linguistic:paraphrasing
Influences

The primary influence on Heinlein's writing style may have been Rudyard Kipling. Kipling is the first known modern example of " indirect exposition ", a writing technique for which Heinlein later became famous. In his famous text on " On the Writing of Speculative Fiction ", Heinlein quotes Kipling:

There are nine-and-sixty ways Of constructing tribal lays And every single one of them is right

Stranger in a Strange Land originated as a modernized version of Kipling's The Jungle Book. His wife suggested that the child be raised by Martians instead of wolves. Likewise, Citizen of the Galaxy can be seen as a reboot of Kipling's novel Kim.

The Starship Troopers idea of needing to serve in the military in order to vote can be found in Kipling's " The Army of a Dream ":

But as a little detail we never mention, if we don't volunteer in some corps or other—as combatants if we're fit, as non-combatants if we ain't—till we're thirty-five—we don't vote, and we don't get poor-relief, and the women don't love us.

Poul Anderson once said of Kipling's science fiction story " As Easy as A.B.C. ", "a wonderful science fiction yarn, showing the same eye for detail that would later distinguish the work of Robert Heinlein".

Heinlein described himself as also being influenced by George Bernard Shaw, having read most of his plays. Shaw is an example of an earlier author who used the competent man, a favorite Heinlein archetype. He denied, though, any direct influence of Back to Methuselah on Methuselah's Children.