Stranger in a Strange Land

Science fiction · Satire

Print length: 498 pagesPenguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

Description

Valentine Michael Smith is human by birth but Martian by upbringing, the sole survivor discovered when a second expedition reaches Mars twenty-five years after the first mission vanished. Returned to Earth as a young adult, he is confined in a hospital while officials struggle to control a man who has never encountered human society. Nurse Gillian Boardman secretly befriends him through a Martian water-sharing ritual, then helps him escape to the protection of writer, physician, and lawyer Jubal Harshaw. As Smith becomes a celebrity, he studies Earth’s rival religions and develops the Church of All Worlds from Martian ideas. Heinlein uses Smith’s estranged perspective to satirize politics, organized faith, sexuality, and the customs humans accept as natural.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dialogue-driven · Direct · Essayistic

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Irreverent · Philosophical · Satirical

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Ideas · World

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

BelongingCommunityFreedomIdentityReligion and faithSexuality

About Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein was an American science fiction writer, engineer, and naval officer whose work helped establish hard science fiction and carry the genre into mainstream magazines. His futures are built through indirect exposition: unfamiliar tools, customs, and institutions appear in use before they are fully explained. Direct, conversational prose carries technical problem-solving and sustained arguments about competence, liberty, citizenship, and social convention. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress combines a revolt plot with low-gravity constraints, resource economics, and debates over voluntary government, all narrated by a computer technician. Starship Troopers alternates combat and military training with classrooms devoted to suffrage, discipline, and the moral meaning of force, so a soldier’s coming of age also becomes an argument about civic duty and political power. Stranger in a Strange Land changes the method by placing a Martian-raised human inside Earth’s culture. Dialogue and satire make religion, sexuality, politics, and everyday custom appear contingent. Even when the action turns on warfare, escape, or engineering, ideas are tested through decisions and social systems.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Language: English
ISBN: 9780143111627

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