Entertaining Dig at Religion

books:


	• Job: A Comedy of Justice Robert A. Heinlein Del Rey, 1985 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 89 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Daring and competent

You get to read all the way to mid-chapter XVIII before two very important sentences appear: "(...) Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too. (...)" This book was finished 1984. Its style is superb and its entertainment value immense and it is daring - very daring! Especially devote Christians should read the quote I have given and take it to the heart before starting to read the book itself. It is fiction but fiction by a well educated master wordsmith. Those who might have been unsettled by Pullmann's His Dark Materials should beware; they will be shaken by this. Robert A. Heinlein works on a higher level of literary and theological competency and does not whimp out in the end. He gets more drastically! As his protagonist goes through trials of faith, scripture itself is used to unsettle protagonist and reader as well. Skill and knowledge should not lead the reader to forget that it is still fiction, mesmerizing fiction at that. It is thought provoking and may provoke anger as well. Ponder this before you start reading because once you started it will be hard to put it down. I read it in one day. Heinlein adds the word devine in front of the words conspiracy theory and plays it to the end with surprises around every corner. He has gone where Dante Alligeri went but from the other side of the spectrum and as Dante's Devine Comedy Heinlein's Comedy of Justice is also a masterpiece.
I wish I could give 4.5 stars in the rating - I will settle for 4 right now.

for more information click here

Entertaining Dig at Religion

I enjoyed this amusing little science fiction novel because I am always up for a little religious satire. Heinlein elaborates on the biblical story of Job, presenting Christian mythology as an eternal bureaucracy. I didn't find the book particularly memorable, but it was fun while it lasted.

for more information click here

A True Man of God

Whenever the subject of Heinlein comes up, certain works of his always seemed to get mentioned, such as his Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land. But for some reason, there is very little comment about this book, which may arguably be the best of his late period "World as Myth" books.

The plot is comparatively simple: Alex Hergensheimer, fundamentalist priest, finds himself shunted from alternate reality to alternate reality, with his only constant his new-found love-at-first-sight Margrethe as his traveling companion and the clothes on his back. Such changes impose severe hardships, as again and again he finds himself without spendable money or records of who he is, and must survive by taking any jobs he finds available, chiefly dish-washing. Culture shock is also heavily prevalent, as his own ideas of what is proper in terms of women's dress, public displays of affection, acceptable language, and what should be (in his mind) the one and only acceptable religion are continuously rubbed headlong into the facts and customs of totally different cultures. Alex is quite a bit of a prig, whose ideas on papists, Jews, and blackamoors are horrendously prejudicial, and finds these changes very difficult to take. His take on the entire experience is that either he is totally paranoid, that these shifts are directed solely at him, or that these are signs and portents of the coming Armageddon. That his paranoia is justified and Armageddon really is just around the corner is the logical conclusion to this, but what he finds and does in both Heaven and Hell may not be at all what the reader is expecting.

Alex is a fully developed character, in some ways a typical Heinlein ubermensch, as he concentrates on surviving in each new world and showing great practicality and intelligence in doing so, and at the same time violently different from just about every other character Heinlein ever created, with his closed mind and highly religious outlook. But despite his continuous pig-headedness and "I know I'm right" attitude, there is a certain nobleness and steadfastness of character that shines through, that in the end fully justifies his selection as a modern day Job. There is a very large amount of very biting satire and humor prevalent throughout this book ("Is this Hell? Or is this Texas? Both."), and those with fundamentalist Christian beliefs may find this book extremely upsetting as Heinlein takes the exact words of the Bible and shows just what they would really be like. In fact, it has been denounced as blasphemous by Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, a reaction Heinlein was probably trying to provoke.

The book is also quite inventive, showing off Heinlein's masterful world-building skills as he details not just one but several alternate worlds and technologies, and he even takes a crack at detailing a scientifically plausible Hell-world and the infrastructure of a Heaven with plumbing and public transportation. But the basic idea behind all the world-shifting and religious trappings is an idea that he first tackled in "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathon Hoag" and "They", which he wrote very early in his career, an idea which runs throughout his late period books, that the world we see is an artifact, a stage setting, created by some fabulist for his own purposes. This book also clearly shows some of the literary influences on Heinlein, mainly James Branch Cabell and Mark Twain, along with highlighting the fact that Heinlein was brought up in the heart of the Bible-belt, and had an extensive knowledge of the Bible.

Some have complained that the book's ending has too much of a deus-ex-machina feel to it, but this is one case where the `God' is quite literal, and I found the ending quite fitting. But a warning: the last two chapters must be read very carefully, especially in terms of what characters are present (names are quite important), as there are a lot of hidden statements and meanings hiding behind the bare happenstances that are detailed.

I did not think this was one his great books when I first read it, but every time I give it a re-read, it impresses me more and more as quintessential Heinlein at the peak of his form, a joy to read and an illuminating volume of ideas and thoughts that require some serious contemplation.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

for more information click here

Daring and competent

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

After he firewalked in Polynesia, the world wasn't the same for Alexander Hergensheimer, now called Alec Graham. As natural accidents occurred without cease, Alex knew Armageddon and the Day of Judgement were near. Somehow he had to bring his beloved heathen, Margrethe, to a state of grace, and, while he was at it, save the rest of the world ....

hot