Literary Significance and Reception
Jack Kirwan wrote in the National Review that the novel is "about two men and two women in a time machine safari through this and other universes. But describing The Number of the Beast thus is like saying Moby Dick is about a one-legged guy trying to catch a fish". He goes on to say that Heinlein celebrates the "competent person".
Sue K. Hurwitz said in her review for the School Library Journal that it is "a catalog of Heinlein's sins as an author; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly right wing, and excessively verbose", and comments that the book's ending was "a devastating parody of SF conventions—will have genre addicts rolling on the floor. It's garbage, but right from the top of the heap".
Read more about this topic: The Number Of The Beast (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or reception:
“The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
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“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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