JPod:—Well it is science fiction, which Kingsley Amis (a big fan) correctly described as “a naive American art form, like jazz.” You don’t read sci-fi for deep insights into the human condition. Such insights do occasionally pop up, but never in deathless prose.

J.J.:—Like practically all–make that all–sci-fi writers, Heinlein was really at his best in the short story format. All You Zombies is a classic–everybody in the story (I am working from dim memory) turns out to be the same person, and also that person’s father and mother, by dint of time travel and a sex-change operation. Brilliant stuff, and often funny: I recall another one–title I think Gentlemen, be seated–about a leak in the wall of a lunar station, which the hero seals by a method suggested in the title.

To several readers who object to my characterization of RAH as a conservative on the grounds that he seems to have favored polygamy: He was a libertarian (though of an odd, Tory-tendency, sort) and that’s what they’re like. I’m not a libertarian myself, and NR is not a libertarian publication, but they are generally regarded as a species of conservative. I think so, anyway. Ask Jonah–this is the kind of thing he could knock out a 1,200-word essay on while simultaneously watching three different TV programs and juggling chainsaws.

Practically all–no, make that all again–sci-fi writers fall flat on their faces when they try to write about sex. Theodore Sturgeon, a brilliant sci-fi writer, did a dire thing about a future world where human beings were all hemaphrodites, everyone having a full set of both male and female kit. I forget the title, and wish I could forget the story too. There were even diagrams. Oy oy oy. If you want to read interesting stories about love & sex, or about human relationships in any form, my advice would be, don’t head for the sci-fi shelves.