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Stranger in a Strange Land <span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), by Robert A. Heinlein is one of the science fiction books that have attained the most mainstream success, both culturally and in terms of sales. It is a science-fictional version of one of the traditional formats for a satirical tale: the society seen through the eyes of an innocent, in this case Valentine Michael Smith, born on Mars of human parents, raised by Martians, and brought to Earth as a young adult unaware of human culture. The society he arrives in is 1961, only more so, complete with greed, commercialism, and an attitude towards sex combining taboo and prurient fascination. Smith is puzzled by such human phenomena as religion. There are no religions on Mars; instead, there is a concept he attempts to translate as "Thou art God." (Heinlein refrains from informing us that this apparent blasphemy closely resembles the orthodox Hindu creed tat tvam asi.) Martians all start out female and then, if they survive, become male; they also stay around after death. Smith is introduced to his ancestral planet by Jubal Harshaw, a voluble and cynical oldster, open-minded enough not to mistake the customs of his native planet for the laws of the Universe. Harshaw comes to believe that the Martian language may be a better instrument for understand the world than Terran languages. (The idea that a better language could help people live better, partly derived from Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics, also appears in Heinlein's story "Gulf.") Martian includes the word grok, which originally meant "to drink" but has been extended to indicate total understanding of another person or object. Many readers were glad to find their own certainties challenged by the book. For some, it was the Eastern religious approach; for others, the cynical view of politics (Jubal Harshaw remarks that "Man, as a social animal, can no more escape government than the individual can escape bondage to his bowels.") There are other amusements, such as Jubal's comment that the taboo against cannibalism is not caused by our being civilized but necessitated by our not being civilized. There is one "prediction" that even the author would admit was good luck: As in the Reagan administration, the best way to get through to the leader of the free world is through his wife's astrologer. But of course, the most famous aspect of the book was its treatment of sex, which to the enlightened mind, can be purged of all jealousy and possessiveness. The characters who reach this view have undergone a transformation through understanding of the Martian language that gives them what we would consider superhuman powers, and Heinlein might have stressed a bit more the difficulty of transcending jealousy if one did not have such powers. Besides, the book has aged badly in some ways. It is as squeamish and phobic about homosexuality as almost all sf and mainstream fiction of the time. It treats the avoidance of rape as entirely the woman's responsibility (as did the laws of the time), though one of the powers Martian gives is the ability to kill would-be rapists by sheer mental power. The book influenced the Sixties; grok has found its way into dictionaries. There is a widespread belief that Charles Manson read Stranger, but in fact Manson was barely literate and never read anything he didn't have to. The most that can be said is that some of Manson's followers incorporated some of the terminology of the book, along with Beatles lyrics, Black revolutionary rhetoric, premature Newage, and other shiny objects found in the culture. Heinlein sharply cut the book to meet his publisher's length requirements. In 1991 Heinlein's widow reclaimed the rights to the book and sold the publishers the original version as Heinlein wrote it, which is now in print. Comparing the two versions, we see that Heinlein was excellent at editing himself. A few amusements are lost (at one point in the original Jubal explains that he writes popular trash because "I can't pimp for my sisters--I don't have any.), but in most cases the original wording is prolix and benefits from Heinlein's trimming. The book has received much critical attention, most of it negative. James Blish and Alexei Panshin have expressed doubts about it. A useful corrective is The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which perhaps swings the pendulum a bit too far in the opposite direction, but shows that the book is a satirical anatomy. External LinksInternet Speculative Fiction Database Categories: Novels | Robert A. Heinlein novels | 1960s novels | Novels set on Mars | Hugo Award winning novels
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