Stranger in a Strange Land

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Just re-read this great book. It’s about a boy raised by Martians who comes back to Earth completely ignorant of humanity. The book certainly has some caveats:
  1. It inspired the “free-love” philosophy of the 60’s.
  2. It has some good arguments about Christianity’s flaws.
    However, I still recommend it to any open-minded person on this forum. I was curious to know if anyone here has read it.
 
I’ve read it. The author, Robert Heinlein, was a good science fiction writer but some of his ideas are strongly objectionable.
“Free love” is just another name for random sexual encounters, and Robert Heinlein took the idea to extremes.
For example, his hero Lazarus Long, in a late book, had sex with his own mother and two of his daughters.
I would recommend against reading any of Heinlein’s work because of his beliefs as shown in the books.
 
rocklobster said:
Just re-read this great book. It’s about a boy raised by Martians who comes back to Earth completely ignorant of humanity. The book certainly has some caveats:
  1. It inspired the “free-love” philosophy of the 60’s.
  2. It has some good arguments about Christianity’s flaws.
    However, I still recommend it to any open-minded person on this forum. I was curious to know if anyone here has read it.
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I don’t think this particular book “inspired” the lack of moral values in the 1960’s. A lot of people don’t read science fiction/fantasy, and even among sci-fi fans, Heinlein isn’t a universally read author.

The main character is a god-like mystical figure (Jesus-like, although twisted). The book has biblical elements. I loved it when I was in high school, but I did not consider myself a Christian let alone a Catholic at that time. I suspect that if I read it now, I would find it highly objectionable and of little merit.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
I don’t think this particular book “inspired” the lack of moral values in the 1960’s. A lot of people don’t read science fiction/fantasy, and even among sci-fi fans, Heinlein isn’t a universally read author.

The main character is a god-like mystical figure (Jesus-like, although twisted). The book has biblical elements. I loved it when I was in high school, but I did not consider myself a Christian let alone a Catholic at that time. I suspect that if I read it now, I would find it highly objectionable and of little merit.
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“Twisted Jesus” is a good description. He teaches reincarnation and by the end of the story has a small harem.

I agree Heinlein did not inspire the “free love” movement; but he would have fit right in with it.
 
Reepicheep said:
I would recommend against reading any of Heinlein’s work because of his beliefs as shown in the books.
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While I enjoyed Stranger in high school, I doubt I would now. (I still like the idea of impartial witnesses, or whatever the woman wearing white was; but like the defense-only guns of Weapon Shops of Isher, it’s fiction, so, oh well 😦 )

However, I wouldn’t dismiss all of Heinlein’s work. His “future history” stories collected in “The Past Through Tommorow” were very good, as were his juveniles like Starman Jones and Have Space Suit will Travel, and there was no sex in any of them (iirc).

His Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a good, more adult story.

So I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Just avoid his later work if it bothers you.

Tom A.
Who probably hasn’t read anything of Heinlein’s newer than Time Enough For Love, which was published 1973 (and that was probably close to the year I read it).
 
meteoric said:
While I enjoyed Stranger in high school, I doubt I would now. (I still like the idea of impartial witnesses, or whatever the woman wearing white was; but like the defense-only guns of Weapon Shops of Isher, it’s fiction, so, oh well 😦 )

However, I wouldn’t dismiss all of Heinlein’s work. His “future history” stories collected in “The Past Through Tommorow” were very good, as were his juveniles like Starman Jones and Have Space Suit will Travel, and there was no sex in any of them (iirc).

His Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a good, more adult story.

So I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Just avoid his later work if it bothers you.

Tom A.
Who probably hasn’t read anything of Heinlein’s newer than Time Enough For Love, which was published 1973 (and that was probably close to the year I read it).
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I believe the term Heinlein used was “Fair Witness” - and yes, I liked that idea myself.
 
I still love this book except for the last section which frankly drags a bit the begining is well written and I still consider it most interesting scifi book out there. As to the morals …it’s a book not a guideline for living and while free love is in the book that’s not really what the book is about. Heinlein himself may have had some questionable ideas but he was married to his wife for a long time and actually lived a very traditional life. He did spin a good story in a lot of his books. I never got into the Lazarus Long serious…that charactor never interested me. His books “The Door into Summer” “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” “Starship Troopers” “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” are some of the best scifi out there.
 
I did read the book and found it totally objectionable. The lead character’s own small harem. Very bad idea. I love his work that was published in the 1950s and earlier. It was solid hardware science-fiction.

I knew people who were older than me who had read Stranger and a lot - a lot - of other science-fiction. In prehistoric/pre-internet days, there were science fiction clubs, people produced fanzines and wrote letters. The book struck a chord, and still strikes a chord with modern hippie, anarchist, free love - sex with anyone - types. One review on amazon talks about its “riches.” But I saw none. It won an award - big deal.

The book, The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, with stories selected by John W. Campbell, Jr., and carrying the following copyright dates: 1940, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1951, with the Introduction copyright of 1952, has an Introduction written by John W. Campbell, Jr., that includes his version of the history of science-fiction and history in general. The author is no historian but a highly biased polemicist.

Science fiction essentially died in the early 1970s, along with other things. It appealed to humanists because except for a few movies from the 1950s and early 1960s, religion was not a factor. In fact, I got a lot more out of early 1960s television science fiction than the books, including from comic books produced in the 1950s.

Peace,
Ed
 
Ugh, I so DO NOT GROCK this book. I felt like the character Jubal Harshaw (sp?) was just a mouthpiece for Heinlein’s rants. There was one place where he spews about how popular music has a repetitive structure because most people are stupid and like it that way. Reading it through a post-modern, post-feminist lens, I think it can be taken also as rather anti-woman. I don’t remember specifics, I read this like 20 years ago but as a young man I was put off by some of how he portrayed women.
 
It’s been a number of years since I read this book. I think though when I read it and thought about it I viewed it more as a cultural artifact. Something that reflected an author’s views and philosophy. If I’m not mistaken Heinlein was always known for allowing his views to highly influence his writing.

I wouldn’t take his writings as a guidebook and I doubt that many today would even look to it as a how-to-manual. For my money though I enjoyed “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” much more.

ChadS
 
Like several others on this thread, I read Stranger when I was a lower-case pagan, and I thought it was good stuff. However, to quote a song that was popular at the time, I was so much younger then; I’m older than that now.

I agree with other posters (and his Wikipedia bio) that Heinlein wrote himself (at least his views) into his characters and their speeches. I had a short correspondence with him in the '70s where I asked about his writing himself (as Lazarus Long) into Time Enough for Love. He denied it, but methinks he protested too much. He certainly was not the first (nor will he be the last) to use the speeches of a main character as a bully pulpit to express his own views.

I agree with several posters that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is his best (most enjoyable plot, least offensive morals, except for the serial marriages among the Lunies) adult book. He sort of went downhill from there, and his books became a forum to promote his positive views on polyamory. His 1982 novel Friday played a role in popularizing the aphorism “When rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.” I have never read (as far as I know) his juveniles.
 
Heinlein was a wonderful storyteller, no doubt about that. To me, his books are sharply divided into two categories: the ones in which he is a storyteller, and the ones in which he gets on his soapbox and never. gets. off.

I haven’t read all of his books, so take this post as both incomplete and with a grain of salt.

The great stories: Starship Troopers (a little soapboxy at times, but still an enthralling read which asks, and answers, the questions of what it is to be a man and a citizen); Have Spacesuit Will Travel; Podkayne of Mars; Red Planet; Between Planets (possible my favorite of his books). I’ve never met one of his juvenile works that I didn’t like. Great literature they aren’t, but great stories they are.

The soapbox ones: Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday, anything in the Lazarus Long series. I tried so hard to get into SiaST. I know it’s considered one of his best works. But I loathed it. I found it clunky and an endless polemic against everything Heinlein didn’t like. Mind you, I agreed with him on a lot of his politics; I’m inclined more towards the libertarian politically. I still couldn’t stand it. Heinlein had a lot of very bizarre ideas about sexuality, and they came full-fledged in Lazarus Long and in Friday. Friday was the worst; I’d no sooner start really getting into the story and enjoying it, and then the main character would start yet another sex orgy with men, women, and anything else available. I’d skip ahead a few pages because, well, I really don’t need to read about an android-homo-hetero sex orgy, thanks all the same, and ten pages later there would be another one. After the first fifty pages, I was sufficiently exasperated that I tossed the book. Heinlein believed in no higher moral creed than “do unto others as you want done unto you,” and his writing shows that.

Short answer: I’d recommend that anyone who enjoys, loves, or is even mildly interested in science fiction or good storytelling read at least a few books by Heinlein, though for obvious reasons I’d steer them away from Friday, at the very least. He was an extremely intelligent man, and while as Catholics we won’t agree with him on a lot of his opinions, he articulates them very well and in such a manner that you can learn to frame your own arguments against his position. The themes of his juvenile books–independence, strength, compassion–are all qualities I should like to see in my as-yet-nonexistent children, so I’d hand them copies of the juvenile books that I have read without a qualm.
 
I thought Starship Troopers was good. I don’t like the sound of Stranger, though… Troopers is the only one of his I’ve read.
 
rocklobster said:
Just re-read this great book. It’s about a boy raised by Martians who comes back to Earth completely ignorant of humanity. The book certainly has some caveats:
  1. It inspired the “free-love” philosophy of the 60’s.
  2. It has some good arguments about Christianity’s flaws.
    However, I still recommend it to any open-minded person on this forum. I was curious to know if anyone here has read it.
Click to expand...
Never read this but I loved his other book, Friday.
 
I’ve only read Stranger in a Strange Land, and it bored me to tears. And that was when I was a deist type! His other fiction sounds boring to me, except perhaps for the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I’ll stick with Arthur C. Clarke. 😃
 
StudentMI said:
I’ve only read Stranger in a Strange Land, and it bored me to tears. And that was when I was a deist type! His other fiction sounds boring to me, except perhaps for the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I’ll stick with Arthur C. Clarke. 😃
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At least Heinlein had some semblance of spiritual belief (he did, apparently believe in rebirth or resurrection, and there are some hints that he may have grown more spiritual later in his life (a not-uncommon phenomenon). Clarke was a pretty hardcore atheist (among even less appealing aspects of his personal life) - I thought his clumsy “debunking” of humanity’s belief in Christianity in “Childhood’s End” was pretty laughable (some demonic aliens show the Pope a videotape of what supposedly really happened at the Crucifixion, and the Pope loses his faith? - I think Pope Francis would respond to such a scenario by an exorcism.) I did like a lot of Clarke’s earlier work when I was young, though, like “A Fall of Moondust” and some of his short stories.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
At least Heinlein had some semblance of spiritual belief (he did, apparently believe in rebirth or resurrection, and there are some hints that he may have grown more spiritual later in his life (a not-uncommon phenomenon). Clarke was a pretty hardcore atheist (among even less appealing aspects of his personal life) - I thought his clumsy “debunking” of humanity’s belief in Christianity in “Childhood’s End” was pretty laughable (some demonic aliens show the Pope a videotape of what supposedly really happened at the Crucifixion, and the Pope loses his faith? - I think Pope Francis would respond to such a scenario by an exorcism.) I did like a lot of Clarke’s earlier work when I was young, though, like “A Fall of Moondust” and some of his short stories.
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Heinlein mentions quite a few religious books in Stranger in between scenes of sex and perversion. I’ll stick with Clarke. Of course that part of Childhood’s End (which I haven’t read in years) would be silly. I’d forgotten it, though, so thanks for reminding me. Won’t be rereading that.

I tend to avoid sci-fi, though, because of the atheistic themes in many books. I’m a mystery fan. Hercule Poirot and Father Brown are my favorites. 🙂
 
I do remember enjoying “Red Planet”, and “The Door Into Summer” and maybe one or two others. So it’s not like I dislike Heinlein as a whole. But I found “Stranger” very annoying.

Oh, and since others have mentioned Arthur C Clarke - I find him to be the most highly overrated of the “giants” of sci-fi. I liked “2001” and sort of liked “2010” but anything else I’ve ever read by him I’ve found ultimately rather shallow while trying so hard to be profound. I think he recycles a lot of plot elements as well. I never did read “Childhood’s End” but I have a feeling it would annoy me.
 
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