Stranger in a Strange Land

By: Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by: Christopher Hurt

Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

Stranger in a Strange Land is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with “psi” powers—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrolysis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others—and complete innocence regarding the mores of man.

After his tutelage under a surrogate father figure, Valentine begins his transformation into a kind of messiah. His exceptional abilities lead him to become many things to many people: freak, scam artist, media commodity, searcher, free love pioneer, neon evangelist, and martyr.

Heinlein won his second Hugo Award for this novel, sometimes called his “divine comedy” and often called his masterpiece. This Blackstone audiobook is the “as published” version, read from an Ace paperback published in 1987. The full, uncut text was not made available until 1991.

©1961 by Robert A. Heinlein (P)1996 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, 1962

10/10

Loved it.
I find this book to be a masterpiece for my time.
life feels great when we emerge back into a world of hope.

the feeling I carry with me from this novel give me hope that the exploration of life is endless.

The Real Life Church of All Worlds

It is the first legally recognized Neo Pagan church in the United States inspired by and founded shortly after the publishing of this book. You can learn more about it by going to its Los Angeles Nest Livethedream.org. or calling 800-LifeMates (543-3628).

Hurt hurts.

Decent story. Somewhat engaging. Performance sub-optimal: far too fast. Play at 80% speed for best results.

Great story and excellent narration

My mother-in-law recommended this book to myself, after a night of drinks around the fire with family. We all were confessing our favorite books and she selected this “Stranger in a strange land.” After listening to Hurts expression of Heinlein’s vision, I was very pleased and deeply introspective. It was authored in a different time, admittedly misogynist at times, but the overall theme was profoundly progressive even by today’s standards. Unexpectedly, it also made me completely aware of how i had so incredibly mistaken the person my mother in law is. I highly recommend this narration and the story. Drink deeply.

impeccable and interesting

Interesting, from start to finish. The voice over is vivid. The writing easy to follow and descriptive..

Wonderful literally work and reading

Truly worthy of its reputation as the best piece of science fiction ever written. Where else would you find an eloquent discussion of Rodin’s sculpture - and have it fit perfectly into the story.

Beautifully written

The best in all categories Heinlein is a master as beautifully designed
as Rodan sculptures .

Very Enjoyable

I read this book years ago, and liked it. This audible version makes the book even more so. The reader seems to make the characters three dimentional. I highly recommend this audible book

Awesome Characters, Plot Felt Lost At Times

I love Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." I admire his amazing writing yet again in this book, but from the halfway point to the end, the book seems to get a bit lost in the depth of ideas that Heinlein undoubtedly wanted to entertain throughout the novel.

The way the book progresses almost feels like this should have been 2 separate books. The first half and last half of the story feel like distant relatives.The anarchist, unconventional, and anti-traditional themes are indeed thought-provoking, and sometimes eye-opening. But these themes begin to feel forced into the narrative somewhere along the way. Instead of a nice flow of happenstance and dialogue, Heinlein's mission statement seems to be injected into each scene to dominate the narrative.

Speaking of narrative, the narrator is amazing - 10/10. I will give extra consideration to any book narrated by Christopher Hurt.

Grok it as a Classic

I would echo the review titled “ We live in the world this book made ”, which captured my experience of this book. I want so much to like Heinlein because I was a child in the 1960s and his work sets the foundation and tone for so much Sci-Fi over the decades. However, while the concepts in this book may have blown peoples minds at the time it was published, it is primarily a treatise on racism, religion and society and the concepts illustrated in this story are old hat now. I will continue to plow through Heinlein stories for the nostalgia, but this was not the masterwork people made it out to be, even if it did have an impact on culture and peoples thinking then. In fact, it seemed even a bit trite and boring in spots. The narration was excellent, though, and I truly enjoyed the portrayal of the character Jubal Harshaw, which captivated my imagination. With all that said, this probably needs to be on a must-read list to help us understand the changes in our culture in the past 5-6 decades.