| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
66 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good; should have been great,
By
This review is from: I Will Fear No Evil (Mass Market Paperback)
I probably like this book far better than it deserves; if so, it's because I imprinted on Heinlein's stuff during my formative years. At any rate, this novel is based on a terrific concept but suffers from flawed execution.
The concept: Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is ooooold. Oooooooooold. He's going to die soon. But he's also rich, and he wants to spend a huge chunk of his fortune having his brain transplanted into a younger body. This he does. ('Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . ') Well, the joke's on him. The body -- as he learns after the transplant is performed -- is not only female, it's the body of his beloved secretary Eunice Branca (who was killed in a mugging that conveniently left her in brain-transplantable condition, and who conveniently happened to have the very same rare blood type as old Smith). So Johann has to learn how to be female, and also has to get over feeling just terrible about taking over Eunice's body. Ah, but the lucky fellow gets some help. Turns out Eunice's body is still inhabited by Eunice -- or maybe Smith is hallucinating her (perhaps as her body rejects the transplant?). Or maybe it doesn't matter which; reality is slippery that way. (' . . . I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.') _Great_ concept. The idea alone is worthy of a Hugo. Unfortunately, Hugos aren't given for ideas; they're given for execution. And the execution here is troubled. Heinlein suffered from life-threatening peritonitis during this period of his life, and his wife Virginia had to help him out with the editing on this one. At that, Heinlein claimed to have trimmed the draft MS by some ungodly number of thousands of words, and the result is _still_ sort of saggy in places. Like, between the covers. There are minor indications throughout that this isn't Heinlein's best-thought-out work. Here's my personal favorite example: when Johann, in Eunice's body, decides on a name, he suggests using 'Joan' but giving it the 'two-syllable pronunciation'. Apparently the author forgot that his character was _speaking_ the name, so that her listeners (who were not reading the text but hearing her speak) would _hear_ the two syllables; what they wouldn't know was how she intended to _spell_ it. (And what, by the way, would have been wrong with spelling it 'Joanne'? Then we wouldn't have had to worry about reader-vs.-listener at all, and I wouldn't have to keep reminding myself all the way through the blinkin' book that it's _not_ pronounced 'Jone'.) Lots of the content is very dated, too. And it's not very realistic to imagine Joan Eunice spreadin' 'em for every big strong han'some male who treats her nice. (Including attorneys and judges, who might have had some ethical issues here. And please don't email me any lawyer jokes on the subject; believe me, I've heard 'em.) But there's still lots of cool stuff. The dialogue (especially the _internal_ dialogue, of which there is naturally a long ton) is about as well handled as it could be. Eunice's 'stenodesk', allowing for time and fictional extrapolation, sure looks a lot like a modern desktop computer (in about the way that D.B. Davis's 'Drafting Dan' looked like a CAD system). There's also what must be one of SF's very first sympathetic fictional portraits of a same-sex couple -- and, lurking in the background, some references (in 1970!) to what is clearly the Internet. So I still rate this one as a rewarding read (and in fact do reread it every now and again myself). It's not Heinlein's best; it's not even his second-tier material -- but it's still pretty darned good. It's just not _great_. And that's too bad, because I'd have loved to see what Heinlein could have done with this concept had he been at the top of his game.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Concept, But Yes It's Too Long, 3-1/2 stars,
By Antinomian (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: I Will Fear No Evil (Mass Market Paperback)
There was once a time when I thought of writing a science fiction story of a brain transplant into another body. And then thought of a real twist to it, by putting a male brain into the body of a female. Then one day I read a reference that it had already been written, but didn't say by who. So here it is some fifteen years later that I found out that it was by none other than Grand Master Heinlein himself. (It's not like the book title helped, instead of something like `A Tale of Dual Genders' or "When Gender Switches Happen to Brain Transplanted People", it's a fairly indescript "I Will Fear No Evil" from psalm 23.) He's done such a thorough job here that no other book on this subject (with it being the major plot) need be written again.
It's a fascinating concept and the book goes into a lot of detail about sexual identity. From reading this book, and from some subsequent movies (Switched?), it appears that the general consensus is if one's brain is switched to the opposite gender one should take up that person's new gender. Whew, I guess that's clears up that worry for all of us waiting for that brain transplant at the end of our days. So if a heterosexual male's brain gets transplanted into a females body, it should take up female heterosexuality. (Hmmm, what if a male homosexual's brain gets transplanted into a female, does that person become lesbian... hey, maybe there is room here for another book.) There's nothing here written though about the section of the female brain that regulates female hormones (the pituitary gland?) and that it would have to remain from the original brain for the possibility of transfer to be successful. There is quite a bit written on what is the person's actual identity (with regards to financial ownership) and what constitutes death. It's interesting to note Heinlein references a court decision from 1976, which is in the future of when the book was written, thus fictitious. The main problem is that the book is 2^9 pages long. There's a trend here I noticed on Amazon's review pages that when someone trashes a book or an author they really liked, they automatically click the Not Helpful button, no matter how well the person has articulated why they didn't like the book, and of course that's every person's right. For this book I would recommend reading the negative reviews to get an idea of what you would be in store for. For me, I found the book dragging at about pg 300 or so when Joan goes into the names of her household's entourage, and their first names, and I was constantly go back and forth to know what name belong to who. I have a lot of books on my reading list and this section was really unimportant. When you get to these sections I suggest just plowing through them and any Olga's or unknown names you see later is somebody's wife and doesn't really matter for the story. For all the pages Heinlein dedicates to establishing identity, he does little on how the previous bodies spirit comes to co-share the new mind. Since there's no brain matter left, how does it get there. This open the entire immense field of `is there a soul', but is overlooked. In fact at the end there's a question of whether Joan just imagined it. It's difficult to know, because almost the entire novel is from her perspective and it's said that crazy people don't know that they're crazy. The general consensus from having read the other reviews, and I concur, is that if you're new to Heinlein, other books of his are recommended. I've read `only' 6 Heinlein novels (now 7) and I'm still considered a relative novice, but a good site is www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ on where to start. If you're one of the Heinlein legions and have to read everything he's written, well then, you'll eventually have to get to this novel, it's only a matter of when. If you're in the third category, as I am, and find the concept interesting and would read anything anyone has written on it, then this is the book. However, it is long on sexual dialogue, and sure, it can seem interesting and at times are, it's just overdone. I didn't generally find the book dated, the hippy slang, maybe it's too old, I just didn't recognize it. Only towards the ending when they were sailing, which was the hip 60's thang, did it seem dated to me and gave it a feel like the ending of the movie "The Way We Were" or something. The things I really liked about this novel are the details, the items that didn't cover sexual banter. For instance when Joan is shopping she stops when she's hungry, because from her experience from the Great Depression, she equates hunger with being poor and thus doesn't want to spend money. The prose Heinlein writes here is short but powerful and it feels like Heinlein is himself writing from personal experience. This alone is a moving thought, and there have been a number of high profile movies set in the depression this year (2005) (Cinderella Man, the beginning of King Kong). There's also a section when there's only two eggs left in the kitchen and Joan's experience from the Great Depression enables her to stretch it out (by adding flour, etc) to feed three people. She claims this recipe is courtesy of the W.P.A. I looked up that acronym and sure enough there was (is?) a Works Programs/Projects Administration. It seems during the Great Depression almost everyone was in the same boat, but hunger was prevalent. Hard to imagine today with the record levels of obesity in America. (I bet no science fiction writer saw that coming.) For those that think this isn't science fiction haven't been reading what's been awarded the Nebula in past years. Faery handbags, magic amulets, Mayan spirits are the norm. This novel in comparison is hard core science fiction. So much has been written on `what is science fiction' that the paper version of them threatens the gravitation rotation of the planet. I would consider this novel to be science fiction, albeit somewhat diluted. If you want to read a superb Heinlein story that is even more `twisted' in a way than this novel so would give some idea of the identity concepts, but is also a short story so is a quick read AND has one of greatest time travel paradoxes I've ever read, then read `All You Zombies -'.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Body's Memories,
By
This review is from: I Will Fear No Evil (Mass Market Paperback)
Heinlein never lacked for ideas. Many were original with him, such as the multi-generational star-ship. Sometimes he took someone else's idea and added his own fillip to it - which is what he does here.
Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is very old, very rich, very stubborn - and caught in the medical straight-jacket of extensive life support. So he conceives of having his brain transplanted - whether the operation is successful or not, he'll at least escape the straight-jacket. So far, an idea done many times before. Now Heinlein adds his own touch, as the 'donor' body turns out to be that of his young, extremely beautiful secretary, Eunice Branca, who was mugged and murdered. When Johann wakes up after the operation, he finds Eunice there in his head, ready to help him adjust to the new world of being very much a female. Is Eunice real, a product of 'body experience'? Or just a figment of Johann's imagination? Heinlein lays clues to this important question throughout the book, but you'll have to read it and make up your own mind. Given the scenario above, this seems to be a perfect setup for Heinlein's traditional storming of the taboo bastions adhering to sex and gender stereotypes in American society. And there is no shortage of comments, situations, and happenings about just these items. Unfortunately, there is entirely too much of this material, occupying almost all of the middle section of this book, and after the first few sexual situations that Joan (the Johann/Eunice hybrid) faces, becomes extremely repetitious. Joan is not very believable as a woman (female characters were never Heinlein's strong point), nor do her actions really jive with what a 95 year old man would do. The internal conversations between Johann and Eunice are interesting and well done, though here again it becomes somewhat repetitious in the later stages of the book. When Heinlein leaves Joan's intimate life for a broader look at his envisioned world, it gets much better. The book is set in what he described in other books as "The Crazy Years": illiteracy is common, people need to live in armored fortresses, drive in the equivalent of tanks, court decisions are just as crazy as the one's you read about in today's newspaper, homosexuality is actively encouraged as a way to limit population growth, some areas of cities have been completely abandoned by the police as impossible to enforce. Heinlein's description of ordinary living amongst the youth of the times, his depiction of Eunice's husband Joe as a real artist, his satirical snapshots of the headlines of the day are all excellent, and his headlines are far too close to today's reality to be easily dismissed as 'impossible'. Heinlein became extremely ill just as this book was going to final edit, and his wife ended up making some of the decisions about the final form of this book. I think that if Heinlein had been well, a large portion of the middle section of this book would have been cut, and some tightening up done on the rest of it. As it is, it is far from his best, even making allowances. But the idea and situation are intriguing (who hasn't fantasized at least once about what it would be like to be the other sex?), in places Heinlein's power to engross and change your world-view are in full flower, his believable world-building skills much in evidence, his messages important and relevant to today's living. Heinlein on a down day was still better than ninety-nine percent of the other material on the racks. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
See all 7 books this book cites
See all 12 books citing this book
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
