By Galen Strickland

Novels:

1. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Tie:Friday......................} depends on which one
......Starship Troopers..} I'm reading at the time
4. Glory Road
5. Stranger in a Strange Land
6. The Door into Summer
7. Methuselah's Children
8. Time Enough for Love
9. Job : A Comedy of Justice
10. Double Star

From the back cover of
Time Enough for Love
No photo credit given

Numbers 1, 3, 5, and 10 all won Heinlein the coveted Hugo award which is voted on by readers at the annual World Science Fiction Covention. He was for a long time the only author to win for Best Novel four times (with her latest win Lois McMaster Bujold tied with him). Numbers 2, 4, 8, and 9 were nominated for a Hugo, but I'm not sure about The Door Into Summer. I was not able to find information for 1958 and previous except for the winners. Also, Methuselah's Children may not have been eligible in 1959, even though it was a revised version printed in book form for the first time. It had originally been serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941, before the Hugos even existed. It should be obvious I like a lot of RAH's later work as only four of these titles pre-date SiaSL. Rest assured I also have a great admiration for much of his earlier work, and many of those titles just narrowly missed making the list. Honorable Mention goes to Beyond This Horizon, The Puppet Masters, Citizen of the Galaxy, Tunnel in the Sky, and Orphans of the Sky.

Novellas and Short Stories:

1. The Man Who Traveled in Elephants (in The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein)
2. If This Goes On— (in Revolt in 2100 / Methuselah's Children)
3. Gulf (in Assignment in Eternity)
4. The Man Who Sold the Moon
5. —All You Zombies— (in The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein)
6. By His Bootstraps (in The Menace from Earth)
7. Coventry (in Revolt in 2100 / Methuselah's Children)
8. Logic of Empire (in The Green Hills of Earth)
9. They— (in The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein)
10. The Green Hills of Earth

Honorable Mentions: Requiem (in The Man Who Sold the Moon), -We Also Walk Dogs, It's Great to Be Back!, and The Long Watch (all in The Green Hills of Earth), and —And He Built a Crooked House (in The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein)

Of course this list is highly subjective; at another time I might possibly list them in another order.

Special Note:
At the current time, the following titles are available from the Science Fiction Book Club: Stranger in a Strange Land, Glory Road, and Off the Main Sequence (essentially a combination of the collections Assignment in Eternity & The Menace from Earth), along with three different omnibus volumes of the juvenile novels - Four Frontiers (Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet & Farmer in the Sky), To the Stars (Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones & The Star Beast) and Infinite Possibilities (Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars & Citizen of the Galaxy). A fourth omnibus - Outward Bound (Have Space Suit - Will Travel, Starship Troopers & Podkayne of Mars) is due soon (Summer 2006).

Related Links:
The Heinlein Society Website
The Robert A. Heinlein Homepage - maintained by James Gifford
Wegrokit.com - an inactive site that still has a lot of info.

Would you like to contribute an article on your favorite SF author or book? Just email me at ecgordon@templetongate.net.

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