1970 marked a turning point in some ways in Heinlein’s writing. First, health issues intruded, and not unexpectedly, intimations of his own mortality became more prominent. This is just my personal opinion, but I think his works became a little more uneven in this last stage of his career.

I Will Fear No Evil (1970)

in 1970 Heinlein had the first of his major health issues with an attack of peritonitis. He did manage to publish one novel but it is a bit of a mess. I Will Fear No Evil tells the story of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, a billionaire whose body is failing, so he decides on transplanting his brain into another body. He offers $1 million for the donation of a brain dead body. Then his secretary is killed, and her body is used. When Bach wakes up after the surgery he discovers that the secretary is still there and he can talk to her. Or maybe it is all a hallucination on his part. Sex becomes a major part of the story, as would become a theme in Heinlein’s later works. The now female person takes the name Joan, and then decides to have child using sperm frozen by the billionaire. They then decide to marry the lawyer, then he dies, and his personality seems to join the other two. This is certainly consistent to the hallucination hypothesis, but who knows. Heinlein had only done one rough draft when the peritonitis hit, and that laid him up for two years. So this novel at the very least did not receive the polishing he usually gave to his novels. You can safely skip it, in my opinion.

Time Enough For Love (1973)

This is a collection of shorter pieces with linking narration. It concerns the life of Lazarus Long, who we first encountered in Methuselah’s Children. He now becomes a kind of alter ego for Heinlein himself. Lazarus has lived thousands of years, and is tired of it. But he has an audience for his stories, so he will keep on as long they are listening. You can see the parallels, and maybe Heinlein, after a long illness, wondered how much longer he could tell stories. Part of the book is inclusion of extracts “From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long”, which consist of sayings and aphorisms. At the end, he travels back in time and has sex with his mother, before shipping off to France to fight in World War I. If you are a fan, you will want to read this. This book was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, but did not win. It did win a Prometheus award.

Heinlein has a rare blood type, and had needed multiple transfusions to combat the peritonitis. As a result in the mid-1970s he got involved in organizing blood drives within the SF community. This reduced his writing. Then in 1977 he had a series of transient ischemic attacks, which were traced to a blocked carotid artery. This set him up to be one of the very early recipients of a carotid bypass operation.

The Number of the Beast (1980)

This novel has 4 protagonists, and different chapters are narrated from each of their perspectives. The four are Zebediah John Carter, Dejah Thoris Burroughs Carter, her father the mathematician Jacob Burroughs, and Hilda Corners. And if you think there is a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs clues in those names, you are correct. In this novel Heinlein creates his “World As Myth” idea, which basically states that fictional worlds also exist in the Multiverse. If you take the idea of infinite universes seriously, it follows that in infinite universes there must be one for every world written about in stories. In this novel they have a craft that can navigate between universes, and end up visiting Barsoom, Oz, the Lensman universe, etc. before finally joining up with Lazarus Long. This is a fun read in many respects, but he redid it later as The Pursuit of the Pankera, which I prefer, though that may in part be because it has a much long stay in the Lensman universe. I am a big fan of that series as we shall see. This novel was nominated for a Locus award.

Friday (1982)

In his later works Heinlein frequently depicted the world in a violent and chaotic state (for example, see I Will Fear No Evil). And that is certainly the case in this novel. This brings us back to the world of Gulf and Kettle Belly Baldwin. Friday is a genetically engineered person employed by quasi-military organization (the same one we saw in Gulf) as a courier. She has adventures in the chaotic mess that is North America divided into many smaller countries. Sex is part of the story of course, but also we see Heinlein reaching back to his earlier works bring in people and settings from those works. Writing this in the time of Donald Trump I cannot really discount Heinlein’s pessimism, even though I am by nature more of an optimist. This novel was nominated for Locus, Hugo, Nebula, and Prometheus awards. This is a novel I will reread.

Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)

This is a fantasy novel about Alex, a Christian activist, and Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess. Alex is being corrupted by Margrethe, and quite loving it, when things start to go pear-shaped on them. Jehovah has given Loki permission to torment the couple, which he does through a series of world changes. This is the parallel to the Biblical Job. Along the way the couple spend some time with Satan while not knowing that, and then are separated by the Rapture, because Margrethe is a pagan who worships Odin, and thus ineligible for Heaven. After a bit of Heaven, Alex is tired of it and prefers to be with Margrethe. And of course the book makes the claim the Hell is a much nicer place than Heaven. This is a fun book I can recommend. It won the Locus award for best Fantasy novel, and was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards. This would be the last Heinlein novel to get Hugo and Nebula nominations.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

At this point Heinlein is starting to dwell on his past, and he drags in all kinds of characters from his previous novels and stories, and starts to tie together all of those stories into one whole. Of course, early in his career he tied together stories into his Future History, so perhaps not such a departure. And Asimov did much the same with his Foundation and Robot stories. The story here is a type of thriller with the first killing in scene one, and the protagonist not knowing who is doing this or why. There is a certain charm to this novel but it has to do with how Heinlein uses his words in the writing. He does have a distinctive style. But the plot is bit of a mess. It was nominated for a Locus award.

To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1987)

This last novel continues several themes from his later work: The World as Myth, Lazarus Long, sex (including voluntary incest), and is connected to his earlier works as in the previous novel. This time the protagonist is Lazarus’ mother, introduced at the end of Time Enough For Love. Partly it tells her story in the early days of the Howard Families, introduced in Methusaleh’s Children. Then it continues to the episode with Lazarus, but now seen from her perspective. This is a prime example of why some people refer to Heinlein’s last few works as his “dirty old man” period. It was nominated for the Locus and Prometheus awards.

Heinlein passed away in 1988 from emphysema and heart failure. But a few things made an appearance that are Heinlein-related.

For Us The Living (1938, 2003)

This novel, written in 1938, is Heinlein’s earliest. But he never submitted it for publication in his lifetime, which perhaps tells you what he thought of it. It is not up to the standard of his mature works, but you can discern the DNA of his style in it. It was lost for a long time, and then rediscovered and published in 2003, fifteen years after Heinlein’s death. It still managed to get nominated for a Locus award, but if the same novel were submitted by an unknown author I doubt it would have been nominated. It was all about Heinlein’s name and stature within the field. Only for completists. A man has an accident and wakes up in the future, and the novel describes this future world as the man experiences it.

Variable Star (2006)

This novel was written by Spider Robinson from an 8-page outline written by Heinlein in 1955. So the plot is Heinlein’s, but the words are Robinson’s. But Robinson is a huge fan of Heinlein, one reason he was chosen, and it reads pretty much like a Heinlein novel. Heinlein had intended it to be one his Juvenile novels for Scribners, but clearly Robinson took it an a more adult direction. A young man with no money has a girlfriend whom he believes to be equally impecunious, only she was lying and is the heiress to the solar system’s largest fortune. She has their future all planned out, but the young man decides he wants no part of it, and signs up for a one-way trip of exploration to the stars. The telepathy angle from Time For The Stars reappears here.

I enjoyed it. It did not receive any nominations.

The Pursuit of the Pankera (2020)

This manuscript was found in Heinlein’s papers, and the first third is identical to The Number of the Beast. But then it goes in a slightly different direction. There is still The World As Myth, they still visit Barsoom, and there is longer section in the Lensman universe that I quite liked. I find I prefer this version to the original.