Suvudu Universe

I am starting a new thing on my blog. As infrequently as I post I should have something I go to on a regular basis. This new thing will be called Classics Corner. It's simple. I will review a classic work of speculative fiction and either recommend it for others to read or steer readers clear of it. The thing is, I'm not going to be reviewing the great classics. Most people into speculative fiction have already read most of them, and if you're like me, you will make up your own mind about whether or not you want to read them instead of listening to what others have to say. The books I'm going to review are going to be lesser known books that were written by the masters. I am not going to review works such as Heinlein's   Stranger in a Strange land. That title is too popular. Too many people have already read it and won't care what I have to say. Instead, I'm going to talk about books like The Number of the Beast because people may not have gotten to it. Maybe someone liked Stranger in a Strange Land but didn't like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress so they don't know where they stand on other Heinlein works. That is where the Classics Corner will come in.

As the title, and my opening paragraph, suggests, I will be going over Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. I'm not going to give a summary of the book because if I did that, what's the point of anyone reading it afterwards. Sure there may be one, but it will take the fun out of the book.

This was a weird read for me. It was the first time I had ever read, so I didn't know what to expect (I find that the older sci-fi writers are weirder that the current ones).  I picked it up as I do so many books, on sale. I knew who Heinlein was but had never read him, and the book was only fifty cents, so I quickly picked it up. It took me a little while to get to it, but what book lover doesn't have a pile of books to read eventually. When I did eventually get around to reading it I had no idea what I was in store for, and I'm still a little confused.

It is a good story, and interesting idea. The action follows four people, one of which is a "mad scientist" who creates a "continua device" which allows the four to travel through time and to parallel universes. These parallel universes turn out to be fantasy realms from known literature. Unlike me, one who is familiar with the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom series will easily see that the names of the characters are references to those works and makes it easy to see that the action takes place in the same plane. The title comes from the number of possible planes. There are 6 dimensions and the continua device can travel across them so it comes to (6^6)^6 which becomes a very large number I don't feel like typing, and that is the number of universes the device can travel along.

Heinlein does his best to describe how it all works, and I remember it making sense at the time, but I am not scientifically inclined so I can be fooled by scientific mumbo jumbo that turns out to be BS (plus I read it a couple years ago and am having trouble remembering all of the details). The four get hunted by evil creatures who want the device which adds a little suspense to the story. And there is a lot of nudity, but somehow it a novel it doesn't have the same impact it would if it were in a movie

Overall, it is a good story with decent characters. It's a little weird but a little cool at the same time. It also has a bit of a fangirl experience built it of going to different fantasy worlds that the reader may love. In a way, it may be the first example of fan-fiction, or at least the first time it was produced by a well known writer and produced by a big time publisher. The ending is a little weird, but all in all, I would have to recommend it to the avid reader. If your someone who doesn't read very quickly and you only want to read great book, then I would skip it.