Stranger in a Strange Land (original 1961; edition 1969)

A good idea but poorly executed. A lot was included that shouldn't have been and some intensity could have been added. Now I see why I am a Bradbury fan. Had to push through to finish. ( )

Lovely audio rendition of this classic! ( )

4 1/2 stars - although Mike is "the man from Mars", this story is really about human culture & religion. Mike just provides a fresh set of eyes to see Earth & humanity. ( )

I read this for the SciFi and Fantasy book club hear at GoodReads. It's also the first Heinlein I remember reading. I've read a few of his short stories and might have read [book: Job: A Comedy of Justice] when it was released in the mid 80s, but I'm not 100% sure.

I found the first part of this book, probably the first half or so, to be a great story and mostly a science fiction story that I could really enjoy. An expedition to Mars ceases communicating with Earth and a rescue mission is not launched for several years. The only survivor of the original expedition isn't even one of the original crew members, but the offspring of one of the couples. He has been raised by Martians from birth (his mother died bearing him and his father died as well). So he has no common points of references with humans. He is transported to Earth and kept under heavy guard at a medical facility until his body can acclimate to Earth's environment and gravity.

Access to "the Man from Mars" is strictly regulated and you can start to see the political plotting and machinations within the first chapter or so. However, once the Man from Mars makes his escape from his governmental custodians, and furthers his education of all things Earth-like or human-like, Heinlein attempts to preach his vision of society. Subtle it is not.

The culmination of Mike's teachings leads to his martyrdom but it felt dissatisfying to me, perhaps even hollow. It's easy to change the world around you when you have unlimited wealth and unlimited power (abilities he was taught by the Martians). It left me wondering, if he had been left on a street corner with no wealth, no friends, nothing at all, would he have made any impact on our society?

Back in the early 60s, all of these new ideas about sex and religion and gender roles was probably shocking. Some of it is still a bit shocking to me, and I grew up in the 60s.

I probably would have given this 2.5 stars if I could have. It's better than a two stars but not quite a three. ( )

I do not grok it, Jubal.

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Some copy/pasted comments I originally posted elsewhere:

I feel like this book must have been a fusion of two originally distinct story ideas, one about a sexy messiah who preaches free love, and another about a strange alien culture whose attitudes toward food and drink profoundly shape its language and mindset. That's the only way I can grok the awkward tension between the latter half of the book and the former.

Mike's Martian concepts are originally presented as though they were responses to the specific material conditions on Mars -- they place such importance on sharing water because there's so little of it on Mars, and their ritual cannibalism is framed as "not wasting food" -- but then they later get interpreted as simply the right way to do things (for everyone everywhere). "Grokking" at first seems like just a weird way of thinking about knowledge, but turns out to be a true source of mystical revelation. Mike's complete loyalty to his water brothers, and his concept of "wrongness," seem at first like a strange and problematic alien morality, but are later spun as simply the *right* morality. (How is that stuff supposed to work, anyway? Mike sees anything that threatens his water brothers as "wrongness." But what if my water brothers [inadvertently, through failure to grok?] threaten yours, and vice versa? Are we both "wrongness" from each others' perspectives, but not from our own? But then how can Mike be so confused by the notion of people having incompatible beliefs, e.g. in religion?)

I thought the weird alien psychology was really cool and interesting, and I think it becomes much less interesting when the story starts treating it not as weird alien psychology but as just plain truth.

(Also, yeah, the way the book treats male-female interactions and the whole thing with the witticism-spouting old dude [obvious Heinlein stand-in] and his sexy secretaries is all as groanworthy as they say.)

. . .

It seems like the more excited the book gets about the idea of "thinking like a Martian," the less it's able to make that idea mean anything interesting. As it goes on, it focuses less and less on what Martians actually think, and more and more on how thinking like a Martian (whatever that means) will give you video game stat upgrades.

(You'll become an awesome Jedi who doesn't need to eat or sleep and can communicate with the spirits of the dead and has no sexual hang-ups and is happy all the time and blah blah blah blah blah yawwwwwnnn)

. . .

The book was definitely worth reading for historical reasons, and the first half was good, but the whole religious segment felt very tacked on. I always like reading about messiah-like figures, but there are much better novels about them out there. ( )