Review of "Methuselah's Children" on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Oh Heinlein... how complicated my life with you has been.
I wasn't even sure how to rate this one, much like the trouble I have rating any Heinlein book that I have read in the past decade. His stuff just... hasn't aged well. Would I recommend this to anyone? The way I see it, if you haven't read this you fall into one of two camps: 1) You are either Heinlein fan or a fan of this period of science fiction and it's on your list to read, OR 2) You wouldn't be interested in this.
This is not a good book. Even by Heinlein standards this isn't a great book. It's short and I sloughed through it at an extremely rapid pace so I guess that's a merit? There is enough pseudo-psychology/sociology in this thing to drown a grad student. Heinlein loves his pseudo-sociology and he definitely had some …
Oh Heinlein... how complicated my life with you has been.
I wasn't even sure how to rate this one, much like the trouble I have rating any Heinlein book that I have read in the past decade. His stuff just... hasn't aged well. Would I recommend this to anyone? The way I see it, if you haven't read this you fall into one of two camps: 1) You are either Heinlein fan or a fan of this period of science fiction and it's on your list to read, OR 2) You wouldn't be interested in this.
This is not a good book. Even by Heinlein standards this isn't a great book. It's short and I sloughed through it at an extremely rapid pace so I guess that's a merit? There is enough pseudo-psychology/sociology in this thing to drown a grad student. Heinlein loves his pseudo-sociology and he definitely had some ideas about the subject... they just weren't very good ideas and by today's advances they seem head-shakingly misguided.
Then there's the "science" used. I love the pulp and post pulp era of paperback sci-fi so I can ignore bad science as well as anyone out there, but man this one gave me some chuckles. It reminded me of one of my favorite youtube snark move reviewers Brandon Tenold (seriously, if you like mystery science theater check this guy out, he's a step above that in my opinion). I kept thinking throughout this book that Heinlein just threw mumbo-jumbo at the wall. I kept hearing "check the phase-capacitor to see if the neutrinos have been flipped and if so then cross the damn streams" in my head. So much of the this book talks about space travel and physics as if they author really knows what he's talking about but it is all just pseudo-mumble-core claptrap.
So, why read it? Well, once upon a time, I loved Heinlein. Twenty years ago I'd put the book Friday up in my top 5 favorite books of all time. What can I say? I was younger and thought I was supposed to worship the man. Now, I understand the impact he had, and some of his stories are even fun for what they are, but I also now see all of the craziness hiding under the surface too. I read this because I am working through all of my paperbacks and this was at the start of a stack for whatever reason and I thought it would be fun.
It was... for the combined two hours or so it took to read it, and then it was just... a meh aftertaste. I am sure I have it because it's an old beat-up copy that looks like it had a story to tell and I wanted to preserve it and save it from the trash. Do I regret reading it? Not at all, it took two hours to read and I have definitely spent two hours watching worse movies. Would I recommend it? Not in the slightest. If you want to read Heinlein focus on some of his non-Future History stuff.