Stranger in a Strange Land

What Hacker News says

1. wise_bloodSep 2026
   20 years ago I read a The Guardian article about the "top geek novels". I immediately read a bunch of those.

   Recently I managed to find the list again, and it's been endless pleasure:

   - American Gods -- Neil Gaiman

   - Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley

   - The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett

   - Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks

   - Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson

   - Cloud Atlas -- David Mitchell

   - The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson

   - The Dispossessed -- Ursula K Le Guin

   - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick

   - Dune -- Frank Herbert

   - Foundation -- Isaac Asimov

   - Giles Goat-Boy -- John Barth

   - Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon

   - The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams

   - I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov

   - The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

   - The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K Le Guin

   - The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick

   - Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland

   - Neuromancer -- William Gibson

   - Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell

   - Orlando -- Virgina Woolf

   - The Shockwave Rider -- John Brunner

   - Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson

   - Stand on Zanzibar -- John Brunner

   - Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein

   - Trouble with lichen - John Wyndham

   - UBIK -- Philip Dick

   - Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

   - Woman on the Edge of Time -- Marge Piercy

   (I am creatively interpreting "The Colour of Magic" as "all Discworld", "Dune" as "the six Dune books", etc.)

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2. stevenwooJul 2026
   Some audiobooks can add to the experience - for instance in both Flowers for Algernon and Stranger in a Strange Land the main character evolves in ways the performer encapsulates in their voice that most readers probably did not do as well - I read both in print about 40 years ago and listening to the audiobooks recently was a revelation. There’s also A Confederacy of Dunces - this has multiple American accents that I bet no non native speaker could capture and possibly escapes most Americans as well. Another example is Infinite Jest - some people like the going back and forth with the footnotes but i preferred the audiobook incorporating the footnotes with a second narrator of different gender than the main one with an audio cue.
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3. jahalaMay 2026
   I absolutely LOVE Accelerando. I've recommended it to everyone I meet for years.

   If you're looking for other great sci-fi reads:

   John Ringo - Live free or die

   John Varley - Titan (-> Wizard / Demon)

   Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

   Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky

   Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

   Dan Simmons - Hyperion

   Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space / The Prefect

   Orson Scott Card - Enders game

   Isaac Asimov - Foundation

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4. piltdownmanApr 2026
   If you want the druggy, high-concept, ersatz-reality version go with Philip K. Dick - namely The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS.

   If you want the intellectual take go with A Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller), Oryx and Crake (Atwood) or Solaris (Lem).

   If you want the 60s hard-science rooted societal outlook from an ex-Naval Engineer with strong views on gender roles, it's all about Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers etc..

   If you want something to share with the young adults in your life, or simply some of the finest writing in the contemporary British YA canon, then Philip Pulman's magnificent homage to 'Paradise Lost' - the 'His Dark Materials trilogy' - cannot come more highly recommended. Usually categorised as 'fantasy', and heavily indebted to Milton and Blake, this represents a master-class in parallel-universe world building with its own take on a Steampunk Oxford and a number of other science fiction tropes.

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5. branonDec 2025
   The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it.

   Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though!

   Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though)

   Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good)

   Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love" (PHENOMENAL, highly recommended)

   Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (pretty good, required to understand "Time Enough for Love")

   Richard K. Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (very good)

   Robert A. Heinlein, "The Rolling Stones" (young adult, but good all the same)

   Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (very good)

   Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)

   Lincoln Child, "Full Wolf Moon" (okay, not great)

   Lincoln Child, "The Forgotten Room" (pretty good)

   Lincoln Child, "The Third Gate" (very good)

   Lincoln Child, "Terminal Freeze" (okay, not great)

   William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)

   Lincoln Child, "Deep Storm" (very good)

   James Patterson, "Along Came a Spider" (not my usual genre, okay though)

   Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" (from childhood, revisited)

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6. collingreenOct 2025
   > Here’s the thing. Crypto is scam. Musk is an assclown. The only good thing that may come of this is that more people will read Stranger in a Strange Land. It is a wonderful and moving piece of fiction. I highly recommend it.

   Well said. No notes.

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