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Based on both recommendations and easy availability, I have obtained Space Cadet, Time for the Stars, Have Space Suit - Will Travel, The Door Into Summer, Podkayne of Mars, and Tunnel in the Sky.
I read Tunnel in the Sky, which I generally enjoyed and will report on individually, and three pages of Podkayne of Mars, which was all I could get through before I was overcome with the urge to vomit and/or hurl the book across the room. Those pages consist of 15-year-old Podkayne talking about being a giiiiiirl and going on about how pretty she is and giving her exact measurements and how she's smart enough to not reveal that she's smart because why would any giiiiiirl want to do things herself when she can bat her eyelashes at a man twice her age and have him do things for her? ICK ICK EW. Also, written in a rather twee style. I hate twee.
If it was about her learning better I'd keep reading, but I recall from the last time I read it that she gets blown up because she goes back to a house where she knows there's a bomb to rescue a cute alien kitten, and then her uncle lectures her mom over her comatose body about how it's all her mom's fault for having a career. (Flips to end.) "A woman has more important work to do." Barf. Nix on Podkayne.
Podkayne of Mars
Though I may change my mind after I've read more, my preliminary reading of one book and three pages of another suggests a theory on why people get so outraged over sexism in Heinlein's work, as opposed to getting outraged over sexism in the work of other male sf writers of the same time - especially when, as Heinlein's defenders argue, Heinlein actually has more interesting/badass/competent women than the others.
It's due to bait-and-switch. Because his women are more badass/competent/etc, the female or sympathetic male reader thinks, "Hey! Badass female soldier! Awesome!" Then, two pages later, the badass female soldier says, "Oh, I have no interest in the military at all! I'm only doing this because men outnumber women in outer space, so out there I can get a man and have lots of babies! I don't care of he's a total jerk and hideous, all that matters is that he's male. Oh to be pregnant!"
At that point, the reader is much more likely to be surprised and irate, their expectations having been unpleasantly thwarted, than if, as many other writers of the time did, no non-stereotypically feminine characters had been introduced at all.
As Jo Walton and others mentioned over at the Tor discussion, Heinlein has a trick of sounding extremely authoritative, in a manner which either seduces you into wanting to measure up to his rather eccentric requirements for true manliness/womanliness/awesomess, or else makes you instantly begin deconstructing them in your head. Or both at once. Again, this is unlike other authors of his time whom I've read, who were less concerned with what makes a Proper Man or whose opinions were not presented in such a compelling and forceful manner.
For instance, though I had to look this up as it's not in one of the ones I read, "Specialization is for insects." I'm sure not everyone has this reaction, but I bet I'm not the only person who reads that and instantly, defensively thinks, "I can do lots of stuff!" and then, "Tell that to a cardiac surgeon."
ETA: Complete quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
This is being discussed in the DW comments.
Link to edition I'm reading, with strangely-proportioned hero: Tunnel in the Sky
I read Tunnel in the Sky, which I generally enjoyed and will report on individually, and three pages of Podkayne of Mars, which was all I could get through before I was overcome with the urge to vomit and/or hurl the book across the room. Those pages consist of 15-year-old Podkayne talking about being a giiiiiirl and going on about how pretty she is and giving her exact measurements and how she's smart enough to not reveal that she's smart because why would any giiiiiirl want to do things herself when she can bat her eyelashes at a man twice her age and have him do things for her? ICK ICK EW. Also, written in a rather twee style. I hate twee.
If it was about her learning better I'd keep reading, but I recall from the last time I read it that she gets blown up because she goes back to a house where she knows there's a bomb to rescue a cute alien kitten, and then her uncle lectures her mom over her comatose body about how it's all her mom's fault for having a career. (Flips to end.) "A woman has more important work to do." Barf. Nix on Podkayne.
Podkayne of Mars
Though I may change my mind after I've read more, my preliminary reading of one book and three pages of another suggests a theory on why people get so outraged over sexism in Heinlein's work, as opposed to getting outraged over sexism in the work of other male sf writers of the same time - especially when, as Heinlein's defenders argue, Heinlein actually has more interesting/badass/competent women than the others.
It's due to bait-and-switch. Because his women are more badass/competent/etc, the female or sympathetic male reader thinks, "Hey! Badass female soldier! Awesome!" Then, two pages later, the badass female soldier says, "Oh, I have no interest in the military at all! I'm only doing this because men outnumber women in outer space, so out there I can get a man and have lots of babies! I don't care of he's a total jerk and hideous, all that matters is that he's male. Oh to be pregnant!"
At that point, the reader is much more likely to be surprised and irate, their expectations having been unpleasantly thwarted, than if, as many other writers of the time did, no non-stereotypically feminine characters had been introduced at all.
As Jo Walton and others mentioned over at the Tor discussion, Heinlein has a trick of sounding extremely authoritative, in a manner which either seduces you into wanting to measure up to his rather eccentric requirements for true manliness/womanliness/awesomess, or else makes you instantly begin deconstructing them in your head. Or both at once. Again, this is unlike other authors of his time whom I've read, who were less concerned with what makes a Proper Man or whose opinions were not presented in such a compelling and forceful manner.
For instance, though I had to look this up as it's not in one of the ones I read, "Specialization is for insects." I'm sure not everyone has this reaction, but I bet I'm not the only person who reads that and instantly, defensively thinks, "I can do lots of stuff!" and then, "Tell that to a cardiac surgeon."
ETA: Complete quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
This is being discussed in the DW comments.
Link to edition I'm reading, with strangely-proportioned hero: Tunnel in the Sky
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And happily I never got around to reading Podkayne.
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By the way, you read the unpublished ending of Podkayne. He wrote that and turned it in and the editor nixed it. The version I grew up reading had her severely burned and in a pod, but expected to survive. I much prefer the bowdlerized version.
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Huh. I read Podkayne, in high school even, and I don't remember anything about it except that a teacher saw me reading it and said sneeringly, "You certainly have catholic reading tastes"
You would think that I would look back on it with horror, rather than it just being a big old blank in my mind. But then again, I guess there were an awful lot of books I had to just blank out ... and perhaps the teacher's sneeriness made me give it a bit of a pass.
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As Edith Crowe says in her great feminist essay on Tolkien, when she (and I) read it in 1965, it's not as if there were lots of feminist books out there.
Heck, even getting Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search" when it was first published as short story (sometime in 1960s) was great then, given the lack of female protagonists.
That was then, this is now. There has been change, especially in number of women (and a few men) writing more complexly about gender (male and female characters).
I mean, I should not feel guilty that I do not know how to use a slide rule and skin a mule, damnit, RAH!
Not to mention the whole (me) not wanting to have babies thing.....
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Ha. I wonder whether he spun his own thread for clothing? Or scrubbed his own floors, for that matter. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress includes an interplanetary equivalent of sending your laundry from Hawaii to the mainland (because that's cheaper than trying to do it locally), so I wonder who he thinks DID the laundry once it arrived in California??
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(My blood runs cold/My memories have just been sold)
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* Deliver a baby.
I'd just as soon a pro dealt with the placental abruption, thanks.
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What do you want to bet that most of the traditional feminine arts are not on the list? Baby-delivery presumably makes it only because it involves being Heroic and Saving a Lady.
(Actually, the checklist sounds very much like that GQ / men's magazine "Things every man should be able to do," like surf on a longboard and tie a bow-tie and carve a roast. As if every man were James Bond, and as if James Bond never had to wash out his socks in the sink sometimes.)
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I see one traditionally female, two maybe that (comfort the dying and cook a meal), and nine traditionally male.
I am trying to decide which is more ridiculous for the average person in modern urban America, "plan an invasion" or "butcher a hog."
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(Not to mention culturally bound - and again, not "an American living on a farm in a rural area," but a human being. How about "A human being should be able to write a ghazal, make a vid, spear a lion, and draw a doujinshi?" That would make just as much sense.
I'll give him "cooperate, act alone," but then it would be so general as to be banal, self-evident, and forgettable, unlike the rather memorable list it is.
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"Butcher a hog" seems particularly -- why hog? My automatic thought is that anybody who doesn't touch pork would seem to be taken as a lesser human being, which, I've never seen Heinlein accused of anti-Semitism so bold. Hogs are not even animals that most humans can lift: they routinely top 200 lbs. (They're also vicious when feral! Really, it's like he is cleverly trying to kill off the weaker and dumber of his followers, or something.) If he'd said, say, "Debone a chicken" or even "dissect a frog" it would make a jillion times more sense.