I would never call Heinlein’s work formulaic. Not many juvenile authors can make such a claim.) Sixty years later, his juveniles are all still in print, and, I believe, none has ever gone out of print.
Heinlein consider this the only difference between juvenile and adult literature. (Tuck away in the box where you store your little ironies that Heinlein’s juveniles are perfectly respectable adult science fiction stories. It wasn’t until these two rejected juveniles were released that Heinlein really came to be considered an author of “adult” science fiction novels. He wrote fourteen of these, although two, Podkayne of Mars and Starship Troopers, were rejected by Scribner’s juvenile editor, Alice Dalgliesh, and published subsequently by G.P. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine, amongst other short fiction venues, Heinlein spent the 1950s as the reigning champion of juvenile (what we now call Young Adult) science fiction novels for Scribner’s. After establishing himself in the 1940s as the King of John W. By “adult” I don’t mean Heinlein was writing porn, though there are some detractors who would make that claim. Friday represents a marked change in tone from Heinlein’s previous “adult” novels. On the book jacket of the hardcover edition, Harlan Ellison said “ Friday is Heinlein back in control.” I’ve never polled readers to ask if they agree with this assessment, but the sentiment is understandable.
It was hailed as Heinlein’s return to his former glory. Friday was, I believe, the book that changed me into that rabid fan. It had been out since the previous April, but I guess I wasn’t yet a rabid enough Heinlein fan to have picked it up the day it came out. I received a copy of Heinlein’s Friday as a Christmas gift my senior year in high school.
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