There is a brouhaha going in the science fiction community, surrounding the Hugo awards. The Hugo is a top award, given to the truly top drawer authors. According to the flak coming out of the combat zone, the Hugo's used to be controlled by a New York publishing house, Baen Books if I remember aright. A movement in fandom arose to take over control of the Hugos and cut the Baen people out of it. Sides were taken, flames were posted. I am far enough from ground zero that I don't really know who is who and what is what, and the merits of either side. But the fireworks are fun to watch.
A long internet ramble got diverted into comparing Robert A. Heinlein with Andre Norton as writers. I'm familiar with both writers, having encountered both of them them in grade school. Liked both, have read all, or nearly all the books they ever published. I was a little surprised to see all the comparisons. I always thought Heinlein was the better writer of the two. Heinlein's stories were always new and different, he seldom repeated a story, where Norton's stories were pretty much all coming of age stories with very young protagonists. Heinlein invented strong new characters for each story and seldom reused them in later stories. Friday, Oscar Gordon, Johnny Rico, Podkayne, Manny Davis, Michael Valentine Smith, and many others were all unique, interesting, but only appeared in one book and were replaced by other characters in later books. Andre's character was pretty much the same book after book. She gave him/her a new name in the new book, but as a reader I knew this character pretty well, he/she never did anything to surprise me.
And, a lot of people sign their Internet posts with Heinlein quotes. I don't remember seeing any Norton quotes out there.
Thus endeth today's bit of trivia.
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