This CliffsNotes guide includes everything you’ve come to expect from the trusted experts at CliffsNotes, including analysis of the most widely read literary works.

This CliffsNotes guide includes everything you’ve come to expect from the trusted experts at CliffsNotes, including analysis of the most widely read literary works.

From Grandmaster Robert A. Heinlein comes a long-lost first novel, written in 1939 and never before published, introducing ideas and themes that would shape his career and define the genre that is synonymous with his name. July 12, 1939: Perry Nelson is driving along the palisades when suddenly another vehicle swerves into his lane, a tire blows out, and his car careens off the road and over a bluff. The last thing he sees before his head connects with the boulders below is a girl in a green bathing suit, prancing along the shore.... When he wakes, the girl in green is a woman dressed in furs and the sun-drenched shore has transformed into snowcapped mountains. The woman, Diana, rescues Perry from the bitter cold and takes him inside her home to rest and recuperate. Later they debate the cause of the accident, for Diana is unfamiliar with the concept of a tire blowout and Perry cannot comprehend snowfall in mid-July. Then Diana shares with him a vital piece of information: The date is now January 7. The year...2086. When his shock subsides, Perry begins an exhaustive study of global evolution over the past 150 years. He learns, among other things, that a United Europe was formed and led by Edward, Duke of Windsor; former New York City mayor LaGuardia served two terms as president of the United States; the military draft was completely reconceived; banks became publicly owned and operated; and in the year 2003, two helicopters destroyed the island of Manhattan in a galvanizing act of war. This education in the ways of the modern world emboldens Perry to assimilate to life in the twenty-first century. But education brings with it inescapable truths—the economic and legal systems, the government, and even the dynamic between men and women remain alien to Perry, the customs of the new day continually testing his mental and emotional resolve. Yet it is precisely his knowledge of a bygone era that will serve Perry best, as the man from 1939 seems destined to lead his newfound peers even further into the future than they could have imagined. A classic example of the future history that Robert Heinlein popularized during his career, For Us, The Living marks both the beginning and the end of an extraordinary arc of political, social, and literary crusading that comprises his legacy. Heinlein could not have known in 1939 how the world would change over the course of one and a half centuries, but we have our own true world history to compare with his brilliant imaginings, rendering For Us, The Living not merely a novel, but a time capsule view into our past, our present, and perhaps our future. The novel is presented here with an introduction by acclaimed science fiction writer Spider Robinson and an afterword by Professor Robert James of the Heinlein Society.

This CliffsNotes guide includes everything you’ve come to expect from the trusted experts at CliffsNotes, including analysis of the most widely read literary works.

Science fiction-roman.

The original uncut edition of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Hugo Award winner Robert A Heinlein - one of the most beloved, celebrated science-fiction novels of all time. Epic, ambitious and entertaining, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND caused controversy and uproar when it was first published and is still topical and challenging today. Twenty-five years ago, the first manned mission to Mars was lost, and all hands presumed dead. But someone survived... Born on the doomed spaceship and raised by the Martians who saved his life, Valentine Michael Smith has never seen a human being until the day a second expedition to Mars discovers him. Upon his return to Earth, a young nurse named Jill Boardman sneaks into Smith's hospital room and shares a glass of water with him, a simple act for her but a sacred ritual on Mars. Now, connected by an incredible bond, Smith, Jill and a writer named Jubal must fight to protect a right we all take for granted: the right to love.

The capstone and crowning achievement of the Future History series, from the New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Science Fiction... Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.

In a futuristic military adventure a recruit goes through the roughest boot camp in the universe and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry in what historians would come to call the First Interstellar War

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background—all to help you gain greater insight into great works you're bound to study for school or pleasure. In CliffsNotes on Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and Other Works, you explore the American author's original three Foundation books, the three Empire novels, The End of Eternity, and The Gods Themselves. The Foundation Trilogy, written between 1951–53 is celebrated science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's most famous work. In the three-book series, he portrays the ruin and rebirth of a futuristic interstellar empire. In this study guide, you'll find Life and Background on the Author, Introduction to Asimov's Science Fiction, and Critical Commentaries on Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, plus a look inside the following other titles by this prolific writer: Pebble in the Sky The Stars, Like Dust The Currents of Space The End of Eternity The Gods Themselves Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

"Rarely has Heinlein pushed his imagination further...a vivid, stirring experience."--Chicago Tribune "One of the superb Heinlein stories that has excitement, urbanity, humanity, rationality, pace, understanding, and is a joy to read."--The New York Times With over-population stretching the resources of Earth, the need to find and colonize other Terra-type planets is becoming crucial to the survival of the human race. But finding these planets is time-consuming and very costly. With a seemingly inexhaustible budget, the scientists at the Long Range Foundation create the remarkable Torchships, which are able to traverse to different Star Systems within the matter of months. However, communication between Earth and these ships would still take countless years--even decades. How would they alert Earth of the planets they find? Tom and Pat are recruited by LRF to become the human transmitters and receivers for the mission. Growing up together they had felt like they were so similar, so in sync, that it was almost as if they read each other's minds.... Only to discover, that was indeed what they could do. Along with other telepathic pairings, their abilities are tested, and it is discovered that time nor distance impedes their connection; communication between Earth and the Torchships would be instantaneous. But there is a catch: during the course of the mission, while one of them stays behind and grows old, on Earth, the other will be traversing the stars, and--if he survives--will return a young man. "The word that comes to mind for him is essential. As a writer--eloquent, impassioned, technically innovative--he reshaped science fiction in the way that defined it for every writer who followed him.... He was the most significant science fiction writer since H. G. Wells."--Robert Silverberg