I'd never taken it as RAH saying "This is the One True Way" because I think his real point was that mom+dad+2.5 kids isn't the One True Way, that it's an adaptation to outside forces. And that in a different environment, a different structure might result, and people might manage to be happy that way, too.

That's the way I read it, too. What if...?

Yeah, I think it's kind of both - the patriarch/love god figure (Jubal Harshaw, etc.) is definitely a Heinlein Sue, but I do respect the fact that he was thinking outside the box in terms of what defines a family - which is liberating even if you're not a Mormon don't want to be one of his brilliant fuckbunnies.

There are two quotes that have stuck with me since I first read TMiaHM as a teenager:

I think the timing is key for liking Heinlein/finding him profound. I read The Green Hills of Earth as a young'un, but didn't get around to the novels until university. SF fandom had large groups of Heinlein advocates and Libertarianism was large with fandom as a result. It was too late for me. I couldn't see the RAH love, found the politics stifling and the inter-personal relationships creepy.

YRaHMV, especially if you first read him in the 60s or early 70s. I find reformed Heinlein fans defending his juveniles now, but not much else outside of Starship Troopers, Moon, and Stranger.

I think Glory Road is fun.

t glares around suspiciously

I think The Green Hills of Earth and The Long Watch may have affected my world view as a youngster, more than anything else I read at the time. It's changed, of course, since then, but those two short stories have stayed with me. I can't be rational about them, because when I try to read them now, I'm overcome with all the adolescent emotion they evoked on first reading.

Stranger, Friday, and Beast, however, are a completely different pair of galoshes.

I think the timing is key for liking Heinlein/finding him profound.

Yeah. It may have helped that I read more of his short stories than the novels; it's a little easier to take it as "here's a thought... and here's a different thought" if you aren't immersed in a particular world for hundreds of pages. And I was reading a lot of Asimov and Dick around then; compared to that RAH's women would have looked pretty good.

I really appreciated the ideas when I read Heinlein -- at 14 or so, I only had two or three ideas of what marriage could be.

I don't think I settled on loving the line marriage -- instead I tried to make up other marriages. And I was too young to be thinking of the author really believing what they wrote. I believed it was all always make believe.

However, I'm older now, and I've read Number Of The Beast, and I don't think I can properly like him again. He may or may not have believed his philosophies, but he believed that was worth both writing and reading, and ick.

I've read Number Of The Beast

Cover-to-cover????

If so, ((( ita )))

I've read NotB and Friday ...can't remember much about them though.

Cover-to-cover????

Twice. Just in case.

I'm not a brackety person, but I definitely accept them in this situation, even if I brought that pain all on myself.