I've read everything of his that I can get my hands on, with the exception of his YA stuff (started straight on the adult stuff from my old man's collection when I was a kid, never went back), and yes, I think my assessment is true (although you might be right about Puppet Masters).

I Will Fear No Evil is probably the worst book I've ever read. It's the fucking Gone Fishin' of the literary world. The 2nd half of Stranger was unreadable. JOB sucked. Number of the Beast sucked. Friday sucked. I _want_ Heinlein to be good, I really do. I gave him plenty of chances, but, with very few exceptions, he failed to deliver. I mean, I get that it was a different time, and that you had to pepper your stories with a little sex to make them more palatable to the kind of people who were buying pulp sci fi, but Christ, I'd like a little bit of actual sci fi in my books, not just "Johnny fucked his mom in space again".

Avoid Heinlein. He's only got like 3 good books anyway (Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress [best sci fi book ever], and half each of Stranger and Cat), and subjecting anyone to that convoluted, Oedipus-driven Lazarus Long shit at an early age is either going to turn them off the genre, or make them try to mount their mothers.

Finally, parents can know ahead of time if their kids are destined to grow up into whiny little John Hughes emo assholes, and vacuum the little bitch out before they have to end up paying for 20 years worth of Hot Topic clothes.

Up next, the Goth gene!

Sell your kids, and then take the money and pay someone else to clean up your cables for you.

I've been looking into this myself lately (US resident, hate the fact that the free market is quickly becoming an extinct beast here), and fwiw, Estonia and Hong Kong are at the top of my list. Estonia b/c they have a flat tax (20%), and are pretty libertarian-leaning currently (although their PM's party just narrowly avoided defeat in this last election, so keep an eye out). Hong Kong is a little crowded, and there's the whole China thing to deal with, but for the most part, the Reds respect the "two systems, one country" policy that's kept Hong Kong prosperous.

I make about 25% more than I did when I was working a 9-5, and I was getting paid slightly above the area average for a web developer at the time. For me, and I may be the exception, going out on my own was a fantastic decision from both a financial and a personal perspective.

Unless you're in Austin, and then stay the fuck out of my territory and keep your day job.

In all seriousness, I started, and continue to run, a moderately successful dev company on my own via 100% Craigslist clients. I began by building up a small, but consistent client base while still at my 9-5, and then, when the time was right, I struck out on my own.

I would advise against places like rentacoder and getafreelancer and elance, etc... More often than not, with those joints, you're competing against Eastern European or Indian programming companies that charge like $8/hr, and the client base on those sites is more cost-conscious than quality-conscious. You'll waste a ton of time.

Also, for what it's worth, _never_ utilize the services of a site that makes you pay for it. More often than not, they're not worth the money you spend on them.