by Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein was born on July 7, 1907, in Butler, Missouri. He dropped out of the University of Missouri in 1925 to enlist in the U.S. Navy, in which he served as an officer on several ships, including the first U.S. aircraft carrier, before taking a medical discharge in 1934 because of tuberculosis. Afterwards he studied physics and mathematics at the University of California in Los Angeles, going on in 1939 to publish his first short story, "Life Line," in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Heinlein proceeded to write many short stories and several novels. His Stranger in a Strange Land, the first science fiction novel to make the New York Times bestseller list, appealed to readers not only as a fantasy but also as a reflection on social attitudes and change.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel