Pun Salad

I own the 50¢ Signet paperback edition of this novel, pictured. I was pretty sure I'd already read all of Heinlein's novels, but as I tackled this one, I was unsure I had ever read this one. I sure didn't remember anything about it. The Wikipedia page is full of praise: good reviews from P. Schuyler Miller, Anthony Boucher, and J. Francis McComas; in 2018, it nabbed a "Retro-Hugo" award for Best Novel.

And (yet) I disliked it intensely. A book I'm currently reading claims it was (essentially) co-written with Heinlein's then-wife, Leslyn. That would explain (what I perceived as) the book's narrative style as like nothing Heinlein wrote before, or since.

The book pictures a society where genetic engineering is common. Also duelling. Prosperity is widespread, thanks to wise central planners. There's an attempted revolution somewhere in the middle, capped off with a ray-gun shootout. Other topics include telepathy, and immortality of the soul via reincarnation.

But basically, there's just a lot of talking.

Fun fact: the aphorism "An armed society is a polite society" comes from this book. I'm a Second Amendment fan, and yet I'm skeptical of that claim. Maybe if we were all aremed with ray guns, like here, we'd be more polite.