![]() I'm biased, I know I like good writing, and I have a great deal of respect for it. I don't think you can be a good writer unless you do that. He has accepted membership in the human race. He has even bridged the difficult gap of realizing that people feel much the same way everywhere, allowing for constitutional differences. Now Heinlein does something that is vitally necessary to good writing: he perceives people. Unfortunately, too many science-fiction stories might have been written by robots or spirits. Sentimentality is no substitute it degrades man instead of treating him with the respect that, God knows, he deserves. And a good story must be about man-not man after a lobotomy, but about the irrational part of him as well as the rational. ![]() Literary and scientific techniques are very useful to a writer, but I don't think the study of them is necessary. And there is only one kind of experience that counts as necessary to a competent writer: experience of mankind. ![]() If I were backed into a corner and forced to tell why in one sentence, I'd say, "Heinlein's got a sense of proportion." Well, how does one get a sense of proportion? By experience, I think. Heinlein is probably the best story-teller in the science-fiction field today. This book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without written permission, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. ![]() ![]() Copyright, 1939, 1940, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.Īll rights reserved. ![]()
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