The Number of the Beast

By: Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne, Emily Durante, Malcolm Hillgartner, Sean Runnette, Richard Powers, Tom Weiner

Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

The wickedest, most wonderful science-fiction story ever created in our - or any - time. Anything can begin at a party in California - and everything does in this bold masterwork by a grand master of science fiction.

When four supremely sensual and unspeakably cerebral humans - two male, two female - find themselves under attack from aliens who want their awesome quantum breakthrough, they take to the skies - and zoom into the cosmos on a rocket roller-coaster ride of adventure, danger, ecstasy, and peril.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) was the dominant science-fiction writer of the modern era, a writer whose influence on the field was immense. He won science fiction's Hugo Award for best novel four times.

©1980 Robert A. Heinlein (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“One of the grand masters of science fiction.” (Wall Street Journal)

“The most influential science fiction writer of all time!” (Locus)

“[A story] about two men and two women in a time-machine safari through this and other universes. But describing The Number of the Beast thus is like saying Moby-Dick is about a one-legged guy trying to catch a fish.” (National Review)

Well worth the re-read!

This fits in well with Heinleins other later works. I first read it a long time ago, possibly when it came out.
It is the story of four or five people. They are all very clever but also impressively individualistic (selfish) and have some rather bizarre personal politics .
On fact, all of Heinleins books show his politics to be right wing and libertarian, in the US usage of the term.
As a child, I never noticed the politics of this excellent story and would recommend it.
You might benefit from having read some of his earlier books first though.

Would have been 5🌟in Performance as well...

But those aren't the voices I hear when I read it. Heinlein is minimally dated, until you realize his historical records of the future are from a different universe.
Great fun.

Wonderful voice actors until the last chapter

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

As long as you DO NOT LISTEN to the last chapter, you'll be very happy.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Hilda--a true force of nature, funny, sexy, smart, and fierce.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

For the four main characters, yes. For the creature that voiced Jubal Harshaw, not in a million years. It will takes years of therapy to undo the damage that man did to my brain. He made Jubal Harshaw sound like Frank Zappa's Thing-Fish.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Print: The final chapter is the only sore spot for me. The book is quite wonderful, and the World as Myth concept is highly engaging.

Audio: Loved the 4 main characters. The second I heard the voice for Jubal, I wanted to hit my iPhone with a brick until it stopped making that horrible noise. I cannot describe how utterly AWFUL and ridiculous he sounded.

Any additional comments?

The voice actor for Jubal--Tom Weiner?--should be forever banned for this performance.

Very interesting ideas, but hard to finish.

The story started off interesting, and the idea of multiple universes in this context was unique. That aspect of the story was very enjoyable, however, the end of part three and all of part four have no drama. The story devolves into a polygamous sex orgy that I did not find either enjoyable or purposeful. It is nice that the multiple different stories of Heinlein are merged in this story, but nothing meaningful or resolute comes from it, other than that they are all now husbands and wives in the Long family and have lots of sex with each other.

The several different narrators gives the audio performance a nice touch, and it keeps things interesting until the latter part of part three and into part four. At that point, only a change in the story could save things. The Cat That Walks Through Walls makes more sense now though, which is nice. I'm a fan of Heinlein, but this book just didn't do much for me.

Too many narrators reading this book

I remember reading this as a kid and I was looking forward to listening to the audiobook.

My biggest issue was the multiple narrators. An interesting idea but poor execution. The idea is to have a different narrator for each character POV section, I guess so each character would have their own voice. The problem is that each character ends up having multiple voices. When Zeb is the POV all characters have voices created by the narrator of that section, when it is Hilda's POV section is read by a different female narrator all characters have a voice created by that narrator and so on.

It would have been better to have each character POV narrator be the voice for that characters dialogue throughout the book. What we ended up with is a hodgepodge of multiple narrators reading each characters dialogue differently.

Very confusing. Not sure I will finish or if I even recommend this narration. Maybe they will try and do it over but probably not.

Don't start here...

The performance is interesting, with the round-robin of narrators reading the chapters as told from the various characters' points of view, and the narrators do very good jobs, but it's ultimately Heinlein himself who lets us down. The concept of the story is good, but the story itself is just a hot mess. Jerry Pournelle once said that Heinlein's biggest problem was that he became too big to edit, and this story is proof of that statement.

What is really Real?

This isn't the most thought provoking Heinlein book but the concept of interdemensional traveling is fun. It begs the question of what is real? is everything real and fleshed out or just a figment of our collective imagination. Beautifully told if a little wordy at times. Some parts do last longer than enjoyable but over a solid place in the Heinlein canon especially with some of his other stories and how they connect.
My only real gripe was the number of narrators. It was hard to follow who was talking when they each added their own flair to each character and made it hard to connect then at times.

It didn't age well.

I read this book almost 40 years ago in my teens. Now, it seems completely vain and vacuous. I guess you really can't go home again. As for the narrators, they do not complement each other well. Some are acceptable but most lack any talent whatsoever.

Confusing Reading Style

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes. Interesting Idea of the universe are put forward. But let down by it's presentation

What did you like best about this story?

The idea of "free" time space travel, and what could be out there.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

Which narrator! This is my big problem with this book there are many narrators and they change each chapter. This makes it very hard to follow who is who, as the whole reading style changes. The narrators ranged from very good to comical. Over all the male narrators did a better job than the female ones, as the women speaking as males were not as believable.BTW is this question even grammatically correct? "narrators' performances". Sorry just a question, I've always had problems with genitive in english

Was The Number of the Beast worth the listening time?

For this recording, Listening time NO.But I would attempt it again with a single male narrator. Or just pick up the book and read it myself.

And I know now to stick to early Heinlein work.

Any additional comments?

The story read as if it was out of the 50s or 60s. it's really hard to believe it was written and published around 1980. There is a lot of "our dear husbands", and "now were married". Then later in the book the story drops into FKK, wife swapping and finally into incest. I personally think this is not Heinlein at his best (or anywhere close to it). However I really like the basic premise of mathematics bridging worlds and times and imagination.

this book rocks!

Heinlein wrote this book to show off his love for historic science fiction.... and to incorporate bits of campy sci-fi to show off why it didn't work.... all while working it into touching his Lazarus Long series of novels and hypothesizing that fiction creates new universes.... thoroughly entertaining and occasionally dipping into his free love thinking that helped spawn that culture in the 60s. good fun romp!