If you are not philosophically inclined, don't read this book

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	• Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein Ace Trade, 1991 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 539 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Must Read

Stranger in a Strange Land is a great book, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the science fiction genre. Robert A. Heinlien - a classic science fiction novelist, wrote this book. Heinlien creates a future world that is very different from today. The book was written in the late 1950's, so some worldviews are different from our contemporary views. The world Heinlien creates is more unified than the world today. One government, the Federation, controls the planet earth and individual countries resemble states rather that independent countries. This is one interesting idea of many that Heinlien includes in his novel. But the story doesn't revolve around the world's government, even though it plays a big role.

Valentine Michael Smith is a Martian that comes from the planet Mars to the planet Earth. Smith is a unique character in that he is Martian, but is of human decent. The story is about Smith's becoming accustomed to human culture and nature, since they are very different from Martian culture and nature. Smith interacts with many characters that Heinlien creates. These characters are very unique in their own way, and are very memorable to the reader. Heinlien develops his characters in such a good way, that the reader can easily believe the characters could be real people. The dialogue between people in the book is very believable because you can understand what is being said, and it sounds like conversations you would hear in real life as opposed to writing.

If you want to read a book that has an opinion on modern human culture as a whole, and you want to see another person's idea of where this contemporary world is headed, this is the book to read. This book also has themes of human nature and how weird it really is. Smith goes through a journey in finding the reasons why people act the way they do and how he can translate that into how he should act in society, do you want to accompany him on this journey?

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Grok This

Ack! Even though Heinlein was a 'bit' of a sexist (to say the least), I've always liked his books ... until this one. I love the idea of a human being stranded on another planet and coming back to earth years later, but I couldn't get past the dawning of the age of Aquarius. It was soooooo 60s. Free love and all that groking. I could just see the technicolor paisley flowing freely.

The book left me cold. Maybe I was jealous that I didn't live the 60s. Maybe I just didn't understand it.

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If you are not philosophically inclined, don't read this book

This novel was way ahead of its time in many ways, and yes, stuck in the 50s in other ways. Reading some people's negative reviews here has been amusing.

Most of them presume that Heinlein was writing from their 90s or post-2000 perspective for some insane reason. Take note: He wrote this *before* the so called "free-love" movement had become widespread in the 60s. Take further note: The water-brother mini-society he created in the novel wasn't "free-love" at all, but had a quite high barrier to entry.

Other negative posters are clearly unable to escape their ethnocentric viewpoint, finding the relationships constructed by Heinlein to be distasteful based on their societal values. If you are unable to think about a society that practices polyamory without feeling embarassment or nausea, or really think that it is simply "unnatural", then don't read this book. (...)

Most of all, remember this is science fiction. It's intended to portray an alternate reality, and I think it does a fine job of that while satirizing our reality at the same time. I could go on about other particulars of the book, but I won't: In short, this is one of the finest books ever written.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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