- Hugo Award Winner, American Science fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general, Children's fiction
One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was — as usual — in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars. Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake — failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line — for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!
Log it
Sign in to log this.
Character
Classical in form, resolved, plot-driven and effortless.
- classical in formformally daring
- resolvedopen-ended
- character-ledplot-driven
- effortlessdemanding
- contemplativerelentless
Who loves it, who doesn't
No profiled raters yet.
Ask the title
A yes-or-no question, answered from what people wrote here, on TMDB and on Wikipedia. Never made up.
Reviews
No reviews yet.
About the book
- Author
- Robert A. Heinlein
- First published
- 1956
- Pages
- 170
- Publisher
- Doubleday, Heyne Verlag, Grafton Books
- Editions
- 42
- Language
- French, English, Dutch
- ISBN
- 9780451014443
Where to read
Libraries first: a card gets you most books for nothing. Each opens that service’s page for this title.
On Open Library, 36 have read it and 60 want to.
“IF A MAN WALKS IN DRESSED LIKE A HICK AND acting as if he owned the place, he's a spaceman.”
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. 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 genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was 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
Similar in taste
Closest on the same fourteen dimensions, from everything scored on Tastebuds Other media included when they land close.
Odd and the Frost Giants 200180% alikeBoth classical in form, resolved.
A Master of Djinn 202180% alikeBoth classical in form.
The Hollow Boy 201579% alikeBoth classical in form.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories 199078% alikeBoth classical in form.
Bone 199776% alikeBoth classical in form.
House of Many Ways 200876% alikeBoth classical in form, resolved.
Operation Mincemeat 201075% alikeBoth classical in form, resolved.
The girl from everywhere 201675% alikeBoth classical in form.
The Incredibles 200480% alikeFilm · Both classical in form, resolved.
Night Train to Munich 194077% alikeFilm · Both classical in form, resolved.