff during my formative years. At any rate, this novel is based on a terrific concept but suffers from flawed execution.

The concept: Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is ooooold. Oooooooooold. He's going to die soon. But he's also rich, and he wants to spend a huge chunk of his fortune having his brain transplanted into a younger body. This he does. ('Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . ')

Well, the joke's on him. The body -- as he learns after the transplant is performed -- is not only female, it's the body of his beloved secretary Eunice Branca (who was killed in a mugging that conveniently left her in brain-transplantable condition, and who conveniently happened to have the very same rare blood type as old Smith). So Johann has to learn how to be female, and also has to get over feeling just terrible about taking over Eunice's body.

Ah, but the lucky fellow gets some help. Turns out Eunice's body is still inhabited by Eunice -- or maybe Smith is hallucinating her (perhaps as her body rejects the transplant?). Or maybe it doesn't matter which; reality is slippery that way. (' . . . I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.')

_Great_ concept. The idea alone is worthy of a Hugo.

Unfortunately, Hugos aren't given for ideas; they're given for execution. And the execution here is troubled.

Heinlein suffered from life-threatening peritonitis during this period of his life, and his wife Virginia had to help him out with the editing on this one. At that, Heinlein claimed to have trimmed the draft MS by some ungodly number of thousands of words, and the result is _still_ sort of saggy in places. Like, between the covers.

There are minor indications throughout that this isn't Heinlein's best-thought-out work. Here's my personal favorite example: when Johann, in Eunice's body, decides on a name, he suggests using 'Joan' but giving it the 'two-syllable pronunciation'. Apparently the author forgot that his character was _speaking_ the name, so that her listeners (who were not reading the text but hearing her speak) would _hear_ the two syllables; what they wouldn't know was how she intended to _spell_ it. (And what, by the way, would have been wrong with spelling it 'Joanne'? Then we wouldn't have had to worry about reader-vs.-listener at all, and I wouldn't have to keep reminding myself all the way through the blinkin' book that it's _not_ pronounced 'Jone'.)

Lots of the content is very dated, too. And it's not very realistic to imagine Joan Eunice spreadin' 'em for every big strong han'some male who treats her nice. (Including attorneys and judges, who might have had some ethical issues here. And please don't email me any lawyer jokes on the subject; believe me, I've heard 'em.)

But there's still lots of cool stuff. The dialogue (especially the _internal_ dialogue, of which there is naturally a long ton) is about as well handled as it could be. Eunice's 'stenodesk', allowing for time and fictional extrapolation, sure looks a lot like a modern desktop computer (in about the way that D.B. Davis's 'Drafting Dan' looked like a CAD system). There's also what must be one of SF's very first sympathetic fictional portraits of a same-sex couple.

So I still rate this one as a rewarding read (and in fact do reread it every now and again myself). It's not Heinlein's best; it's not even his second-tier material -- but it's still pretty darned good.

It's just not _great_. And that's too bad, because I'd have loved to see what Heinlein could have done with this concept had he been at the top of his game.

Rating:
Summary: Every man's dream: a sexy woman with a man's brain
Review: I love Robert A. Heinlein's work, well, most of it. But not this book. When R.A.H. goes bad, he really goes bad. The plot is simple; secretary gets offed, boss is dying, badaboom-badabing, borrow her (now useless) body and insert brain. Now, you have a man living in a woman's body, and her spirit to guide him along the troublesome path of living as a woman.

Eunice, the secretary, is pretty much unbelievable as a woman. While I am sure there ARE a few women out there like her, for life is diverse, as a WOMAN character, this is a flop. She acts like men would WISH women would act, and of course, haha, we don't! Heinlein makes up for deficiencies by lots of sex, situations, ugh, pass on this one unless you MUST read everything the Master wrote, in which case, I warned you.

Rating:
Summary: OK, it's Heinlein's weakest novel
Review: This is Heinlein's weakest novel, which still makes it better than 80% of the stuff available today.

(Rumor Has It that this book was actually ghostwritten by Virginia Heinlein, possibly from Bob's outline. Interesting speculation, given that the treatment of women in the book is one of the major criticisms.)

The central question in the book is about identity, are we our bodies, our brains, or Something Else, possibly our souls? This is never really resolved, we don't find out for sure if Eunice has survived her murder or if Johan is just delusional.

Coupled with this is the question of sexual identity. When this was written having bisexual characters was very controversial, cutting edge stuff. Now it's badly dated, and the Kinesian hypothesis that everyone is bisexual to some extent or another has largely been disproven by subsequent research. Still it's an interesting question. If someone you loved suddenly became a person of the opposite sex, how would that change your feelings about them?

It's not essential Heinlein or essential Science Fiction. It is a good thought piece. Read Heinlein's other books first, then let this one challenge your preconceptions.

Rating:
Summary: Man becomes woman - as seen in "Penthouse Letters"
Review: There is a well-circulated FAQ on the internet with information on Heinlein. In it, there is a suggestion that Heinlein fans generally consider this book to be one of his weakest. I must concur with that statement. There is very little here of interest, and almost none of the usual provocative Heinlein theorising. (To be fair, in the pre-AIDS 1970's when this book was written, it may have been better received, but today it seems dated and ludicrous).

The basic idea - that of a man's brain being transplanted into a woman's body - is good, if not original (Star Trek did this a few years earlier, for example). The man: an ancient, crusty CEO worth billions. The woman: his beautiful nymphomaniacal secretary, who the boss was infatuated with. After a mugging leaves the secretary brain-dead, the boss's brain is transplanted into her body. With a new set of hormones and new sexual equipment, the boss sets out to discover what life is like as a woman. The wrinkle: the "spirit" of the woman is still in the body, guiding the boss on his new journey.

There are some good parts: there is the court challenge to the wo/man's identity: is she the boss? the secretary? both? There are some practical and philosphical points brought up, and this is what Heinlein readers want. However, the vast majority of the book is spent on the wo/man's sexual conquests. Unfortunately, everyone in the book behaves as if they are straight out of the Playboy mansion. Worse, Heinlein writes the wo/man's character as a male fantasy of what a woman is: completely unrealistic! Two examples will have to suffice to illustrate the silliness. (1) The wo/man gives a (full-mouth) kiss to everyone that treats her well - her lawyer, her doctors, her (female) nurse, a judge, her bodyguards, etc. Most of these people she also has sex with. Hasn't anyone heard of professional misconduct? (2) In rooms where men are sitting around in comfort, wearing business suits, she will complain about how hot she is and take off her clothes. In my experience, women are likely to be colder than men at a given temperature.

Granted, this is a fantasy tale, and such details would not bother me in a fantasy world. However, Heinlein is otherwise careful to make things realistic, so the realism/fantasy conflict is distracting to the point of annoyance. All women in the book, including the main character, are Playboy carricatures. Likewise, the men are all controlled solely by their libidoes, with most people (including a 70-year old laywer) having sex several times a day! Again: silly characters/dialogue are forgivable if there is good action (see Michael Crichton), but that isn't the case here - nothing happens!

Take my advice - give this one a miss, especially if you haven't read much Heinlein. Check out Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, or even Citizen of the Galaxy (a "young adult" book) for better written, more thought provoking Heinlein. For those (like me) that have to read it all - don't say that I didn't warn you!

Rating:
Summary: A Weaker Yet Still Enjoyable Heinlein Story
Review: Robert Heinlein said that he cut nearly 100,000 words from I Will Fear No Evil, but the book itself still drags on at points unlike many of his masterful works. Still, the book presents an idea deserving of the term "novel" and is an enjoyable read on the whole and a must for true Heinlein fans.

The basic premise: a wealthy, crotchety old man contracts to have a highly experimental and illegal brain transplant performed to preserve his life; unfortunately, the first suitable donor is his much-adored, beautiful, and spunky secretary who is herself killed in a mugging. Typically good Heinleinian legal shennanegans follow as the sucessful transplantee must prove his identity, and then the meat of the novel (after many thousands of words of set-up) begins as he must adapt to being a "she."

Much of the novel from that point is an enjoyable speculative exploration of the idea of having ones consciousness transplanted to another, altogether different body, including passages where the female's "ghost" shares the young body's mind and the reborn old man finds himself attracted to, having a child with, and eventually sharing a body with his old business partner. The latter portions are somewhat below Heinlein's normal standards of tight, well-defined prose--but then again, during the writing of I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein did suffer a long relapse of tuberculosis that frequently interrupted his writing efforts.

Heinlein novices would be advised to read Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and The Past Through Tomorrow (his "future history" anthology) first, but those already familiar with the grand master of sci-fi will likely find this still a fun read--and a requirement for the complete Heinlein library.

Rating:
Summary: Unusual Heinlein work, not his best, not his worst
Review: Johann Smith, kept alive past his years, chooses to undergo a brain transplant. He doesn't consider the possiblity that the first available body might be a woman, and, in fact, turns out to be his secretary, who was killed, unknown to Smith.

Smith soon hears the voice of Eunice, the secretary in his head (her head, actually). Eunice guides Johann in what it is to be a woman.

OK, the sex is overdone, and frankly, the book could have used a good editor.

This is not one of the Heinlein late novels where everyone will live along happily forever with Lazarus Long and his crew (and I mean forever). Remember, this book's title is borrowed from Psalm 23 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." That shadow is never far away in this book, but within it, Johann learns to live, not just exist, as he did before.

Rating:
Summary: Heinlein's Worst?
Review: I really admire Heinlein's ideas. Many of them are still ahead of their time. Sexual mores are still a hot issue. People judge, they don't accept what is "different," and refuse to acknowledge that sex, for sex's sake is not necessarily wrong. Its unfortunate that these ideas are so much better expressed in Stranger in a Strange Land and especially Time Enough For Love.

I always wondered where people's accusations of Heinlein's sexism came from. Time Enough For Love certainly had its fair share of promiscuous (by today's standards) women--but they also loved and were human. Sex wasn't always the goal. But in I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein basically states that sex is what women are made for and nothing else. Every single women in this book only thought about sex--the men were at least sometimes rational. Let's also not forget Joan's wedding, where she demands to fulfill the traditional, sexist oath of obeying her husband. She insists over the objections of those who have presumably evolved along with the future to realize the awful truth about such an oath. Its too bad Heinlein didn't evolve as well.

Heinlein's attempts at accepting homosexuality fall flat as well. His 70s prejudices show through, something that does not happen in Time Enough For Love. Homosexual acts are not the norm. Those who partake in it are walking "Gay Street." Heinlein tries to equalize sexual acts. He declares that there are no sexes, just sex. Unfortunately the book is rampantly sexist and heterosexist.

There are some good things here. The premise is fascinating. The future depiction of America through some entertaining newsbriefs, is interesting, if hard to fathom sometimes (a working court system in what is once described as defacto anarchy?) The overpopulation issues are and will continue to be relevant for a long time. The dialouge style between Joan and Eunice is once again confusing, but original. The best thing I can say about this book is that the ideas are all there, but they aren't expressed well in the least. Read Time Enough For Love instead.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Idea Destroyed by Constant Sex Theme
Review: To begin with, this novel started out as a highly intriguing idea. A man is going to die, and wants to try a radical idea of a brain transplant. Fortunately for the main character, he has his brain transplanted into his FEMALE secretary following the gnag related murder of the secretary. Up until this point, it was a rather interesting read about how money CAN buy you anything you want. But then we go downhill fast.........

Once the main character Johann regains his consciousness, he realizes that he is in a female body. However, he is not alone. It seems that the "spirit" of the secretary is still housed in this body. This is where it gets interesting...........

Heinlein does his best to blur the lines of heterosexuality and homosexuality in this novel. The "man" in a woman's body literally goes around kissing both memebers of the sex and sleeps with both members of the sex. Twisted around the constant sex drive of the individual is the debate about identity. In this novel, it is found that the brain is the identity of the human, not what the individual looks like.

The novel was not interesting because it was centered around sex...............the whole time. Therefore, I feel is fails to qualify as a real good science-fiction novel Yes, it is in the future, and yes it had an interesting pretense. But the basis of the story deals with individual ideas based around who the main character is sleeping with next. I won't even bring up the issues that are raised with pregnancy covered in this book. The best bet is to avoid this novel and pick up some of the other novels that Heinlein has written, because this book does not do justice to the author's ability as a creative writer.

Rating:
Summary: A mess
Review: Anything by Robert A. Heinlein is likely to be dubbed a classic of science fiction -ex officio-. This, unfortunately, is one of his worst. Part of it is the rambling incoherence of the plot --serious health problems caused Heinlein to turn in essentially a first draft. But mostly the fictional culture he describes, a straight-line extrapolation of the late 1960's, has aged phenomenally badly. Even real hippie slang seems quaint and poser-ish today. His game attempts to show hippie slang and culture as the mainstream 30 fictional years later are actually painful to read.

Worst of all are Heinlein's portrayals of his female lead and other women characters. Apparently we all love spankings, feel uncomfortable without lipstick, and are cheerful about spike heels and pasties as office wear in cities with 300% or so of the modern crime rate. Heinlein's long and happy marriage is well known, and he does write credible women characters in other books like "Glory Road." But this book makes one wonder if he'd ever met a woman let alone talked to one.