Stranger in Paradise (song)

"Stranger in Paradise" is a popular song from the musical Kismet (1953), and is credited to Robert Wright and George Forrest. Like all the music in that show, the melody was taken from music composed by Alexander Borodin (1833 –1887), in this case, the "Gliding Dance of the Maidens", from the Polovtsian Dances in the opera Prince Igor (1890). The song in the musical is a lovers' duet and describes the transcendent feelings that love brings to their surroundings. Later versions were mostly edited to be sung by male solo artists.

Meaning

In Act 1 of the story told in the musical Kismet, the beautiful Marsinah is viewing the garden of a house her father wishes to buy. The young Caliph, who is dressed in disguise, has already been struck by her beauty from afar and enters the garden pretending to be a gardener, so that he might speak to her. She begins to sing about how the garden has been strangely transformed before her eyes. He takes over the song and sings about how he, too strangely feels he has entered paradise when he stands beside an angel such as she. In the song he asks for an indication that she feels the same way about him. Though she feels a strong draw to him she breaks from the song and asks him a mundane question about what flowers to plant. He asks her to meet him again in the garden at moonrise, and she instantly agrees. He asks her to promise she'll keep her rendezvous, and she now takes up the song, singing that it was his face that had made her feel in paradise. They now sing together that they are in bliss in each other's company and how much they need to know the other cares.

Stranger in Paradise

Stranger in Paradise may refer to:

See also

Stranger in Paradise (short story)

"Stranger in Paradise" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was written in the summer of 1973 for an anthology of original stories edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, but was rejected by her. It was also rejected by Ben Bova for Analog Science Fiction and Fact before being accepted for If magazine, where it appeared in the May–June 1974 issue. The story was reprinted in the collections The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976) and The Complete Robot (1982).

Plot summary

Anthony Smith and William Anti-Aut are full brothers who live in a post-catastrophe world where, due to concerns about humanity's limited genetic diversity, full siblings are rare (and identical twins are nonexistent). Not only are they full brothers, they also look alike, which is totally unheard of.

William pursues a career in genetic engineering, referred to as homology, and has been trying to understand and cure Autism, hence his chosen surname. Anthony has gone into telemetrics, and is working on the Mercury Project, the purpose of which is to send a robot to Mercury. This is a problem because the positronic brain at the time is not yet adapted to such an environment, so a computer on Earth must direct the robot. However, the speed of light communications lag between Earth and Mercury can last up to twenty-two minutes, making computer control difficult. Anthony attempts to solve this problem by recruiting a homologist that can design a positronic brain that resembles a human brain. The leading homologist in this area is his brother William, and much to their mutual embarrassment, the two wind up working together.