On a recent drive to Idaho I had just finished listening to the audible book version of Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast* when I saw this:
* Did you know he also wrote an alternate universe version of this book, which is about alternate universes?
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
I just read the alternate (“Pursuit of the Pankara”) and re-read Number of the Beast right after that. Both are excellent; on the whole I like Pankara slightly better.
It’s curious that both versions exist, and one wonders why the one wasn’t published in Heinlein’s lifetime.
Having read Pankara, I noticed in re-reading Number of the Beast that there’s a leftover from the earlier version that no one noticed in editing: a reference to a Barsoomian mathematician who doesn’t appear in the body of the book at all, but does figure prominently in Pankara.
Both books are highly recommended.