Current reading: Heinlein & Bester

I'm about halfway through Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, a relatively short book about some folks in a crazy sort of genetically created distopian future. It's entertaining me well enough, though it's in line with about half his work, in that it's neither especially great nor especially weak.

I've been a very hardcore fan of Robert Heinlein since I first picked up Time Enough for Love when I was 14. Over the next several years and more sporadically through two decades, I devoured his work, reading pretty much everything he's ever had published. For a long time meeting Heinlein was on my shortlist of Life GoalsTM. He died before I got around to it. While many of his novels made a strong impression on me, my favourite work is the story "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." Written in 1942, this is from the very early years of his writing career, long before his books turned into scifi fanboy wet dream material [see anything he wrote in the '80s].

In addition to Beyond This Horizon, I just read Alfred Bester's "Star Light, Star Bright," a short story that can be found here*. I've read very little Bester, only a few of his short stories and The Stars My Destination, and enjoyed all of it. "Star Light, Star Bright" follows a queer chap on an ultimately frenzied search for a young boy who seems to have disappeared. I like his writing style and though elements of "Star Light, Star Bright" are distinctive of the period [1953], it was written with a sophistication more common in later scifi eras.

Incidentally, my favourite recurring character on Babylon 5 is psicop Al Bester, which led me to seek out the author's work in the first place.

*This is the SciFi channel's short story archive, with a great selection of both "classic" stories and more recent works.
[Update: Since SciFi became SyFy, I have been unable to locate any fiction archive on their site, so the link I had there broke. Sorry.]