I'll add a couple of thoughts here on this one... I'd only read a collection of his short stories (
The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, the ACE pb. edition from the 1960s) and a couple of other stories ("Waldo" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon") in an anthology, when I tackled
Stranger in a Strange Land. Of course, I was 12 at the time, and it blew my little mind away.... not to mention I followed it up with
I Will Fear No Evil, which was... ummmm.....
very strange for a boy that age.
Then I went back and read his juveniles, and on to read his other work. So I'm not sure it would necessarily put someone off... but it does seem to work that way a lot of the time.
However, the caution about this one is not that it is a bad book... or even that it is talky (quite a few of his books are that -- even his older work has a fair amount of that, if you really take note, especially things like "The Man Who Sold the Moon", and large chunks of "Waldo"); rather, it is that the philosophy that most people come away with from that particular book
seems so at odds with Heinlein in general (it isn't, really; he's just going about things in a different way), which can be a bit of a jolt if you've not read more of his work and realized that he does approach things from different angles in his work a lot of the time. (Of course, I've also seen people who read
Stranger first, and loved it... and then hit
Starship Troopers next, and were appalled!
These are the ones who tend to label Heinlein "fascist", in most cases.)
But by no means be scared of
Stranger -- it's a challenging book, but I think a very good book; thought-provoking (as well as outright provoking at times!
), carrying a full range of the emotional spectrum, and does combine an adventure story with a dialectical, even didactic approach. Though some are put off on it, and it certainly has its flaws, it is a true virtuoso performance, well worth reading... but I do think that, for most, it might be better to tackle it a bit further on rather than right off.