The Cat Who Walks through Walls [Mass Market Paperback]

At the very end of his career, Heinlein wrote a series of books, now known as the `World as Myth' set, that effectively managed to tie together just about all of his works through the idea that time has three dimensional axes, one of which is the set of universes produced by strong fabulists (writers), so that in some sense all possible realities are nothing more than the figments of some writer's imagination. This book is the second of this set, following The Number of the Beast.

The opening of this book is set in the universe that we first saw in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, about a hundred years after the Lunar revolution. And a dandy opening it is, with the hero, Colonel Colin Campbell, having an uninvited dinner guest murdered in front of eyes within five minutes of sitting down at his table, and marrying his other dinner guest, all in the first ten pages. The action continues rapidly, traversing various sections of the moon, with our heroes being attacked and chased by several sundry unknown bad guys, while Campbell's new wife continues to display unusual talents and apparently has something of a `past' (readers familiar with most of Heinlein's other work will figure out what that `past' is fairly quickly - and I do recommend that you read at least The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Methuselah's Children, Time Enough For Love, The Rolling Stones, and The Number of the Beast before tackling this book).

So for the first half of so of this book, what we have is a strong action/adventure/mystery story, with rather less of Heinlein's typical pontificating than many other late-period books. But at midpoint the book takes a sharp curve towards the `Myth' concept, and other characters from other works make their appearance, most notably Lazarus Long, the Burroughs family, `Slipstick' Libby, and Jubal Harshaw. Lazarus is here seen from an external viewpoint, and he doesn't come off as either very nice or all that smart about how to convince Campbell to join his Time Corps. While it was nice to meet all these characters again, the action quota of this portion of the book drops drastically, and the original mystery scenario seems to get lost in the shuffle, not making a reappearance till the last couple chapters of the book.

Those last couple of chapters do some extreme compression of some very significant events, and do manage to bring to a close the initial scenario. But you must read this section very carefully, else you'll miss some very significant points - and one of the points will probably make your head spin when you try to untangle the `time line'. I know I missed some of this the first time I read it, and ended up feeling very disappointed with the book that first time through. With subsequent readings, my comprehension has improved, and my feeling about this book has gotten considerably better. Even the cat of the title, Pixel by name, and probably modeled after the real cat personage who at one point was part owner of the Heinlein residence, makes a significant addition to this, being a cat who can literally walk through walls just because it does not know that doing something like this is not supposed to be possible, a philosophical point of major significance to this book. Some may object that there is no closure to one major part of this final scenario - but you just have to read his last book, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, if you really have to know what happened after the end of this book.

This book may not be his best (by quite a margin), but neither is it anywhere near his worst, and Heinlein, even at his worst, was at least readable.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

A great opening scene, some sparklingly witty dialogue mixed with Heinlein's own brand of proselytising ensures that this is more than a SF romp -- we meet old friends, make new ones and get to reflect there's always Time Enough for Heinlein. Not for someone new to his works, though.

If you go on any sci-fi website and mention this book, or any of the later Heinlein books, you'll get the tired old line that they just weren't very good. None of them.

This is wrong.

You've always gotta give Heinlein the time of day at least, even if he's writing the yellow pages, and this book is way beyond that. In a good way, I mean. The two main characters are straight out of 'His Girl Friday', in that they're both smooth and unruffled by violence, and they've always got a smart line for every scenario. It does grate a little at times as they don't seem like real people, but you get used to it, and the plot is so strong you end up not really caring at all.

The plot itself is a strange thing. It starts fast and plays as a caper for half the book then marks a sudden shift in subject matter[though there are markers throughout the first half that it's gonna turn that way] and time travel, or dimension travel comes into it. At this point, both the main male character and I got a headache. But in a good way.

Not as stylistically brilliant as 'The Moon is a harsh Mistress' but still recommended.