Sep 23
Click for full imageEric Comments: The ironic thing about this one is that the cover depicts an actual portion of the story. Accurately. Really. It is a good book, regardless of how it’s clad.
Published 1986
Many thanks to Eric!
(Average: 3.00 out of 10)
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(9.25 out of 10)
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September 23rd, 2010 at 11:19 am
“One has to look excellent before putting on her space helmet. Who knows the men she’ll meet.”
I have to say that while I wouldn’t necessarily take this into public to read it’s not too bad. The women is drawn without ridiculous cleavage and the space suit actually looks usable. The cat even looks… like a cat.
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:24 am
The worst thing about this is the inexplicably massive scrawled signature, it’s like they were dissapointed the illustration wasn’t utterly wretched and tried to come up with a way to make it worse. Although, maybe Heinlein was entering a Diva phase and demanded his name be on every surface of the book at least twice.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I read this book, and in fact I owned this edition. I had no problem with reading it in public. Apart from the cat never being balanced on anyone’s spacesuit, this is a faithful depiction of the middle part of the book.
The problem is that it’s late Heinlein. So, following the scene shown on the cover, you may merrily rip out the last half. Write, “And then they took off their clothes and fornicated and espoused free-market capitalism and lived happily ever after” on a clean sheet of paper; read it over and over again for two hours, and you’ve saved yourself any amount of trouble.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Yeah, I recently read this one. The cover, such as it is, is much less absurd than much else.
The book itself, however, sucked so hard. I’m gonna go with Big teeth. When the entire genre changed without warning and everything came about everyone having sex with everyone else, it got stupid so fast my head hurt.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:47 pm
I, too, own that edition. The publisher reissued most of Heinlein’s works that year, all with the huge signature trade dress. This was actually the first Heinlein I bought, and the second I read (we read Stranger in a Strange Land in a Science Fiction lit class earlier in the year), so I was drowning in in-references to all the Heinlein books I hadn’t read.
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Everyone has pretty much nailed this – especially the criticism of Heinlien’s later works. As a young reader I lived in his books & the complete universe he created. New readers of Heinlien should definitively start with the earlier works and read on in chronological order – they are self referential occasionally.
Yes, the later books are NSFB – Not Safe For Brains – sex with parents, siblings, computers.
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I really don’t see that this cover is that bad, unless you complain about the author’s signature squeezing out everything else on it. But at least it looks classy.
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I wish that they looked a bit more like actual, y’know, people. But other than that, and the cat’s tail looking rat-like, it’s pretty good.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
That spacesuit is NOT realistic. But it is faithful to the tradition of SF book covers:
“All Female Space Suits Shall Reveal Cleavage And Legs First, And Provide Oxygen And Pressure Last.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:23 pm
As Heinlein covers go, this is positively classy.
September 23rd, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Re: A.R.Yngve’s comment…
I don’t know, though…
If you added gloves and a helmet, it would provide life support fairly well & seems realistic to me (certainly it seems & looks far more realistic than some others, that I’ve seen illustrated…).
As for the ending, why do I get the impression that he’s about to ambush The Doctor, given his ramblings/rants about Time Lords…?
(For maximum effect, if this event does happen, I suspect that it’s the 5th Doctor circa Season 19B, with Nyssa of Traken in tow, that will be the recipients of said ambush…).
September 27th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
>and lived happily ever after. . .
Spoiler
Not so much in this one. As I recall everyone on the cover (cat included) live neither happily nor ever after.
October 1st, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Is this one of the Heinleins where “Lazarus Long and his gang of time-travelling sex maniacs” show up?
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:36 am
@David Cowie: Yup. Also a crowd of other past Heinlein characters. Basically, if you want to maintain full enjoyment of many earlier and better Heinlein stories, avoid this one like the Mongolian Terror Trout Flu (tm Warren Ellis).
June 7th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
That was one of my favorite novels, and I thought the cover was one of the best sci-fi covers…
August 12th, 2011 at 12:25 am
You have to admit, Michael Whelan does gorgeous covers.
March 24th, 2014 at 3:05 pm
“The ironic thing about this one is that the cover depicts an actual portion of the story. Accurately.”
Accurately? Apparently you missed the part where the protagonist is BLACK.
January 11th, 2016 at 2:45 am
Kirk Douglas to star in the long-awaited prequel to Saturn 3.
January 12th, 2016 at 9:49 am
The cat who went around harrassing women
January 15th, 2017 at 6:53 am
Further spoiler:
They got better in his final book published a couple years later, in which every character he ever created shows up before and get even more incesty and the Heinlein-verse(s) end up in one big glob.
Thankfully, the cat only has sex with other cats.
January 16th, 2017 at 2:58 am
@ShotFromGuns (17), The original version of the cover was worse, he was barely tanned!
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?36837
August 28th, 2020 at 1:30 am
I have a cat who walks -into- walls. Is that the same thing?