I haven’t read War of the World in a long time but, although I liked the movie alot, I’d be astonished if the book didn’t stand up for me as better than any film version anyone will ever make.

Tim Blake Nelson is the guy who runs the prison of people in suspended animation.

Re gross out gags, I mostly love the part where he goes to get his eyes removes and the spider chase, but right in between those there’s this scene where he can’t see and he eats this maggoty sandwhich by mistake. It’s like something from a cartoon, I just thought it was gross without really being funny.

Heinlein wrote books that everyone calls his “juveniles.” Generally anyone who likes his other stuff from that era enjoys the juveniles. They have teenagers as protagonists, but so does Dune. I think he wrote them partially because he wanted to promote science to kids, probably because he was afraid of the U.S. falling behind the Soviet Union. There were certainly books back then that were though of as “boys books,” but science fiction was a niche market and I don’t know how that affected the way SF paperbacks written as juveniles were sold. But some of the juveniles were serialized in the Boy Scout magazine Boys Life. Starship Troopers was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which would not have wanted to be seen as a kids magazine.

Cruise wasn’t involves with Battlefield Earth, but it seems like he would have been. The Co$ as an organization viewed it as an important moment. I remember a youtuber who was an ex-Scientologist turned ant-Scientologist saying that they made the Sea Org member all go see every available showing on opening weekend. So at a multiplex where it had it’s own screen that would be, what, 7 times in one weekend?

Vonnegut would be on teachers’ shelves, but if we’re talking about the market or a particular section of a library then probably not.