Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer, born on 7 July 1907 and dead on 8 May 1988. Often called the dean of science fiction writers, he was one of the most popular, influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the literary standards of science fiction, and he was among the first writers of the genre to break into mainstream general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was also among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern mass-market era. For many years Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Stranger in a Strange Land is the work Open Library lists first among his books.