Stranger in a Strange Land

This is where Heinlein starting getting heavy and weird. The story of the book is pretty simple. Valentine Michael Smith is the last survivor of an expedition to Mars, raised by Martians and brought back to Earth. He learns the absurdity of being human, and then teaches humans how to be Martian in a freaky-deeky free love cult that apparently served as the basis for at least one real life religion.

This book shines in its depiction of Martian philosophy. I don’t think there’s ever been a depiction of an alien mind as coherent as the flashes we get from the Martians. They are patient, logical, relentless; practically a geological force. The essence of the Martian philosophy is the word “grok”, which entered mainstream language for show more a while, and literally means “to drink”, but implies “understand”, “merge with”, “love/hate” and hundreds of other concepts. Once a Martian (or a human trained in Martian thought) groks something, they have incredible powers: telekinesis, teleportation, telepathy, the ability to banish people and things from this universe. With Martian thinking comes a newfound ethical awareness, the understanding that “Thou art God”, and are responsible for the shape of the universe. Jealousy, greed, illness, all the traditional deadly and venal sins are banished in the light of Martian enlightenment.

Heinlein uses this Martian philosophy to take a shotgun to traditional pillars of morality. The church, the state, marriage and monogamy are all mocked and revealed as hollow shells before the absolutely moral innocence of the Man from Mars. Religion is the main target, with Michael Smith using the legal shield of religious freedom to shelter his illuminated cult. A secondary religious target are the Fosterites, a new church founded on the pleasure principle and a hefty dose of violence against heretics. To me, the Fosterites look most like the rock-and-roll Christianity of American megachurches, but there are shades of Mormonism and Scientology as well. The free love advocacy towards the end was apparently immensely scandalous at the time. And of course, the ritual cannibalism that Michael Smith’s church follows is distasteful in a lot of places more exotic than Kansas.

Of course, some stuff seems oddly retro, and not in a good way. For a free love cult, Smith’s people are resolutely straight; no homo here. Everything is grounded in the male-female duality, not person-to-person intimacy. Mad Men style sexual harassment is played straight up, as delightful and pleasant and of no great concern, rather than as the front-line of patriarchal oppression. Female characters were never Heinlein’s strong suit, and the fact that there are so many just gives the book more time to fall flat on their presentation. A Greek Chorus of literal angels appear once in a while to comment on events to no real purpose. There’s new technology, with 3D television and flying cars, but the story doesn’t feel particularly grounded in any particular extrapolation of events. It’s just the 1960s, but moreso.

Where this book really annoyed me was the character of Jubal Harshaw. I don’t mind a lecture, if it’s intelligent and says something new. Harshaw is a Heinlein self-insert character: octogenarian superstar author, rugged individualist, pessimist, universal expert, father to Michael Smith’s humanity, and waited on hand and foot by three beautiful secretaries. Harshaw is supposed to be common-sense wisdom, as opposed to the expert lunacy of the modern world and the alien mindset of the Martians, but he just strikes me as a cranky coot uplifted to Mary Sue status through the undeserving love of the author.

Stranger in a Strange Land has attracted a lot of flack, much of it undeservedly (the one star reviews I’ve seen make me wonder if those reviewers have ever read a truly awful book). I cannot help but love what it’s selling: the idea that if human beings might learn to think straight, we might transcend our ape pasts and become truly luminous beings. You don’t need to believe this, and I don’t think Heinlein did either, but it’s a wonderful idea perfectly presented. show less

I don't even know where to start this review. The sexism? The bigotry? The tiresome, droning sermons given by the characters?

I've heard others claim that Heinlein was simply a man of his time, and we should take this into consideration when a Muslim character is endearingly nicknamed Stinky, or when Jill says the oft-quoted, "Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault." But, I've read plenty of other SF works from the same time period, and Heinlein is an anomaly.

Even if you could ignore the sexism and the bigotry, the rest of the book is simply uninteresting. The future of his world is just the 1950s with flying cars and Mars missions, where reporters are either winchells or lipmanns (a reference that was show more probably outdated by the time of the 1968 reissue). Male characters (because "these women did not chatter, did not intrude into sober talk of men, but were quick with food and drink") frequently orate during regular conversation, espousing their ideas about things only tangentially related to the conversation.

I really do not understand how this book has survived as a "classic" of science fiction. show less

Everything you'll read in the other reviews for this books is true. Most problematically, it's really sexist and really homophobic even for its era (and then there are many subsidiary issues, like how we're forced to spend hundreds of pages getting meandering "philosophical" lectures from Jubal Harshaw, the grating pedant who thinks he's an iconoclast, but let's let all those slide). There's no way around that, and it's weird for a book that's supposed to be about drinking deeply of each other and letting our fears and hatreds melt away.

But in a way, and very much despite rather than because of Heinlein's intentions, doesn't that almost make this book better? A fable of the coming social upheaval (the novel was written in 1961), of the show more tension between sexual revolution and feminist revolution? Consider: In a not-so-distant future that's a caricature of those Jetsons-style setups where technology is totally different and people changed not a whit, because human society was perfected when Kennedy was elected--people like to use Mad Men to evoke that era nowadays, so call it Mad Men with videophones--a Man arrives. This Man teaches us that all we have to do to bring on hippie paradise is to love each other (mostly, this means women offering themselves up to the men and the men getting over their clench-buttocked desire to do the Right Thing (whatever that is) and doing the ladies instead--it also means painfully contrived scenes where the men make really clear to each other that loving each other for men means banging the same broads and being connected that way, no homo dracula style. Basically the future is 1) sex, 2) men expounding Heinlein's weird mix of libertarianism and gender (and racial and religious) essentialism, 3) women doing something cute and dumb or cute and smart but buttering up the men so they don't feel threatened, leading to 4) more sex. Oh, and 5) teleportation. It all seems so limited--the spiritual liberation of humanity basically works like an especially functional, new agey commune with unlimited money, circa ... 1970 or so?

The problem with free love from the viewpoint of second wave feminism was men were still in charge; and the problem, one of the problems, with feminism from the viewpoint of "the sixties" was that some women wanted to do something other with their lives than offer themselves up on a platter with many a giggle and an "oh, you." Heinlein clearly feels that Men are Men and Women are Women and the highly culturally conditioned way they behaved with each other in 1961 is transcendent truth, and when his messiah comes it'll just be with the aim of helping us all accept that and not feel insecure (in its limited way, of course, a worthy goal). His book, though, is such an over-the-top caricature of gender relations in that era, representing such ludicrous attitudes, that it pretty much sums up why the radical freeing of humanity--or in the language of the time, "a brotherhood of man"--to be the manliest men and smokingest dames we could--was never accomplished. show less

Good lord this is a tedious book! 4/5ths of it is pontification, through dialogue between characters, of (mostly) religion, politics, and sex/women.
The "discussion" of religion talks of the similarities of the scriptures through society and how polarizing and harmful they are to the psyche of mankind.
The politics (the least discussed) focuses on the presumed rights on group has on another.
The sex topic, of which fully half of the book focuses, is misogynistic - wrapped in an almost soft-porn discussion of how important it is for women to be attractive and attentive to men. All men. At any time or place. Here is a quote, spoken by a female character (Jill-Part 3, xxiv): "Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least show more partly her own fault. That tenth time--well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary." There are also may descriptions of how wonderful it is for a woman to display her nakedness before men because that is when she is at her fullest self worth. SMH I had forgotten how Heinlein depicts women.

The story itself is rather thin. Group sent to Mars to investigate and set up of colonization. Contact lost. Years later a 2nd group goes and discovers a human baby had been born and raised by Martians. Now a young man (early 20's?) is brought back to Earth. Government cover-up having to do with an huge wealth he has inherited from his parents; he is taken away from government custody by people who believe he has the right to be his own person. He learns very quickly due to psychic abilities curated through is life with Martians. Blah blah blah as he goes through "adventures" leaning about human life and society. Starts a "church" to spread learning of Mars among humans in order to bring true happiness and acceptance - this occurs mostly though orgies and the like. A lot of beautiful naked women being available to men.

Really disappointed in this book. What is strange is how I am sure I read it a couple of times in previous decades and I think I liked it. But what the heck. To each their own.

I do not recommend this book as a serious "science fiction" read. It is generally an almost-soft-porn depiction of how this author thinks life should be between men and the women who serve them. show less

I grok and cherish this story. This book was a strange, fantastic trip, and is definitely one of Heinlein's best books. Unlike some of his other novels, the sex in this book actually fits in better. There are many points about religion and humanity brought up in this book, and many things to think about/chew on. The ending threw me for a total loop, but after a while, it made sense to me. If you're looking for a fantastic read, pick up this book!

Does This Classic Hold Up?

Certain things age well with time, sometimes even improve, and that includes many novels. Others, not so much, especially when polemics wear the cloak of science fiction. In the case of Stranger in a Strange Land, the overall themes challenging the mores of the time (and this time, too), that of critiquing societal sexual strictures (advocating free love), religious hucksterism (supporting secularism), disparaging money (through its cavalier use), and the aspiration of humankind for reaching its full potential, even perfection (with troublingly harsh methods), still resonate with many. In other words, it’s as much countercultural now as when it appeared in 1961; after all, there continues to be plenty to show more rebel against. The not so much parts, among them the slangy and long speeches (Jubal, the great speechifier), the palpable sexism, and the eugenic approach to a better humanity, still will offend many readers. And the added words (around 60,000 by third wife Virginia Heinlein’s reckoning) in the Uncut Edition only magnify these obstacles to enjoying the novel’s many agreeable yearnings.

Regardless of its weaknesses, the novel struck a cord in an America leaving the conformist 50s and on the cusp of major social revolution as the country crept into Vietnam and the countercultural revolution of the latter 60s. It became a New York Times bestseller, the first science fiction genre novel to earn a place on that list. And it assumed a place as a sort of bible to the discontented. This is what holds up in the novel nearly sixty years out from first publication. It calls into question what many regard as the glue binding society, conformity as imposed by organized religion and by government, suggesting that there may be better ways to live. Heinlein didn't dictate that ideas expressed in the book were the better way, just that they were bold enough to break the mold into which we found, and yet find, ourselves cast. Consider it the opposite of Dr. Pangloss’ regular refrain, this is the best of all possible worlds, a channeling of Leibniz’s Theodicy in a phrase and brunt of Voltaire’s sarcasm.

Now, if you have never read the novel and elect to do so, you might find the shorter original more enjoyable, even though reports say Heinlein preferred the original manuscript version (but then what author doesn’t love the sound of his own words). If you read it years ago when you were younger and remember it fondly, you, too, might like the original. But, if you are a Heinlein fan, you’ll want to read Stranger in a Strange Land as he wrote it. show less

Loved it. The development of the main character is very well done, and his strangeness is very well described. I would have given it 5 stars, but I really have to subtract 1 star for the absolutely disgusting remark of one of the women (!) who states that in most cases, if a woman gets raped, it is partially her fault. Really?!? Eugh... It's such a shame, because I really liked almost everything else.