"Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

impossible task. But, over the course of some months, Robert accomplished
it. The final word count came out at 160,087 words. Robert was convinced
that it was impossible to cut out any more, and the book was accepted at that
length.
For 28 years it remained in print in that form.
In 1976, Congress passed a new Copyright Law, which said, in part, that in
the event an author died, and the widow or widower renewed the copyright,
all old contracts were cancelled. Robert died in 1988, and the following year
the copyright for Stranger in a Strange Land came up for renewal.
Unlike many other authors, Robert had kept a copy of the original typescript,
as submitted for publication, on file at the library of the University of California
at Santa Cruz, his archivists. I asked for a copy of that manuscript, and read
that and the published versions side by side. And I came to the conclusion
that it had been a mistake to cut the book.
So I sent a copy of the typescript to Eleanor Wood, RobertтАЩs agent. Eleanor
also read the two versions together, and agreed with my verdict. So, after the
notification to the publisher, she presented them with a copy of the new/old
version.

No one remembered the fact that such drastic cutting had been done on this
book; over the course of years all the editors and senior officers at the
publishing house had changed. So this version was a complete surprise to
them.
They decided to publish the original version, agreeing that it was better
than the cut one.
You now have in your hands the original version of Stranger in a Strange
Land, as written by Robert Anson Heinlein.
The given names of the chief characters have great importance to the plot.
They were carefully selected: Jubal means тАЮthe father of all,тАЬ Michael stands
for тАЮWho is like God?тАЬ I leave it for the reader to find out what the other
names mean. -Virginia Heinlein Carmel, California
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
By Robert A. Heinlein

Part one HIS MACULATE ORIGIN
I


ONCE UPON A TIME when the world was young there was a Martian
named Smith.
Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one.
The first human expedition from Terra to Mars was selected on the theory
that the greatest danger to man in space was man himself. At that time, only
eight Terran years after the founding of the first human colony on Luna, any
interplanetary trip made by humans necessarily had to be made in weary
free-fail orbits, doubly tangent semi-ellipsesтАФfrom Terra to Mars, two
hundred fifty-eight days, the same for the return journey, plus four hundred
fifty-five days waiting at Mars while the two planets crawled slowly back into
relative positions which would permit shaping the doubly-tangent orbit-a total
of almost three Earth years.