July 7, 2007 is Robert A Heinlein's 100th birthday (weirdly, this birthday is shared by Ringo Starr, my paternal grandfather, my cousin and her daughter). There are plans underway already for a centenary celebration in Kansas City in his birth-state of Missouri.
Heinlein, of course, was the often-brilliant pioneering science fiction writer whose novel Stranger in a Strange Land gave us the word "Grok" and was partial inspiration for Charlie Manson. I'm most partial to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a gripping novel of revolutionary intrigue, and to his juvenile scouting novels, particularly Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. The less said about his later novels like Time Enough for Love and (shudder) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls the better (not to mention his embarrassing early "race" novels like Sixth Column and Farnham's Freehold).
(via Out of Ambit)
