Like many boys of my generation, I was introduced to science fiction by a small number of authors, most prominently Robert A. Heinlein. Farah Mendlesohn, a scholar of speculative fiction, has reviewed Heinlein's works including those left unpublished at his death, and written a critical assessment in (mostly) plain language. Some of her conclusions may surprise you: she decides Heinlein is a feminist (outstanding in relation to most men of his generation) and (again in the context of his generation and formative years) a certain type of progressive all his life. This was a fascinating read and has helped me see Heinlein through a different lens. I'm still not going to reread "Farnham's Freehold" or one or two others of his books but she even explains his, to me, embarrassing female-male dialogues. An excellent book, which argues that the Sad Puppies are wrong about Heinlein. ( )

A fascinating exploration of the themes in the works of Robert Heinlein, the way that they repeat, and the way that they change over time. Mendlesohn does a fabulous job of articulating the reasons that Heinlein is problematic, as well as highlighting the reasons that I loved many of Heinlein's work (except Job, which I remember as baffling and unreadable). ( )

Reading this proved interesting after reading Gwyneth Jones’s Joanna Russ a couple of months ago. Chiefly because I have read many of the books written by both subjects. However, where Jones’s Joanna Russ persuaded me to reread Russ’s oeuvre, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein does not do the same for Heinlein. But for a different reason. When I read Joanna Russ, I felt as though I’d missed important points in in Russ’s fiction. When I read The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Mendlesohn’s criticism opened up his books for me in interesting ways but didn’t substantially change what I remembered of them from my own readings. Admittedly, I read the books several decades ago, but Mendlesohn’s argument didn’t strike me as sufficient grounds to track down copies of the books and reread them (I binned most of my Heinlein paperbacks years ago). Don’t get me wrong, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein is a fascinating read in its own right, and an informative study of Heinlein’s fiction. It is a worthy winner of the BSFA Award (even though one of the other nominees contains a critical essay on my Apollo Quartet…). I’m not entirely convinced by some elements of Mendlesohn’s analysis – for example, Mendlesohn fails to point out that Wyoming pretty much vanishes from the narrative of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress once she’s married (she becomes a hairdresser); I also thought the novel’s code-switching was cack-handed at best. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress I read a few years ago for the first time, so it’s relatively fresh for me. Other books, as mentioned above, I read back in the 1970s and 1980s, and I think the only one I’ve subsequently reread was Stranger in a Strange Land ten years ago. And now I’m starting to persuade myself perhaps I should try rereading them… Perhaps that’s the difference between The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein and Joanna Russ. The latter inspired me to read and reread Russ more urgently than the former did for Heinlein. Nevertheless, both critical works are definitely worth reading. ( )

This is a book-length academic study of the works of Robert Heinlein. And at over 400 pages of content, it's quite a long book! I haven't actually read a ton of Heinlein (Double Star, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Friday are it), but I still enjoyed this. Mendlesohn situates Heinlein in his historical and literary context, especially when it comes to issues of race, gender, and sexuality, showing both where he was ahead of the curve and where he couldn't see beyond his own limitations. Her argument is there are some things he gets flack for, which is undeserved if you read it in the context of his time and his body of work, but there are other things for which he deserves castigation, especially Farnham's Freehold.

These parts of the book are worthy but honestly a little too thorough, though I understand why. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the chapters about Heinlein's technique and rhetoric, and about the themes of civic engagement, revolution, and personal responsibility in his work. By reading all of it, from the early shorts to the juveniles to the late-period novels, Mendlesohn is able to show how Heinlein saw society and the self and the relationship between them. It deepened my appreciation of the Heinlein I have read, and made me want to read more of it. (Upon finishing it, I promptly ordered a copy of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, though who knows when I will actually get around to reading it.)

As in her book Rhetorics of Fantasy, Mendlesohn is attentive to detail when she needs to be, but her real strength as a critic is identifying trends and explicating why they matter. She's also a lively and engaging writer. This is a model of good criticism in general, and good sf criticism in particular.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3366809.html

I was a huge fan of Heinlein's writing in my teenage years, but the last awful novels came out just around that time and somewhat tainted the memory of the pleasure I'd had a few years earlier. I have gone back to his work a couple of times in recent years, but bounced off it as often as not.

But here Farah Mendlesohn approaches Heinlein with a redemptive eye. It is an interesting comparison with Roberts' Wells book - it is shorter, because Heinlein didn't write as much despite living a bit longer; it is more consciously fannish; but it's a much deeper analysis of what Heinlein thought he was doing with his writing, grouped more thematically than by time line. Heinlein's politics, for good or ill, had much more influence on later science fiction than Wells'. Possibly Heinlein actually had more to say than Wells, even if Wells said more of it.

I learned a lot from this, including in particular what Heinlein thought he was doing with Farnham's Freehold and how it went so badly wrong. ( )