I Will Fear No Evil

I am an admitted Heinlein fan. I own the entire canon in paper, everything available in e-book format, and everything Audible carries in audio. But this is not his best novel. He wrote it at a low point in his career. The story is still entertaining, but the characters are not his most compelling. So why purchase this book?

Heinlein, as always, provides interesting commentary on our culture. Many of his ideas are coming to pass today. There are creditable observations on how America is moving to a fractured society run by corporate interests and political thugs. Remember that his ideas about the relation of medicine to law were written over 30 years ago. His vision is impressive and thought provoking.

The performance and recording are superb. I was unfamiliar with Anthony Heald until this work. I will seek out his other performances - he's outstanding.

And it's a fun listen. Look, the sex scenes will seem silly. The metaphysical ideas are really out there. But it's still an enjoyable way to spend hours. You won't be bored.

Thank you Blackstone Audio and Audible for adding this masterwork to your collection.

David's review of run, don't read is a great review, only a little long.

I am a Heinlein fan. I loved The Green Hills of Earth, Starship Troopers, Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Double Star. This book is crap.

I did not like Friday or Stranger in A Strange Land. This book is in that category.

This 90 year old man gets his brain transplanted into a 20 something hot chick's body. As a man he was a man's man and loved women. Once he is in a female body, he becomes a airhead. He wants to sleep with everybody including his best friend. He is so pretty he makes gay men want to go straight. I am pretty sure that if tomorrow my best friend's brain ends up in Beyonce's body, I am going to be too weirded out to have sex with him/she. Heinlein believes that a change in body will change our gender, yet studies show that it is the brain that determines the sex.

The worst part is that this is 19 hours long. I could handle eight to ten hours of it, but not 19. After the surgery is over, the book reads like a cheap romance. Lots and lots of girl talk. Hours of girl talk. Mind numbing middle school girl talk with adult situations thrown in.

Please do not let this be your first Heinlein.

...Heinlein

what were you thinking?

I don't even know where to begin.


Okay, I can forgive Heinlein a lot. I forgave him for "Friday." By the end of his career, the Old Man was pretty much just churning out whatever he felt like. But he gave us "Starship Troopers" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Podkayne of Mars" (I know, that last one rarely makes anyone's list of Heinlein favorites, but I liked it), and a lot of other fantastic science fiction, much of which is actually teen-friendly and teen-accessible.

I had never read this abomination, though. This... appalling distillation of the very skeeviest crevices of that dirty old man's id, dredged from the depths of early 20th century gender stereotypes and glossed with the 1970s "free love" aesthetic Heinlein had going on. The result is "I Will Fear No Evil", in which a 90-something-year-old man has his brain transplanted into the body of his hot secretary and promptly turns into the girliest girl who ever spent most of a novel running around tee-heeing that she's not wearing any panties.

yeah seriously did we take a left turn at Piers Anthony here?


And it's not like Heinlein didn't have the writing chops to make this interesting, or that he couldn't explore mind-bending ideas, including gender reification which when he wrote this in 1970 still was barely out of the realm of science fiction.

(But Ursula Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969 so Heinlein you have no excuse!)

So, I already told you the plot. Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is a billionaire, born long enough ago to remember the Great Depression, but the book is set in the early 21st century. Smith's ancient body is only being kept alive by life support, so he arranges to be the "donor" in the world's first brain transplant operation. By sheer coincidence, his gorgeous young secretary, Eunice Branca, is murdered a few days later, and Smith's brain is transplanted into her body.

So, a lifelong heterosexual male born almost a century ago exploring life in the body of a nubile young female. Could be interesting, right? Even if not handled precisely... ah... sensitively? It could still be a good story, especially in the hands of Robert Heinlein, who for all his faults (every single one of which oozes across the pages in this book) was a darn good storyteller.

But I Will Fear No Evil is not a good story. It's an endless series of conversations between Johann and Eunice (who somehow still "inhabits" Johann's mind even though her brain is gone) about sex. Johann, without even hesitating, embraces the role of becoming a male fantasy, giggling frequently to Eunice that being a girl is so much fun! As "Joan" he goes about kissing, fondling, and doing pretty much anyone who holds still long enough. But mostly men. Always the men. She strips and flaunts and teases and seduces because that's what girls are for — always with Eunice's wholehearted psychic approval, because Eunice herself, as she describes repeatedly in wanky detail, was also fond of jumping anything with a pulse, especially if it was male.

Of course, all the men "Joan" is fooling around with know that it's actually their nonagenarian boss occupying that body, but none of them hesitate for a moment either. Just as Johann immediately accepts that he's now a girl, so does everyone else.

I haven't even gotten into the spanking and the lessons on how women must always be super-hot and sexually available but never forget to clean the toilet and the impregnating herself with his seed and

yeah seriously


Everything — everything — you have ever heard about Heinlein's "problematic" gender issues and skeevy sex roles is spread in stark glossy airbrushed glory across this book. I Will Fear No Evil is a course in anti-Heinleinism: "Why Robert A. Heinlein was a Skeevy Old Man 101." Everything you need to know about why he has so many detractors. Minus the alleged fascism and libertarianism, because the minimal worldbuilding is just another representation of a crumbling overpopulated socialist-capitalist state. There's a bit of Heinlein's usual ruminating about individualism, but then Joan is off to flash some other dude, and we're back to the main plot of the novel, which is how many different conversations Joann can have about sex in between having sex. Threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, girls, boys, at least she didn't get around to bestiality but there was serious contemplation of incest and a tempting little thirteen-year-old...

yeah seriously that is the plot


Honestly, I wouldn't have hated this book quite so much (though I'd still have mocked the heck out of it) if it had a plot.

For the love of Hugo Gernsback, do not read this novel if you've never read anything else by Heinlein, because I promise you'll never want to read anything else by him. I can't see how even the most ardent Heinlein fan could love this book. (I've read some of the 5-star reviews, trying to figure out what those readers saw in it, and... no, I still don't get it.)

Heinlein wrote some great books. Even some of his really problematic books (well, they were probably all problematic in some fashion) were great books. But this? It made my skin crawl. And worse, it bored me. It. Stank.

One. Star.

Very disappointing, It was hard to finish the book, and it felt more like a cheap paper back sex story than science fiction.

probably not - didn't get far enough into it to tell. this one was over the line for me.

used his talent as a writer to be descriptive without so much sexual content.

heinlein is talented, who doesn't know that? but this one disappointed me. i know he can make any story great - without going ... too far.

a content rating system of some kind would be nice. movies are rated, music is rated, why can't we have a rating system here so we can make choices without wasting credits?

My brain work in images.

This can sometimes lead to confusion or misses. When I first saw the Lord of the Ring movie, I was so surprised and annoyed when they cam to Rivendal as it, in my minds picture, was on the other side of the river.

So when I read a book I can se most of the story played in my mind and that gives me great pleasure in reading.

At the moment im reading the book - well listening to the audiobook - I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Hainlein. It was fist published in 1970 so its a bit old but its a very nice book.

The plot is that billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is dying, and wants to have his brain transplanted into a new body. His beautiful young female secretary, Eunice Branca, is murdered, so her body is used, since Smith never thought to place any restriction on the sex of the donor.

For some strange reason the spirit (or whatever you want to call it) is Eunice is still with Johann when he wakes up after the transplantation in the new body.

The book then continues to follow the 2 minds as they experience a , for Johann, new world and new body. And a new sex. Yes the book steams of sex. Actually its not written that much and there are no explicit writing of it, just what leading up to it and feelings and so on. But as my mind is very graphical its very sexy for me.

I would say that this is one of the most trilling books I have read in a long while.

The vocal artists are doing a wounderfull job. Even when you started to hear the words from Eunice, you cluld here that it was here before you got the explanation it was her.

So the characterization of the characters in the book is very nice and its hard to put it down.

As a long time fan of Heinlein I am used to him being quite close to the mark when describing the social aspects of the human condition. That is why this book was such a shock. Heinlein so completely misses the mark in his exploration of a modern strong woman that is is pathetic. What no doubt began as a tribute by the author to the emerging power of women in the 1960's, comes off as a wistful dream of a sex starved man who sees little potential in women beyond the ability to stir strong feelings in the loins of men.

Riding the bus, or walking wet dark streets, my mind was taken to a place where money buys everything, but love wins even more.

Heinlein is the master of course, and he keeps a half dozen sub plots spinning around the main line. I felt invited into the world of men from a woman's perspective. Only Heinlein can write a story where the heroine has both a tender and loving heart, and a backbone of steel.

His voice is warm and welcoming. His inflection is very pleasing, and he seems to understand each of the many cast of characters to deep degree. This book sounds like I heard it in my head the first time I read this book many years ago.

This Heinlein book started out good, but about one third of the way through, it changed into a really bad book. I make it a point to try to finish every book I start, and it was very difficult to grind on to the end. Usually I finish a book in a few days, but this one took a month.

Can't bring my self to finish it, not even close to the other heinlein books i've read

yes