XPost: alt.fan.heinlein   
   From: g@crcomp.net   
      
   Paul S Person wrote:   
   > Ted Nolan wrote:   
   >> Christian Weisgerber wrote:   
   >>> Paul S Person wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>>>I would advise skipping this book.  The subjects are horrible and not   
   >>>>>for the faint at heart or the squeamish.  All of the States in the USA   
   >>>>>except Hawaii have worm infestations with worm huts all over the place.   
   >>>>>Various cults of worm worshipers have sprung up of people actually   
   >>>>>living with the worms and feeding their ... to the worms.  There is also   
   >>>>>aberrant sex in the book.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Sounds like Gerrold all right. Book 4 didn't, by any chance, come out   
   >>>> after he decided to emulate the later Heinlein, did it?   
   >>>   
   >>>I've mostly forgotten the details, but I think the books started   
   >>>to veer off a simple "heroic humans fight evil bugs" template and   
   >>>the protagonist went through a major self-finding phase.   
   >>>   
   >>>The sex can't have been all that interesting or I would remember   
   >>>it. ;-)  Some body swapping with the telepathy thing, ending up in   
   >>>a body of the opposite sex, IIRC?   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >>It would be hard to outdo _The Man Who Folded Himself_.   
   >   
   > I found that one ... idiotic. I didn't so much get the feeling that   
   > the main character gradually understood his position as that Gerrold   
   > only figured it out at the end and then decided to pretend that he had   
   > known it all along. Note that this is just my impression; Gerrold   
   > could indeed have had it figured out from the beginning.   
   >   
   > From the sex standpoint, both /Jacob/ and /Moonstar Odyssey/   
   > (available as /Moonstar: Jobe, Book One/; there is no Book Two; this   
   > is the first book of a one-book series) rival anything Heinlein did.   
   > Since it wasn't intrinsically interesting, I soon got bored, driving   
   > on only on the chance that something worth reading would eventually   
   > happen. And, in a way, it did. Less so in /Jacob/.   
   >   
   >>That said, there was a very Heinleinesque feel to the last book I thought,   
   >>though I can recall very little of it now.   
   >>   
   >>While I would certainly buy a new Chtorr book, I would much rather have   
   >>a new Steerswoman, an eventuality which seems equally unlikely.   
      
   Idiocy is in the eye of the beholder.   
      
   The 1950-1960s nostalgia implicit in THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF brings   
   to mind REPLAY's fond memories of the 1960-1970s. My mind is nostalgia   
   neutral so neither hooks me with "memories, sweetened through the ages   
   just like wine."   
      
   Are ALL YOU ZOMBIES and THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF the sole SF self-sex   
   stories tangled in time travel?   
      
   Precedence does not imply provenance.   
      
   Self-sex science fiction was first formulated by RAH. He predictably   
   kept his narrative basic and bare bones by using only four time loop   
   characters: Jane, the baby, the unmarried mother, and the bartender.   
       Gerrold embellishes by expanding his ensemble of time loop   
   characters. Calculating the character count could prove difficult in   
   the case of THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF.   
      
   --   
   Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.                     veritas    _|_   
   telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.               liberabit   |   
   tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'              vos         |   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)