Oops!
I just read the new posts here and to my dismay, I noticed that I may have implied that Heinlein’s excellent [u]The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress[/u] is a short story! Uh-uh, no-no, it’s a novel. What I meant was: Read any of his short story collections.
On the subject of Robert Anson Heinlein, he wrote a long series of short stories, novellas and one novel in a series that became known as his “Future History”. I believe he may have pioneered the concept; he certainly carried farther and in more depth and detail than others. They were all collected in a big anthology called (I hope I get this right) [u]The Past Through Tomorrow[/u]. It contains the stand-alone novel [u]Methuselah’s Children[u] which turned out to be a prequel to the great [/u]Time Enough For Love[u]. It introduces Lazarus Long, who I consider to be RAH’s best character. It comes complete with a time line of his “history” and cover some 40 years of his writing including what, I believe, is his first published story. It is amazing how much of his “future history” parallels much of our own. ❗ BTW, We have been living in the “Crazy Years” for the last 30 (see; Malthusian Pills in his hilarious send ups of newscasts and advertising) , or so, years which kind of scares me given what he (and I, possibly)see coming next.
Hell, I talk too much. But my original premise stands, there is just so much really great stand-alone SF out there! Any local library probably has a bunch of moldy old SF sitting on it’s shelves that goes unnoticed and unread 😥 that would probably be a good place to mine forgotten and out-of-print gems. Good luck![/u]