> > However, after they get the Evil and Corrupt One
> >World Government off their backs and Mike and
> >Jill go out on their own, the book falls apart
> >and just becomes Heinlen's great rambling
> >commentary on Life, the Universe and Everything
> >Else.
>
>
> From what I've read of Heinlein, and what I've heard directly from Heinlein fans, this is basically all they want out of a Heinlein book. It seems to me that his fans want to hear his one or two cool ideas, then listen to him tell them exactly how the world *should* be, and would be if he were in charge, dang it.

Ah. That's sort of unsettling then. Remind me to not read any more Heinlein (not that I really intended to).

>
> This particular book hit it so big because it came out in the sixties and espoused the typical hippie values of free love and all that.

Heh heh heh. Yeah, I was wondering if the time period had anything to do with that. Of course, I don't quite get why it was reccomended to me by people that weren't around in the 60s, but oh well.

> Of course, the conceit is that Mike uses $ex as a bonding among friends, and since he and everyone he surrounds himself with is incapable of jealousy, it all works out great. Of course, in the real world, if anybody tried to run a "church" like Mike had (and many have tried) it'd fall down around their ears as soon as jealousy and other natural human emotions reared their ugly head. But try telling that to a hippie.

This bothered me to no end. I didn't buy into Mike's church, doubted it would work and was wondering when it would fail. The fact that it didn't really suprised me. I also completely disliked how everyone was able to get over all inhibitions with no trouble; the only person that did was Ben and a good lecture from Henry "I'm obviously what Heinlein's imagines himself as" Jubal set him straight. And of course once said inhibitions were lost, everything was just peachy.

One more little thing I don't get -- what was up with the whole cannibialism thing? If Martians are practically omnipotent, they certainly wouldn't *need* to eat their dead friends would they? Which leads me to think that it was just a spiritual thing (eat your buddy to grok him) which doesn't make sense since the body wasn't really you, and once you've left the shell there's really no point...