> Heinlein is interesting because he played with social ideas, as opposed to
> technology for its own sake, more than any of the other "golden age" sci-fi
> writers,
Asimov may have been the grandmaster of idea-mongering, all that Roman history cleverly stuffed into the Foundation series, and of course the informatic theology of the robot laws. Heinlein had a better sense of marketing, of course -- he's just at the cusp of the moment when science fiction turned away from machines which produce kinetic energy, and towards machines which process information. Like James Blish on speed or something.
-- Dennis