Product Description

Epic, ambitious and entertaining, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND caused controversy and uproar when it was first published.

Still topical and challenging today, the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the first man from Mars to visit Earth, is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69954 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-28
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Washington Post
'The best of his many books and the best in the genre'

Review

'The best of his many books and the best in the genre'

Synopsis
Epic, ambitious and entertaining, "Stranger in a Strange Land" caused controversy and uproar when it was first published. Still topical and challenging today, the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the first man from Mars to visit Earth, is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984.

Customer Reviews

its what editors are for...
I bought this recently as I remembered that many years ago someone in a pub told me it was a brilliant novel. I'm sure there's a moral in that. I might have hated it less if I'd had the good fortune to read the original heavily edited version. It's an awful, long-winded, self-satisfied book. Page after page of characters waxing lyrical about everything from homosexuality to art, religion and politics - and every syllable of it the most outdated, reactonary guff. How is a contemporary reader supposed to make allowances for a novel when one of its supposedly most sympathetic characters (in this case Jill) says "Nine times out of Ten, if a girl gets raped, its at least partly her own fault". It isn't shocking it's just bad,bad,bad.

Truly a stange land - the 1960s
I REREAD this novel after perhaps a 20-year gap and was surprised how it had dated.
It is a fantastic idea for a story - the man born and raised by Martians is brought to Earth where he has no preconceptions about human culture. Valentine Michael Smith then proceeds to use his supernatural talents to deconstruct some of society's assumptions and institutions.
It's the things that Valentine attacks - such as attitudes to sexuality - and the things he champions - free love, the power of mind over matter and a pantheistic gnosticism - that date this novel now.
Nonetheless I think it is an interesting read in terms of understanding the 1960s.
This particular editon is the uncut version including some 60,000 or so words not in the 1961 edition. I'm not convinced the extra words do anything for the story - it really does go on a bit too long.

Typical Heinlein, but not the best
This is a stange book, atypical Heinlein, but only if you take it by itself. But if you take it in light of the later books, it fits in with somew of the later books.
Uo to this point, he had dealt with mainly scifi issues, Moon is a harsh mistress looking at the American Revolution; Glory Road, a study in fantasy. Then he changed his style and ideas.
It is fairly known fact that over 40 years he wrote a complete history of the future, culminating in Time enough for love, which brings the history to an end, with the story of Lazarus Long. Though he will return to this story, noticably in Number of the beast and susequent books, this is the end of his history.
It is at this point, or just before, that he writes Stranger. From this point on, he will start to experiment with new ideas. One of the idea is that he starts to experiment with religion, exploring ideas.
In this case, his attack at first appears to be classical/Pentecostal Christianity. His attack is on Mormonism, and is quite fun.
This is followed on by Job, another study in Christianity. In this case, it is Jehovahs Witnesses. This is also the start of his later books, and his study of religion.
Stranger can be read as a hippy novel, and in many ways it was the hippy Bible.
AQ good read, but not his best.