The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein

The Ace: Deconstructed with Lazarus, who has grown accustomed to having his every whim obeyed (and usually always being right to boot), and is rather flustered when his patronizing behaviour causes the Burroughs to leave in a snit.Absent-Minded Professor: Jacob can do multidimensional calculus in his head but requires a calculator to get 2+2=4 and often needs Deety or Hilda to remind him to eat or sleep.As far as the story goes it still follows a lot of the same beats and you can see what in the original transformed into the final product. There are some major changes to the plot, The biggest one being that the meeting with Lazarus was originally forging an alliance between The Lensman and the inhabitants of Barsoom with Heinlein's other work never showing up.

Not to be confused with Number of the Beast, the fictional use of the dread '666', although it is referenced by the characters.Īn original draft of the book has been released called The Pursuit Of The Pankera. The book ends with the Burroughs and Carters (as Zeb and Hilda have married Deety and Jacob, respectively) joining Lazarus Long's extended family and staging a convention for all the fictional heroes of the multiverse.

Throughout this process, they are pursued by marauding interdimensional adversaries with the power to rewrite history, who end up possibly being controlled by a rival Author.

Along the way, they discover that every single fictional universe ever invented by anyone is real and can be accessed by shifting one's dimensional coordinates appropriately, which ends up taking them into the worlds of Lensman, John Carter of Mars, the Land of Oz, and many others before they end up in the world of Heinlein's own archprotagonist Lazarus Long. The plot centers around four geniuses, Zebediah ('Zeb') John Carter, Dejah Thoris ('Deety') Burroughs, her father Jacob, and their friend Hilda Mae, who find themselves embarking on a zany romp through The Multiverse thanks to Jacob's newly invented time machine. When plotted against his 'Future History' series, this book is a sequel to Time Enough for Love, and is followed by The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. It is best known for being a Massively Multiplayer Crossover that unites every single fictional timeline he had ever written and those of multiple other authors, introducing the concept of The World as Myth that would be featured in all his subsequent works until his death.

The Number of the Beast is a 1980 Science Fiction novel written by Robert A.

The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein