My Clothes Are a Harsh Mistress

Two footnotes to Brian Doherty's fine piece on the late Robert Heinlein. First: If you want to find the bridge between Heinlein the militant anti-Communist and Heinlein the radical bohemian, you should read his delightfully cracked 1951 novel The Puppet Masters. When an invasion by alien collectivists threatens their freedoms, the brave people of Earth fight back…with nudism. There's a Whittaker Chambers joke in there somewhere, but I haven't quite found it yet.

Second: My first exposure to Heinlein came when Boys' Life serialized a comic-strip version of another 1951 book, Between Planets. The cartoon was completely insane, and it sent me right away to the "H" shelf in my local library. To read a representative sample of the comic, go here.