Same here. Tunnel in the Sky was my favorite book. Reading it as an adult, it reveals the Heinleinian tendency of mixing pseudo-egalitarianism (a racially diverse cast of characters*) with fascist tendencies (read between the lines of the plot of “survival testing” a bunch of high schoolers and you see a straight-up fascist society). He was a weird dude.
*Which at the time I didn’t grok, and I think few did, because of the whitewashed cover art by Darrell K. Sweet.
