Writing Style
The novel lies somewhere between parody and homage in its deliberate use of the style of the 1930s' pulp novels. Many of the plot lines and characters are derived directly from the pulps, as referenced by the first line of the novel:
He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter. —DeetyThe Number of the Beast contains many in-jokes and references to the author. The name of every villain is an anagram of a name or pen name of Robert or Virginia Heinlein.
As in many of his later works, Heinlein refers to the idea of solipsism, but in this book develops it into an idea he called "World as Myth" — the idea that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that all fictional worlds are in fact real.
Read more about this topic: The Number Of The Beast (novel)
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