Stranger in a Strange Land

Rating:
Summary: Classic in the Science -- Fiction Genre
Review: I read the book for just four hours straight. For you it may be something normal, but for those four hours I was separated from the rest of the world. I was in another university, Heinlein's university. The book displays our way of living, our society in a way we would never see, if not pushed to... And that's what Heinlein does. He directly pushes you right in the chest, from the first line. Heinlein keeps the book dynamic and the plot interesting and exclusively full with humor. Humor is one of the most major characteristics of his books. But it always covers something serious - his major and hocking ideas. When asked what he did say with writing "Stranger in a Strange Land" he smiled back and said that he only wrote a book, it's people who see what they want and are able to see. In this certain book I see some really frightening facts about our society and particularly about religion, sex and murder and prison. If I got your attention, or maid you interested in the book just take it and read it... Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: historically interesting, but still a dull read
Review: I heard this was a classic so I picked it up. I had read Star Ship troopers and thought this book, rated as one of his best if not the best Heinlein book, would be a good pick. Unfortunately the book was utterly dull in terms of the story. The new ideas in the book were only moderately interesting, and that only for their historical significance and not because they had appeal to me now. I was impressed by how fully Heinlein grasped US culture of the 50s how it was going to change in the 60's. The shift, almost overnight, from scientific skeptic, to born-again evangelical cult-master really marked that whole period of US and world history and it is grafted quite clearly in his own work. There is such a dramatic break between the first and second half of the book, marking the switch from one way of looking at things to another. Unfortunately though, it was boring to read on and on about Heinlein's theories. Yes, it was an essay and the author was simply potificating thru his character Jubal. No, my disappointment has nothing to do with my political views. I wanted to read a story not an essay. Almost nothing happens in this whole book. It's like going to church... a really boooooring church that is. Besides the authors rather racy stories about free love, there is little keep the reader reading. Oh behave!!!

Rating:
Summary: Nice but not exactly science fiction
Review: I have to admit I've read this book a little late - maybe I was expecting it to the THE science fiction novel, but if it was this case, I expected too much.

Don't get me wrong; the book is marvelous. But it starts as a "normal" science fiction book, but somewhere in the middle of the book it start getting a different point of view, becoming much more based on "religion" discussing and even trying to push some comical moments.

Robert A. Heinlein presents some pretty nice idea - a man grown without any of the civilization's standards, and thus, unable to understand the most basic things like laughing - but this idea alone doesn't make the best book ever written.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding Charles Manson 101
Review: I first read this book while in college, around 1970. It was one of my favorites back then. It became even more fascinating when I read, somewhere, that it was read by Charles Manson as a "how-to" bible. (Manson's bizzarre story does parrallel this in many ways.

So, if you want to get an understanding of where Charles Manson got his inspiration, read this book.

Re-reading it was still fun. 30 years had erased most of my memories of the details, so it was a fun read. But this time it didn't feel quite as smooth, and it felt a bit too overtly didactic and preachy. I don't mind a story with a message. but this one comes on a bit too thick sometimes. Of course you get the same thing from loads of other authors. Overall, this should be considered one of the all-time classics of Science fiction, with the Foundation Series, Ringworld, 2001, to name a few.

Rating:
Summary: I was glad to be able to put this one down
Review: Wow this book really dragged on. I found it really tedious, and almost didn't bother finishing it. I've read a lot of SciFi and his seems to fall in the pulp area. I read and enjoyed starship troopers and figured I'd give this one a try as it is supposed to be a 'classic'. I was really disappointed.

The characters all just mill around this central god like figure with very little direction, feel for the rest of the world, or reader interest. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Do a search on a different author, there is lots of better books out there.

Rating:
Summary: Read This
Review: I first picked up STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND in the eighth grade, when my older brother was reading it in high-school. I have read it innumerable times since then, and it is still my favorite book. A close and enlightening look at messiahism and the basic needs and desires of all human beings, Heinlein's utopian vision is captivating and inspiring, despite its sad and inevitable conclusion. Although I can see now the sexist overtones to the novel that I missed at age twelve, I still treasure this book for its insight and hope. Read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Inconsistent
Review: I really enjoyed the first 2/3 or so of this book. It was entertaining, thoughtful, good-old science fiction. But then the book suffers a huge shift in tone. You just shouldn't introduce angels and a bunch of pseudo-religious nonsense that far into a book. To me, it was about as jarring as switching from third to first person in the middle of a novel. I can't help but wonder if Heinlein wrote the beginning and the end of this book at different times.

Rating:
Summary: Don't try this at home
Review: This is where Heinlein really started to lose it. In TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE the thread finally snaps and there's no plot apart from Lazarus Long's desire to have sex with his mother. (Or maybe it had already snapped in I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, which had no plot apart from Johann Sebastian Bach Smith's exploration of what it was like to be "reincarnated" as a woman.) But in STRANGER, Heinlein merely sows the seeds of his later cliches.

And what cliches they are. Grokking! Water brothers! Free love! "Religion" as the customs of a tribe of monkeys long ago outgrown by Heinlein's race of mythical supermen! And all of it is presented with a veneer of Heinlein's own scientistic, positivistic, seen-it-with-my-own-eyes-so-it-must-be-so antiphilosophical philosophy (mostly represented by Jubal Harshaw in the present volume).

Well, don't try this at home, kids. Heinlein may well be the oldest person in recent history to indulge in such adolescent fantasies, but unfortunately he drew a lot of others with him. And they made messes of their lives, just as any sane person would have predicted.

From a point of view forty years on the yonder side of its publication, this book is primarily notable for its introduction of the waterbed. (Yes, Heinlein was the first to think it up; in this novel it's used as a comfortable hospital bed. One of the first people to manufacture the things in real life acknowledged Heinlein's contribution by sending him one for free.)

So if you want to do homage to this book and to Heinlein's oeuvre, don't try to have sex with your mom, or start a polymorphous commune, or anything like that. Just go out and get a waterbed.

Rating:
Summary: vastly over-rated
Review: Stranger than Robert Heinlein's protagonist is that anyone takes this author seriously at all. Clearly, this is Heinlein's best book, but that is saying very, very little. If you haven't read Heinlein and you think for some--strange--reason you ought to, start here: then stop. (Okay, 2 and 1/2 stars.)

Rating:
Summary: "The" Science Fiction Book
Review: I received my first copy of Stranger in a Strange Land (I own several) over twenty years ago (I think I was nine or ten). Since then, I have read this book every year, and I keep discovering things I hadn't noticed before. When I was asked to teach a class in Science Fiction, this was one of the three books I chose to use (Childhood's End and Necromancer were the other two). The richness of the story that Heinlein created never fades. Every discovery about the human condition that Valentine Michael Smith (the main protagonist) makes, is something that each and every one of us can relate to. Whenever I reread this book, I still feel every joy and heartbreak that Smith goes through in his progress from being "only an egg," to his final climactic transcendance. I refuse to "give the story away," as so many other reviewers might. If you are interested in reading a book that will make you say, "Hmmmm," for the next twenty years; then this is the book you are looking for.