About "Stranger in a Strange Land"

This page is from the back cover of "Stranger in a Strange Land" "ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS EVER PUBLISHED."--Library Journal "WONDERFULLY HUMANIZING...Some 60,000 words that were cut from Heinlein's manuscript for economy back in 1961 are at last taking their rightful place in the body of world literature."--Kurt Vonnegut, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Here at last is the complete, uncut version of Heinlein's all-time masterpiece, the brilliant novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind grokking and water-sharing. And love. "THE BOOK WAS DESTINED TO BECOME A BESTSELLER, SHAPING THE SENSIBILITIES OF A GENERATION...The uncut novel more explicitly exhibits the author's views on human sexuality, women's issues, and geopolitics."--Boston Globe "ONE OF THE GRAND MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION."--Wall Street Journal A choice of The Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, and the Science Fiction Book Club PREFACE BY VIRGINIA HEINLEIN

check out some "Strange" cover art:

The story of Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet super human in abilities and ignorant of sex as we know it. He shocks the mores of Western culture by attempting to set up a strange and fascinating discipline on Earth: the first step is learning to Grok... "Uses satire, humor, fantasy, remarkable characters  ...evidently Heinlein intended his book to be disturbing, shocking and entertaining. It is. It sparkles and crackles and produces goose bumps of apprehension and dissatisfaction with the human race... The best of his many books..." --WASHINGTON POST. "... A glimpse of love, of worship, of honor and devotion more basic and more pure than anything earth has seen since the days of apostolic Christianity... unsettling, swift-paced, excellent and infuriating... bears out the premise that good science fiction is -- good fiction." -- THEODORE STURGEON.

ANCESTRY---HUMAN; ORIGIN??? Captain van Tromp decided that it was time to throw a tantrum. "This man Smith---This 'man!' Can't you see that he is not?" "Eh?" "Smith . . . is . . . not . . . a . . . man." "Huh? Explain yourself, Captain." "Smith is an intelligent creature with the ancestry of a man, but he is more Martian than man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a man. He thinks like a Martian, feels like a martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us---they don't even have sex. He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment . . . "