This is the original version, not the edited one that was published in 1961. About 60,000 words were cut out of it and it became a best-seller, apparently the first science-fiction novel to make the New York Times best-seller list.

The book begins strongly, beginning with an expedition to Mars that results in a human baby being born on Mars and raised by Martians. Apparently Heinlein's wife suggested that he do something along the lines of The Jungle Book but with Martians instead of wolves raising a child. The novel's first sentence nods to the children's tale element inherent in this idea: "Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith".

When Smith travels to Earth and has to navigate the completely alien world that is our own recognizable human world, projected into a fairly easy to imagine near future, the book is at its most satisfying.

Trouble begins with the appearance of Jubal, a character who appears to be Heinlein's fantasy alter ego, a rich and famous writer who, in addition to knowing everything and everybody and always being right about everything, is also a doctor and a lawyer and lives in stately splendor in a luxurious compound where he is the ultimate authority.

Heinlein insists that he wasn't trying to give answers to questions but there must be a hundred pages of Jubal monologues as he holds forth on art, religion, finance, politics, human nature, sex and whatever else. No other point of view is ever shown and everybody agrees with everything Jubal says.

Some of this is pretty entertaining though too often plodding and facile, not to mention sexist and homophobic.

Other characters are only slightly less garrulous. In fact this might be the talkiest book I've ever read. line.

Where does it all go? Into a dead end of neo-Christian/pagan/free-love/mind-expansion mumbo jumbo, and a dismayingly obvious climax.