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Hi there,

I've never read either of these suthors, and I'm looking for a good place to start. I'd appreciate some recommendations, thanks!

I'd suggest starting Robert A. Heinlein with one of his juveniles. They're my favorites & I still enjoy them as an adult. Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Farmer in the Sky, & Starman Jones are really good.

If you really want an adult only book, I'd suggest The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Personally, I don't think much of anything he wrote after the 60's. Stranger in a Strange Land is his most famous & is worth reading, but I'd get the original, cut version. He lectures plenty in that. IMO, his editors were always a big help & the uncut version is too much. I couldn't get through it.

If you want short stories, the slim volumes of The Green Hills of Earth / The Menace from Earth (either as one or two books) are great. The Past Through Tomorrow contains most of his short stories & can be found as 1 or 2 volumes.

Thanks Jim, that's super helpful.

You're right to be careful where you start reading Roger Zelazny books. Some of his books are plain weird & if you don't have any experience with his 'sleight of word' he can lose you quickly. I hate to say his writing is an acquired taste, but that might be accurate. Start with his more accessible books & work your way into his weird, but really fun ones.

He wanted to be a poet, decided it wouldn't pay, so started writing. He never seemed to worry about genre, often blending SF & fantasy. He burst onto the SF scene with A Rose for Ecclesiastes, a short story. His short stories are wonderful & vary in length from a page to novella size. If you think you might like short stories, any of his collections are worth it. I might give Unicorn Variations or The Last Defender of Camelot a slight edge, although The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth is really good. I don't know. Any short story collection of his will do.

There's also the matter of genre, so here's a list of some novels to start with.
- Lord of Light is a SF/fantasy blend of Hindu & other gods in the future.
- Good SF/mysteries are Today We Choose Faces & Doorways in the Sand.
- The Dead Man's Brother is just a straight thriller-mystery.
- The Changing Land & Changeling are pretty much straight fantasy.
- Damnation Alley is straight up post apocalyptic tough-guy-action SF. Wonderful at times.

He's probably best known for his Amber series. It's one of the easiest for most people to get into, too. It starts with Nine Princes in Amber & has 5 books in the first series which deals with Corwin. Another 5 book set follows his son, Merlin, but most of us don't care for them nearly as much. You can find all 10 in The Great Book of Amber, but it's a huge paperback & not particularly readable, IMO.

While I like all of the above, my favorites are those that are too weird to start with. This Immortal is one of my favorite books of all time, but I've rarely met anyone else who thought it was that fantastic. Like A Night in the Lonesome October & Roadmarks, Zelazny hides all sorts of references throughout them. They're fun whether you get the references or not, but the more you get, the more depth the story has. I've read A Night in the Lonesome October several times with groups & each time we've found more references, but are still missing or unsure about a few, yet I have 20 pages of notes.

He also does some odd things with structure in most books, but some more than others. Part 1 of Lord of Light starts in a present, then the character remembers the past in part 2 & works up to the the present again & the story moves forward in the last part. A lot of people miss that jump back to the past & get confused. That's an easy one, too.

Doorways in the Sand starts each chapter in the middle of the action, goes back to how that happened & works into a cliff hanger to end the chapter on. It's a bit weird, but a lot of fun. For instance, in one case he's being interrogated at the end of one chapter & starts the next staked out in a desert being offered a peanut butter sandwich by a wombat. No, it's not a dream & yes, that's one of his easier & most fun books to read.

I really wouldn't suggest reading Roadmarks until you've acquired some experience with his oddities. That's a book where a road runs through time & he's written it from 2 views, so there are chapters I & II. He stapled all the chapters, put chapter I in sequential order & tossed the II chapters into the air. He put them between the I chapters randomly as he picked them off the floor. Time on the road is strange indeed!

Starship Troopers is a good place to start with Robert A. Heinlein. It is a great read. Roger Zelazny is an acquired taste. I suggest Eye of Cat or Damnation Alley as good places to start.

I've read a lot of Heinlein, not much of Zelazny. The Heinlein books mentioned above are all good. I recently read Double Star and The Door Into Summer. Both are light and fun reads.

I've read a lot of Zelazny. He was one of my favorite writers early on. I'd start with the first five Amber books. I gave these to a friend. They became his favorite books with the first one. He's been taking one on vacation each year to make them last. I could never have that kind of patience with them. I also liked the book, This Immortal.

It seems that they are going to make a tv series of The Chronicles of Amber.

I'm looking forward to it.