By Robert A. Heinlein

I didn’t buy this for it’s book cover. It’s ratty and has a mushroom cloud shaped tear up the front. I bought it partly because of I discovered what my parent’s generation probably already knew; that there were 3 amigos of 50s, 60s, and 70s science fiction godfatherism; and 3rd one was called Robert Heinlein. (The Iron Maiden song of the same name also influenced my decision.)

The cover is reddish, shows the ravages of time, and contains two people, and something that looks like a cervix, but perhaps it is one of the martians, that are described but never seen in the novel. Scratchings and frazzled paper, the imprints of countless thumbs upon the backside of the book, the front cover; bent in countless chunks. It has been a saucy book, yes.

Martian raised boy, more philosophy than tech, superpowers, and lots of french kissing: These are the things I found inside. As I read I couldn’t help place the characters in a 60s style futurist, mod society of free love, peace cultists. I grokked.

Heinlein’s book, Starship Troopers, is the origin for the loosely based 90s film of the same name, and it is next on my list of Heinlein books to read (possibly after AC Doyle’s A Lost World, I Asimov’s A Pebble in the Sky, and AC Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Will I ever get to any of these? Maybe.