There is a Heinlein between genius and insanity.

Originally I had this as my number 1) book, but decided, at the last moment, to change my top three around. I do have to admit though that this book influenced me the most as I was growing up, forcing me to rethink my stance on everything from religion to sex to humor. Robert Anson Heinlein's epic book Stranger in a Strange Land comes in at number 3) in my top ten. This story works on so many different levels that it is scary. Its a fish out of water tale that starts with a group of astronauts getting stuck on Mars that is populated by Martians who have an entirely different view on life. When the Earth finally gets around to sending a rescue ship to pick up the stranded Earthlings twenty years later, all they find is the crashed ship with no survivors, or so they think until weeks later when they meet the Martians and are introduced to Michael Valentine Smith, the illegitimate son of two of the astronauts who crash landed. The main plot thread is Smith's journey back to an Earth that he has never seen only heard about. Heinlein uses this strange perspective to muse philosophically on all Earth traditions. If someone told me that Heinlein did drugs in the 60's and wrote a story, I would point to this book as being the result as it has a warped macabre sense to it. Yet, this is the book that defined the modern Heinlein, and is in fact used as the branching point from Heinlein's juvenile stories to his adult stories. Not bad for what some critics derided as an infantile wet dream.