Robert A. Heinlein began publishing in the 1940s at the dawn of the Golden Age of science fiction, and today he is considered one of the genre’s ‘big three’ alongside Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. His short stories were instrumental in developing its structure and rhetoric, while novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers demonstrated that such writing could be a vehicle for political argument.
Heinlein’s influence remains strong, but his legacy is fiercely contested. His vision of the future was sometimes radical, sometimes deeply conservative, and arguments have flared up recently about which faction has the most significant claim on his ideas.
In this major critical study, Hugo Award-winner Farah Mendlesohn carries out a close reading of Heinlein’s work, including unpublished stories, essays, and speeches. It sets out not to interpret a single book, but to think through the arguments Heinlein made over a lifetime about the nature of science fiction, about American politics, and about himself.
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Farah Mendlesohn is a historian and critic. She has chaired the Science Fiction Foundation; served as the President of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts, and been involved in both national and international convention running.
She is the author of several books about science fiction and fantasy literature and is best known for her book Rhetorics of Fantasy. She won the Hugo Award for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (edited with Edward James). Her most recent book, Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction (with Michael M Levy) won the World Fantasy Award in 2017 and the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies in 2018.
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