The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Missouri in 1907, and was raised there. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, but was forced by illness to retire from the Navy in 1934. He settled in California and over the next five years held a variety of jobs while doing post-graduate work in mathematics and physics at the University of California. In 1939 he sold his first science fiction story to Astounding magazine and soon devoted himself to the genre.

He was a four-time winner of the Hugo Award for his novels Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Starship Troopers (1959), Double Star (1956), and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). His Future History series, incorporating both short stories and novels, was first mapped out in 1941. The series charts the social, political, and technological changes shaping human society from the present through several centuries into the future.

Robert A. Heinlein’s books were among the first works of science fiction to reach bestseller status in both hardcover and paperback. he continued to work into his eighties, and his work never ceased to amaze, to entertain, and to generate controversy. By the time he died, in 1988, it was evident that he was one of the formative talents of science fiction: a writer whose unique vision, unflagging energy, and persistence, over the course of five decades, made a great impact on the American mind.

Who could want anything more from a Heinlein novel than time-travel, intrigue, danger, hasty marriages, murder, playful sexual banter, and a kitten named Pixel who has the extraordinary ability to walk through walls? While he probably can't walk through walls, narrator Tom Weiner's extraordinary ability is to take the dozens of distinct characters in Heinlein's philosophical space adventure and give each a unique and instantly recognizable style. Weiner's performance is particularly strong with the two main characters, Colin Campbell (aka Richard Ames) and Hazel Stone (aka Gwen Novak). Weiner gives Colin/Richard's first-person narrative a charming, softly sarcastic growl and Hazel/Gwen's voice a lovely globe-and-time-trotting sophistication. Spoken by Weiner, their banter becomes clever enough to challenge even Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert to a literary duel. A.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine