IF you liked Wool then check out Philip K. Dick's short story "The Defenders"(1953) and/or his book "The Penultimate Truth" (1964).

I hope you enjoy the journey.

That's how I feel about Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

The only similar experience I have of this is reading Samuel R. Delany's "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" where the prologue is 16% of the book. In audio length it was a little over 2 and a half hours. In any case, that ended up being the best part of the book. The rest was underwhelming.

I understand where you are coming from. I have a vison disorder that makes it hard to read so actual books were a pain when I was younger. I found my love for reading through comics like Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Jamie Delano's run on Hellblazer and Matt Wagner's Gendel. The transition to normal books wasn't overnight but I fazed out comics for sci-fi and horror novels. I don't know how else to describe it but I have a mind movie that runs in my head when I read a book. Authors like Clive Barker and Stephen King helped out a bit(Barker does a lot of the art for his books, so stories like "The Thief of Always" had good visuals to go with the book).

Try audio books. I almost exclusively consume my books this way now.

I didn't find it aggravating. I didn't love the main character but I didn't hate him. He's a naïve kid at the start and you're along for his growth. It's sort of geared towards young adults/teens since he was coming off from writing mostly juveniles which are more like Boy Scouts in space.

Some of those juveniles are excellent, like Citizen of the Galaxy & Tunnel in the Sky.

That annoyed me too.

But seriously, you can't read most sci-fi as and avocation of the ideas in the stories. Authors like Heinlein, Asimov and Philip K. Dick loved taking ideas and extrapolation what the future would be like if certain things persisted.

So, you've read some sentences in the book and think you know everything about it? You've got to teach me that trick.

You know the main goal of science fiction is to ask questions and draw ideas out to their extremes? That is what Heinlein is doing in the book. He isn't saying that the government in the book is how things should be but how they could turn out. I'd say you should just read the book for yourself but I'm sure at this point you'll only see what you want to see no matter what is there.

It's not exactly satire but it's not an avocation of the form the government takes in the book. Heinlein is taking the idea and running with it.

I haven't downvoted anything here myself but I think it's because you're admittingly coming at it with an opinion fully formed without taking the time to read the book to the end.

Thank you!

This book gets so much shit from people who've never read the whole thing or just interpreted it as the author advocating fascism, which is hilarious once you read his next book Stranger in a Strange Land and then Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I found that last book abysmal, so it might not just be you. Move on to something else.

All the posts I see here about the book make me not want to read or listen to it. I wasn't that impressed with The Martian when I read it back in 2014.

Edit: Year fix.