Stranger in a Strange Land

Born aboard the spacecraft Envoy and raised entirely by Martians, Valentine Michael Smith is the only survivor found when a second expedition reaches Mars, twenty-five years after contact with the first was lost. Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel follows Smith to Earth in early adulthood, where he is confined at Bethesda Hospital and attended only by male staff. Nurse Gillian Boardman slips past the guards to see him, and by sharing a glass of water she becomes his first water brother, a deep bond by Martian standards. It took the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1962 and was the first science fiction novel on The New York Times Book Review best-seller list.

Bill Gates said he fell in love with Heinlein as a kid and still counts it among his favorite science fiction novels of all time.