This project has dominated my reading for 2025. I officially announced it back in November of 2024, as it was to be a project to take place between my thirty-ninth and fortieth birthdays. However, at that time I'd recently started reading Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb, and I underestimated just how long that would take me to finish (it was a bit of a slog). So I didn't get to kick things off properly until February.
From February through July, Heinlein was pretty much the only author I was reading. Starting in August, I finally opened a Christmas present from last year and got back into Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series. But I knew that wouldn't stop me from completing the Heinlein project ahead of schedule.
Here are my final rankings for all fourteen books. It divided them up into five tiers, because really I feel kind of ambivalent about some of the individual rankings, but the tiers are solid and I stand by them. I'll link to my blog post for each book. And before I do that, I'll link to the post that introduced this project, so the post you're reading now can serve as a kind of master post for the whole project, indexing everything.
Tier 1: Transcendant, All-Time Superlative Works
1. Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958)
2. Starship Troopers (1959)
Tier 2: Great Books, Personal Favorites (and not just among YA novels)
3. The Star Beast (1954)
4. The Rolling Stones (1952)
5. Tunnel in the Sky (1955)
6. Space Cadet (1948)
7. Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)
Tier 3: Excellent Juvenile Science Fiction
8. Podkayne of Mars* (1963)
9. Starman Jones (1953)
10. Between Planets (1951)
Tier 4: Still Good, But Flawed
11. Red Planet (1949)
12. Time for the Stars (1956)
13. Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)
Tier 5: Mediocre, Deserved Revision
14. Farmer in the Sky (1950)
This has been a blast. I might try something like it again some day.
*Arguably not part of the Heinlein juveniles, but I include it anyway for the sake of completeness.
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