Pasithea

Oh, God no, not Heinlein! I recently read both the Cat Who Walks through Walls and the unabridged version of Stranger in a Strange Land. I'd read the standard abridged Stranger decades ago, and reading it again a few months ago I found it no where near as good as I'd remembered it. As with the fugu in the Simpsons, it was a chore picking the Tasty Fish out from the Poison. The horror! Women depicted as children with skills over and over again. The possibility that women could have skills beyond raising kids might have been revolutionary when this was conceived (40's) and written (1960) but now the sexist foundation just pulls the whole thing under. Now I know of at least one dogmatic glacial melt denier on LJ who promotes Heinlein and Heinlein's version of gun culture as strokes of genius so there are people out there who must consider Heinlein's assessment of women to be bang on. I suspect Heinlein's widow to be one such person.