The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Who could want anything more from a Heinlein novel than time-travel, intrigue, danger, hasty marriages, murder, playful sexual banter, and a kitten named Pixel who has the extraordinary ability to walk through walls? While he probably can't walk through walls, narrator Tom Weiner's extraordinary ability is to take the dozens of distinct characters in Heinlein's philosophical space adventure and give each a unique and instantly recognizable style. Weiner's performance is particularly strong with the two main characters, Colin Campbell (aka Richard Ames) and Hazel Stone (aka Gwen Novak). Weiner gives Colin/Richard's first-person narrative a charming, softly sarcastic growl and Hazel/Gwen's voice a lovely globe-and-time-trotting sophistication. Spoken by Weiner, their banter becomes clever enough to challenge even Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert to a literary duel. A.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

November 1, 1985
As the old guard of SF ages, we are getting more novels of nostalgia. Heinlein is less sentimental than many of his generation but his new book resembles both the latest Bradbury, in making the author the protagonist, and the latest Asimov, in returning to a popular series from early in his career (Future History). Like Heinlein, Richard Ames is an ex-military man turned writer who fancies himself a pundit. An assassination attempt precipitates his marriage to Gwen Novak and sends the newlyweds scurrying to the Moon and then to the planet Tertius, headquarters of the Time Corps. The action, though, is largely beside the point in a novel that is predominantly a dialogue between the protagonists. Their foredoomed attempt to become the Nick and Nora Charles of space (with a bonsai standing in for Asta) is sabotaged less by Heinlein's endless elbow-in-the-ribs wisecracks and more by his inability to convincingly portray a sexual relationship. Given the increasing popularity of his recent, similar work, it is unlikely that the book's short-comings will limit its potentially large audience. November 11

This picaresque tale of adventure is set in the semi-lawless frontier that Heinlein clearly hoped space would become, where men would be men and women would like it that way. It could easily be transmuted to the American Wild West or medieval Japan. Either one likes the later Heinlein, with his machismo and sexual preoccupations, or one does not. George Wilson at least understands it well enough to give it an ideal tone, on the light side, and to make Heinlein's rather strained dialogue sound almost like natural speech. Fans will be well pleased. J.N. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine