Over at the terrific new Tor.com site, Jo Walton is writing a column (blog?) on "re-reading." Yesterday she turned her attention to Citizen of the Galaxy, so correspondents here might want to take a look.



Jo has won the Campbell Award for best new writer, the World Fantasy Award, and the Prometheus Award. Heinlein has influenced her plenty.

Yes, an interesting post by Jo Walton. And definitely too many "phony flaws" in Heinlein criticism.

Heinlein says in Grumbles from the Grave that "I want to cut and slant the serial (adult) version [of Citizen of the Galaxy] slightly differently from the Scribner's (juvenile) version. ... I am going to try this time to improve it a little for each market with some changes in emphasis."

I read the Astounding version several times before reading the Scribner version, but my last reading of the former was quite a while ago.

Has anyone done a close comparison of the Astounding and Scribner texts? And if so, is it public and accessible?

Hmmm ... I have a complete run of Astounding/Analog from 1946-1963. I have considered donating it to the SF library at the KU English Department. I managed to damage one of the issues while the magazines were in storage, but I can likely replace the damaged one. I have tried not to do too much to them because they are pretty fragile.

I have split this topic into two parts so that the original discussion of Citizen can proceed. The Centennial/VE/misc posts are now in a thread in the general RAH forum. Please continue that discussion there, and this discussion here.

I agree with Bill that the structure of COTG is most definitely not wandering, unless you insist a novel remain in the same setting. It's actually quite sophisticated, not least of all which is the following: the novel heads in ever-spreading circles outward, physically, as it moves back to earth, while at the same time boring deeper inward, as Thorby comes to know who and what he is.

Quite a feat, that.

Robert

Came across this piece on COTG,and thought you might like to see it

http://members.iglou.com/jtmajor/Citgalxy.htm

Very good essay.

Joe Major wrote a very thorough, if somewhat uneven book on the juveniles. I think this is one of the parts he published as an essay as well.

Yes, a very good analysis. Citizen of the Galaxy is not only a powerful story, but a subtle and sophisticated one.