Aidan Moher asks an interesting question: what are books or authors you think you should like, but don’t?

I suppose Kim Stanley Robinson should stand pretty high on my list. I love both hard science fiction and colonization stories, so by all rights I should have loved Red Mars, but I found it so dull didn’t even finish it. I almost never fail to finish a book I’ve started, but when I reached what felt like the 900^th consecutive page of scenery description my will was crushed.

Neal Stephenson. I ought to be into him, based on everything I’ve heard about him- even things I’ve heard described as his vices, like his fondness for digressions and infodumps, sound appealing to me- but my attempts to actually read his work always come to a screeching halt very quickly, because there’s just something about the way he writes that rubs me the wrong way. I can’t really put my finger on something more specific than that.

And finally, my secret shame: Robert Heinlein. He doesn’t really do it for me that much, and I’m somewhat baffled as to why. I love plenty of his contemporaries. I enjoy classic juveniles. I like lots of authors who cite Heinlein as an important influence. I like Golden Age Competent Men. I usually like authors who are described as “Heinleinian.”

But the Heinlein books I’ve read all left me sort of “meh.” I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t have any strong urge to seek out more. I have enormous respect for Heinlein and his place in the science fiction field, and I’m perfectly happy to accept that there are virtues to Heinlein I’m just not getting, but for some reason they’re lost on me.

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