On Mar 21, 9:34 pm, Ron Wanttaja wrote:

My personal opinion is that Clarke fall excelled in the extrapolation of
technology and predicting what the scientific/human impacts would be. However,
the *people* in his novels always seemed pretty stiff. Heinlein was better with
characterization; inventing interesting people to interact with the technology.

That's an interesting observation because my feeling about Heinein was
that he had about four characters altogether. He'd insert them in
every story in the ways that they needed to be used to keep the tale
moving. That's what made them so much fun to read when I was 12 or
so, I suppose.

The earliest Clarke novel I remember reading is "A Fall of Moondust," as a
Reader's Digest Condensed book back in the '50s or '60s. Though I read it many
times and remember the plot real well, I remember little about the characters.
But I can see a Heinlein title and say, "That's the one with the guy who...."

My first was the probably "Island in the Sky," but I read "A Fall of
Moondust" and would love to have that RDCB version because of the
illustrations. It would make a good movie.

And I remember clearly NONE of the "Moondust" characters, but the
characters in "Island" I will never forget. I felt like I knew the
crew of "Rocket Ship Galileo," but all I remember of other Heinlein
characters is the Martian flatcat.

Neither of them wrote about aviation, did they? Sci-fi was always
space.


Mike