The Number of the Beast
by Robert A. Heinlein · first published 1980
17% recommend50% neutral33% critical
Heinlein buff David Potter explained on alt.fan.heinlein, in a posting reprinted on the Heinlein Society, that the entire book is actually "one of the greatest textbooks on narrative fiction ever produced, with a truly magnificent set of examples of HOW NOT TO DO IT right there in the foreground, and constant explanations of how to do it right, with literary references to people and books that DID do it right, in the background." He noted that "every single time there's a boring lecture or tedious character interaction going on in the foreground, there's an example of how to do it RIGHT in the
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…where naysayers are coming from. Heinlein himself always maintained he wrote primarily to entertain, even though he can get kind of preachy at times. The very first Heinlein I got my hands on was The Number of the Beast--, while I was a teenager. Flying cars, non-benevolent Other Beings, multiverses possibly made manifest through the sheer act of imagining it... For a kid who dreamt of one day becoming a nuclear physicist…
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life?” ↗I liked the idea of outfitting Zeb Carter's Ford with a "continua" device in Heinlein's Number of the Beast and programming it so it would move through parallel universes via voice command to the onboard computer. Can't tell you how many times I've sat in traffic and wished I could say "jump deety" and immediately…
on “The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)” ↗I thought it one of the two worst books he ever wrote. (The other candidate being The Number of the Beast.) Just posting this to discourage anyone from starting there and being turned off Heinlein for life. He's interesting enough that I tried even the stinkers.
on “Disembodied pig brains revived: Your questions answered” ↗…Heaven (Ursula Le Guin), Faust (Goethe), Anathem (Stephenson), Paradise Lost (Milton), The Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut), The Claw of the Conciliator (Gene Wolfe), The Urth of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe), The Number of the Beast (Heinlein), Baudolino (Umberto Eco), The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follet), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig), I Robot (Asimov)
on “Tell HN: Free Books (apartment clearing)” ↗Not sure I'd suggest The Door into Summer, it's one of the weakest books from Heinlein imho together with the Number of the Beast and I Will Fear No Evil. I'd usually recommend the Moon is a Harsh Mistress or one of his juveniles as the first book.
on “The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)” ↗The version of that that I recall was from Heinlein's Number of the Beast. The detail he added in his version was that you could reassess your property at any time, but you had to pay 5 years of back taxes at the new value immediately. This means you can sit at a low value…
on “Living In A Van in Google's Backyard” ↗Agreed, I would place the onset of 'late career' Heinlein at Number of the Beast. Which it turns out Wikipedia agrees with, when I went to check the bibliography, so there's that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein_bibliograph...
on “Vonnegut Reviews Heinlein's “Stranger in a Strange Land”” ↗…rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it. Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though! Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though) Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good) Robert…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…of owner appraises property for taxes and commits to selling at that price (or raise it and pay N years back taxes of the amount they had to raise it) was mentioned in one of the later Heinlein novels, Number of the Beast I think.
on “San Francisco's zoning makes it illegal to build apartments in 73.5% of the city” ↗There's a scene in Robert Heinlein's Number of the Beast where his self-similar author character, Jubal Harshaw, dictates the first line of a story to a secretary, who happens to be an AI. While he's having a conversation, she finishes the story -- in his voice.…
on “GPT-3 writing tool that generates surprisingly compelling characters/plot twists” ↗Ditto on the timeless appeal. Watching this auto pilot reminded me of landing Getaceiver on Barsoom in Heinlein’s Number of the Beast, which has a very long passage describing the (fictional) orbital mechanics landing on (a fictional alternate reality version of) Mars.
on “Show HN: I added autopilot to the lunar lander game” ↗https://www.respublika.lt/lt/naujienos/pasaulis/kitos_pasaul... Google translate on desktop didn't seem to work for this one but I suspect you might manage Edit: "If This Goes On--" was the story that got me into Heinlein.. I'd started on "Number of the Beast" but that was too long..
on “RAH, "Logic of Empire" (1941)” ↗