How long does it take to read The Number of the Beast?
The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein takes about 9 hours 22 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 22 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1980. 511 pages, about 140,525 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 37 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 22 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 51 minutes |
The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Heinlein buff David Potter explained on alt.fan.heinlein, in a posting reprinted on the Heinlein Society, that the entire book is actually "one of the greatest textbooks on narrative fiction ever produced, with a truly magnificent set of examples of HOW NOT TO DO IT right there in the foreground, and constant explanations of how to do it right, with literary references to people and books that DID do it right, in the background." He noted that "every single time there's a boring lecture or tedious character interaction going on in the foreground, there's an example of how to do it RIGHT in the background."
Subjects: American Science fiction, Fiction, science fiction, alien contact, Fiction, science fiction, general
