Reading biographies always makes me nostalgic, and I am going to be out of town for the first couple of days of this discussion, so I thought I’d just get the nostalgia out of my system in one fell ignorable swoop, rather than attempting to be profound while wondering where the insect repellent is and why I still don’t have my own suitcase.

I first read Heinlein when I was very young. I don’t remember my first Heinlein novel as I remember my first Norton, but since the reverberations of “Wow, I sure was a naïve kid” seem strongest when I reread Red Planet, it may have been that one. I remember wishing there was more about Jim’s sister Phyllis in that book. She seemed just as interesting as Jim. I liked Meade in The Rolling Stones too, but I didn’t want to be her because she seemed to be saddled with an inordinate amount of babysitting and cooking. I adored Hazel Meade Stone, but I didn’t think I could be like her, because she was an engineer, though she’d quit being one because she had hit the glass ceiling and got fed up.

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