Editing Robert A. Heinlein (section)

===Later work, 1980–1987===
After a seven-year hiatus brought on by poor health, Heinlein produced five new novels in the period from 1980 (''[[The Number of the Beast (novel)|The Number of the Beast]]'') to 1987 (''[[To Sail Beyond the Sunset]]''). These books have a thread of common characters and time and place. They most explicitly communicated Heinlein's philosophies and beliefs, and many long, didactic passages of dialog and exposition deal with government, sex, and religion. These novels are controversial among his readers and one critic, [[David Langford]], has written about them very negatively.<ref>See, e.g., {{Cite web |title=Vulgarity and Nullity. Robert A. Heinlein 'The Number of the Beast' |url=https://ansible.uk/writing/numbeast.html |first=David |last=Langford |access-date=December 29, 2022 |website=Ansible.uk |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120081308/http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/numbeast.html |archive-date=January 20, 2013}}</ref> Heinlein's four Hugo awards were all for books written before this period.

Most of the novels from this period are recognized by critics as forming an offshoot from the Future History series and are referred to by the term ''World as Myth''.<ref>Patterson, William H., Jr., and Thornton, Andrew., The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 128: "His books written after about 1980&nbsp;... belong to a series called by one of the central characters ''World as Myth''." The term Multiverse also occurs in the print literature, e.g., Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion, James Gifford, Nitrosyncretic Press, Sacramento, California, 2000. The term World as Myth occurs for the first time in Heinlein's novel ''[[The Cat Who Walks Through Walls]]''.</ref>

The tendency toward authorial self-reference begun in ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' and ''Time Enough for Love'' becomes even more evident in novels such as ''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'', whose first-person protagonist is a disabled military veteran who becomes a writer, and finds love with a female character.<ref name="Robert A. Heinlein Biography">{{cite web|url=http://library.ucsc.edu/special-collections-exhibits|title=Robert A. Heinlein, 1907–1988|access-date=November 27, 2009|work=Biography of Robert A. Heinlein|publisher=University of California Santa Cruz|archive-date=April 18, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150418114331/http://library.ucsc.edu/special-collections-exhibits|url-status=live}}</ref>

The 1982 novel ''[[Friday (novel)|Friday]]'', a more conventional adventure story (borrowing a character and backstory from the earlier short story ''[[Gulf (novella)|Gulf]]'', also containing suggestions of connection to ''[[The Puppet Masters]]'') continued a Heinlein theme of expecting what he saw as the continued disintegration of Earth's society, to the point where the title character is strongly encouraged to seek a new life off-planet. It concludes with a traditional Heinlein note, as in ''The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress'' or ''Time Enough for Love'', that freedom is to be found on the frontiers.

The 1984 novel ''[[Job: A Comedy of Justice]]'' is a sharp satire of organized religion. Heinlein himself was agnostic.<ref>{{cite book|title=Robert Heinlein Interview: And Other Heinleiniana|year=1999|publisher=Pulpless.Com|isbn=978-1-58445-015-3|page=62|author=J. Neil Schulman|chapter=Job: A Comedy of Justice Reviewed by J. Neil Schulman|quote=Lewis converted me from atheism to Christianity—Rand converted me back to atheism, with Heinlein standing on the sidelines rooting for agnosticism.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith|year=2010|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-0-7546-9360-4|page=57|author=Carole M. Cusack|quote=Heinlein, like Robert Anton Wilson, was a lifelong agnostic, believing that to affirm that there is no God was as silly and unsupported as to affirm that there was a God.}}</ref>