Robert Heinlein's Shadow: "The Seven Starlings" and "How Aeneas Browning Got Rich" (Paperback)

~ Jubal Harshaw (Author)
Key Phrases: cocos isles, gov colony, moon colony, Jubal Harshaw, Robert Heinlein's Shadow, Jubal Harsbaw (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

What kind of world is left after the H5N1 Bird Flu Pandemic? What is our future likely to look like? Will humans be cloned and their genetics engineered? What changes to the human genome might the conditions of a moon colony produce? Where is all that extra mass in the universe? A thought provoking science fiction book after the old style with lots of correct science, where the questions being asked encourage readers to become more familiar with the various disciplines [genetics ,mineralogy, anthropology, math etc.] which are glanced upon, and accurately portrayed. The theme is "love that never will be" and the hero of the first story is a four hundred pound, hairy but lovable, slightly mutated foot ball player named Hugh, and the five, eleven year old girls who end up in his charge. This is a good book.

About the Author

The author lives on a pacific island surrounded by progeny and friends, he owns a five pound wonder dog more intelligent than many of the people who will read these words, and a Browning semi automatic shotgun with which he has, over many years, shot 26 deer. He has recently joined his daughter in the kind of vegetarianism where sea creatures such as fish and shrimps are still eaten, although privately, he intends to stretch the aquatic creatures rule to include ducks and geese if given the chance, {in fact even sea gulls, fullmars, gannets, and puffins are starting to look pretty good}. He recommends to all with a true desire to Grok and become waterbrothers that they Grok the sundance and begin to pray in the sweat lodge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse-Indigo (March 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595437117
• ISBN-13: 978-0595437115
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,224,056 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Another lamer hijacking RAH's name, June 24, 2007

By	Jesse Wendel (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just another lamer hijacking the Old Man's name so this poorly copy-edited, badly-written excuse for a book will come up in RAH's search results.

Don't waste your time; this book is a waste of time. Seriously. The author isn't Robert Heinlein. He isn't even fit to take out the Old Man's trash, although RAH would be unlikely to be so impolite as to say so.

Attempting to grab one's fifteen minutes of fame on the back of RAH's Grand Mastery, simply strikes me as rude. Rude and lame.

Don't buy this book please. Not only does it genuinely suck. It's written by a lamer, attempting to use the Old Man's reputation to get search results from people whom aren't paying close attention. And if there's one thing Robert Anson Heinlein wanted you to do besides think for yourself, it is to pay attention.

One Star -- and that's being generous. Jubal Harshaw would have set Michael loose on him. *smiles sweetly*

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Heinlein's Shadow Deserves Better, June 27, 2007

By	Skip Hughes - See all my reviews

Clever idea and good stories, even nicely Heinlein-like. But attention to detail in story-line (something Heinlein himself seldom missed a trick on) is lacking. And proof-reading by author, editor, or anyone at all would have improved the end-product enormously. Was Harshaw in a hell of a hurry on this? By the way, for "future reference," Jubal Harshaw (in "Stranger in a Strange Land") has a middle initial: "E."

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Three stars for story, but one for presentation, June 26, 2008

By	Peter L. Thomas (Purcellville, VA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The "yarn" itself is not a bad one. The story has a semi-fantastic, but reasonably plausibly "spun" premise out of modern-day science fact themes. Clearly "Mr. Harshaw" is also trying to set it in his own future history. He even captures some of the ludicrously sublime wording that one could find in some of Heinlein's juveniles--the line that's sticking out for me in this vein was something like: "Then Mom nuked another city."

The problem, as other reviews have aptly noted, was that this author made a mistake that Heinlein never did. He [or she] failed to retain a competent editor--or if there was an editor, they were poorly heeded.

There's "sheer" instead of "shear," an early warning of what's to come. I stopped short for precious seconds at a capital letter used mid-sentence. The offending character followed a lower-cased, period-delimited abbreviation, "d.n.a." [sic] This flaw made it obvious that the author was drafting in Microsoft Word. A word to the wise: "Auto-Correct" may be automatic, but it's not automatically correct.

Throughout the text there were parenthetical comments {or sometimes curly-brace comments [sometimes brackets were. The fact that these constructs contained anything from run-on sentences to nonsensical fragments only added to their distracting power.

If you like a decent yarn, and can get past all the painful syntax and outright errors, then do give this a try. I'd spend my valuable time with some of the well-crafted works of other SF authors that will give you great stories, without all of the amateurish defects.