The final title will be set on Monday afternoon (Cady will phone me) and, Lurton, you are invited and urged to suggest titles-direct to him is simplest. (I assume that this letter will reach you in the early Monday mail.) The titles now in the running are: The Heretic
The Sound of His Wings (which has an SF tie-in through my “Future History” chart without being tagged as “science fiction” in the minds of the general public. All of these titles have been picked to permit the book to be sold as a mainstream novel, “Philosophical Fantasy” or some such.) A Sparrow Falls Born Unto Trouble (Job 5:7) That Forbidden Tree (Milton) Of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:17)
EDITOR’S NOTE: At this date, no one recalls just who came up with the Stranger in a Strange Land title.
CHAPTER XV
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ECHOES FROM STRANGER
EDITOR ‘s NOTE: Putnam ‘s sales on Stranger were not very Hood during the first year after publication. It went immediately into the book club edition, a two-year contract, and there was a second two-year book club contract. In the second year following publication, it was out in a paperback edition from Avon. Sales went from humdrum to medium to spectacular. This book turned out to be a “sleeper. ” Only word-of-mouth advertising could have accounted for this. At this time, it has been in trade edition for many years, still selling enough copies to make it worthwhile for the publisher to keep it in print. And it still \flls merrily in the paperback edition, which is now with 4