Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.
I was a weird but definite kid, and there were essentially no gender roles for me to fit into.
I wholeheartedly rejected anything remotely feminine but was not enthusiastic about anything masculine, either. I did not want to cook and have babies, and I did not want to be an engineer or a baseball player or a soldier or a politician or any of the myriad careers open mostly or solely to men. I wanted to be a poet.
I did always think of Heinlein as a strict rationalist, although a dispassionate examination of his works doesn't support that.
Truthfully, the person with whom I identified most in Heinlein's early works was Rhysling in 'The Green Hills of Earth.'
I first read Heinlein when I was very young.
