Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

Paperback, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collections

Your library, Hard Sci-Fi, Golden Age

Publication

Ace (2018), Edition: Premium, 608 pages

Description

The epic saga of an earthling, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with superhuman powers and a total ignorance of the mores of man.

User reviews

LibraryThing member JeffV

Once regarded as a seminal work of Science Fiction, Heinlein's masterpiece comes through as dated and is downright uncomfortable to read these days. Did people really act this way?

Part of the problem is Heinlein sets this in too near a future...and does not imagine the gigantic leaps technology has

made in the interim. So we still have typewriters. TV is now "stereovision." We have hover cars, but we don't even have something as convenient as a mobile phone.

The rest of the problem lies in the misogyny displayed by the main characters. Women not only are in secondary roles, but are often told "get back in the kitchen where you belong" or something similar. Religious cults embodied free love -- this was probably the moment Heinlein became a dirty old man -- it was a common theme in most of his remaining works.

Once upon a time, there was an appealing message in this book -- about embracing an alien culture and putting aside our own sense of superiority to learn something from them (or him, in this case, there was but one "man from Mars." That message isn't at all dated...however, the delivery system is in urgent need of a tune-up. I wouldn't mind seeing a modernized version of this to restore some degree of plausibility. In the mean time, it might be a while before I go delving back in to retro-scifi, it is just often so tiresome if the entire mythos isn't created from whole cloth (see Dune).

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LibraryThing member lizday

"Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it’s partly her fault."

If you can stomach this book to the end you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I made it to page 325 before literally throwing it against the wall.

There is a really good novella somewhere in Stranger; unfortunately it's

hidden in endless Heinlein polemics filled with sexism, homophobia, libertarian doublespeak, jingoism, and sexism. Did I mention the sexism? There's a lot of sexism.

This was my fourth tango with Heiny so I knew his portrayal of women would be somewhere be nymphomanic and Stepford wife, but since this is supposed to be Heinlein's "progressive" novel, I couldn't fathom it could be more intolerable than The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It could be and was.

Usually, if I make it 3/4 of the way through a novel, I force myself to the end, no matter how terrible I find it. This time I just couldn't do it.

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LibraryThing member mephit

I enjoyed the first half of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land very much. The latter half not so much.

I was alienated from the text by ruminations on the part of the character of Jill regarding homosexuality and also about rape, which were within a paragraph of each other: something to the

effect that nine out of ten female victims brought it on themselves and ... oh I can't be bothered with explaining the other right now. Both of which rather stuck in my craw.

I wasn't sure whether Jill was speaking for Heinlein or whether she was simply a foil for the more open-minded and progressive characters. As the story continued she became less parochial in her attitudes, although I'm still pretty uncomfortable about those parts of the text. It is much clearer when Jubal speaks that he is a mouthpiece for Heinlein. The depiction of women in the book had some elements I liked: they were resourceful and strong-minded. But they were still secretaries, nurses and acolytes, submissive to men rather than independent.

Still it is a very interesting work, plenty to get your teeth into what with the take on religion, agnosticism and sexual mores. Lots to be annoyed and intrigued by in equal measure.

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LibraryThing member AlCracka

Admit it, this book is pretty boring.

LibraryThing member IrishHolger

For the very first part I liked the concept of the novel but then got more and more bored by its preachy ramblings. It's a book that sure hasn't aged well and is less of a story than a series of seemingly endless not-as-clever-as-the-author-thought-it-would-be monologues. Yep, colour me

disappointed.

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LibraryThing member rmacd47

Shows its age. Philosophy masquerading as science fiction.

LibraryThing member paruline

Well, I did not like this. It felt like being sermonized about privilege by someone oozing privilege from every pore.

The plot was very basic: a man raised by Martians comes back to Earth and teaches that if humans could only get rid of jealousy and monogamy (stoopid relationships, how do they

work?) and learn to speak Martian, then every man would be able to break the laws of physics (stoopid science, how does it work?), develop superpowers, and be surrounded by naked, beautiful, libidinous, subservient women. And gays are icky.

There were some interesting bits about religion, politics and art, but this was not enough to redeem this book in my view.

2/5

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LibraryThing member girlwithafacee

There is no doubt as to why this is the best-selling science fiction book of all time. This book was well written, interesting, imaginative, and yet believable. Heinlein does an excellent job of creating a story which brings to light the way that humans have their social norms that they hate to

stray from. Anything different is viewed as a threat; locked away in a hospital or jail to prevent contamination of the rest of the population. Valentine Michael Smith's fight for freedom Stranger in a Strange Land also had many parallels to the Bible, drawing attention to the fact that the basis of which power-house religions place their beliefs could be just as this is, fiction.

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LibraryThing member thomasJamo

This is supposedly Heinlein's masterpiece. It's certainly a great book, but I don't think it's his best. The Jubal Harshaw character is a great character. The general consensus is that Harshaw is modeled after Heinlein himself. He has some great quotes and he is quite funny. This is definitely a

"must read" for any Heinlein fan. It's fun to watch Mike's reaction to Earth (he is was a human child raised on Mars by Martians and he is brought back to Earth and has a difficult time adjusting to Earth's customs)

It's a fun read and a great social commentary. Of course, it is social commentary by Robert Heinlein, and naturally, it is very conservative and anti-government. Definitely have to read this one. But don't let Heinlein's old-fashioned political views get in the way of your enjoying the story.

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LibraryThing member LarissaBookGirl

This is the story a man of two worlds, the world he was born to and the world be was born on. On first inspection the most remarkable thing about Valentine Michael Smith was his circumstance of birth and subsequent upbringing in a strange land, however it is not until Valentine Michael Smith is

brought 'home' that we have to wonder if his is the strange land, or it is ours?

However you looked at it, biologically Valentine Michael Smith was human, even if his beliefs and ways were not. But is genetics alone enough to define man? As he begins to learn about his new 'home' and its people, many social, philosophical and religious question are raised. What is it to be a man, to be human? What is truth? What is God?

As it turns out Valentine Michael Smith may be no more a man than he is a Martian. He is a race of one having to learn to change his ways to conform to human society, or failing that change human society to conform to his ways. A feat that may be more plausible then it sounds, at least for one as unique as the 'Man From Mars'.

STrANgER IN A StRANgE LAnD is a deeply thoughtful and undeniably compelling read; this is not a book to be skimmed through and passed off as mere fantasy alone but a story to be taken in and grokked as best as possible. It is easy to see why they had wanted to ban this book with its themes of sexuality, religion, society and morals. Themes that are as relevant today as they were when this book was first written.
(1961, in case you were wondering.)

Having never read the original, previously released shortened edition, I can not say for sure how much this story has changed being the uncut version, but I can say that if you have never read this book, either version I'm sure, then you are greatly missing out on one of the most cultural, philosophical and religious discussions ever committed to literature.

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LibraryThing member alwright1

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I didn't read up before hand. I just picked it up for 50 cents at the library book sale.

When I began the book, I was fascinated with the Man from Mars, and I really enjoyed the character. And even though the sexism had already started to bother me, I

couldn't help but like Jubal, as well. The whole first half of the book in which Martians are explained, Mike is only an egg, and the plot revolves around what will become of him, I stayed busy enough not to focus on the sexism or anything else that bothered me.

As soon Mike matured and left home, the book changed so that I felt that I was being preached to with none of the redeeming qualities of the story left to keep me interested. The message seemed to be so shaming towards readers who might not share its values, and yet it seemed so ridiculously backwards in its sexism, homophobia, and general 60s silliness as to be laughable today despite the free-loving spiritualism. (I admit, while I may be quite the liberal idealist, I've never been much for free-loving spiritualism, being more of a proponent of fraternally-respecting rationalism.) I had also unwittingly purchased the complete version that contains 60,000 words cut from the original release, and for a while I was feeling every word of it.

I soldiered through hoping to grok it in fullness (Okay, so I may not love this book, but I love grokking and you can't stop me even if you make fun of me in public about it.), and I didn't hate the end as much as I could have.

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LibraryThing member bertilak

This review is about the 'original uncut version' published in 1991. Read this version, not the earlier one! With the backstory included it is much more coherent. The section about the protagonist and his carnival mentalist act is particularly good: conning the marks to fool them into learning the

truth!

It is a story about the first human born on Mars, who was raised by Martians in accordance with their philosophy, then returned to Earth. He begins teaching that philosophy ('grokking the fullness') with mixed results. There are obvious references to the coming counterculture and to events in Palestine almost 2000 years before.

The note by Virginia Heinlein in this edition explains something I had noticed in the first edition: the curious split in tone of the book. For all the hipness and foreshadowing of the hippie/psychedelic revolution, the relations between men and women are curiously retro. The 'snappy' dialog reminds me of that between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday (which goes back to Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, but never mind).

The reason for this split turns out to be that the book was written in the early 1950s based on an idea from 1948. In view of this book and Heinlein's later works, one could argue that, however much he attempted to compensate by being 'with it', Heinlein's basic image of gender relations never got out of the 1940s.

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LibraryThing member suzybookwench

This book changed my life.

LibraryThing member Xleptodactylous

When you consider we have many other sci-fi writers who are not stuck in their own time and do not write all their male characters as sexist, sex-obsessed or sexy, you can clearly understand the view to give this book a very wide birth. The storyline was actually quite interesting, but I'm sure the

is someone out there who had written something similar without the added bollocks "of the time".

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LibraryThing member reannon

Read it first when I was in my teens and didn't like it... I wasn't mature enough, or willing enough to criticize my society, to get much out of it. It later became one of my favorites, along with Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil, Time Enough for Love, and for sheer fun, The Star Beast.

LibraryThing member kd9

Remember what you wore to the prom? Remember your haircut in high school? Embarrassing to look back on, aren't they? I read Stranger in a Strange Land when it was first published. I was blown away by the open attitudes, the mystical powers, and, of course, the sex. Is that why I overlooked the

misogynist attitudes, the endless pontification, and the facile plotline? The first third of the book is still fairly readable, but when we are introduced to Jubal Harshaw (i.e. Robert Heinlein in a lawyer suit), the novel sinks swiftly. Jubal never stops talking. And his ideas are never questioned. All women love sex all the time. Violating the laws of physics are easy if you think the "right" way. Any technology after the buggy whip is incomprehensible by a normal human being. A Muslim character even remarks that the women are properly in the background, how nice, Meanwhile I am howling and throwing the book against the wall. I did finish reading it all, for proper documentation, so now I can agree that this book marked the end of Heinlein's career as a writer. Admittedly his later books are much worse, but all the hallmarks of a lazy and pompous man are shown here in black and white.

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LibraryThing member john.cooper

It's a worthwhile exercise to reread a book that you first read 40 years ago--if you can stand to. I'm still interested in Heinlein, whose massive (if disturbingly flawed) biography prompted me to revisit his most famous novel. I've long been curious about the "original uncut version" released in

1991; the bio explained that Heinlein spent months laboriously cutting the book to meet the publisher's arbitrary word limit. I'm happy to report that the uncut version is so much better than the original edition that I'm surprised the cut version is still in print. To meet the tight word count, Heinlein didn't just remove soliloquies and non-essentials; he eliminated scenes and shortened others that, as first written, would have been more of a pleasure to read. The book made enough of an impression on me as a teenager that I was able to identify differences even after all these years.

Of course, the idiosyncrasies and anachronisms that mark all of Heinlein's writing have only become more noticeable over the years. Heinlein was famously good at anticipating future technologies (with the notable exception of microchips), but he was hopeless at predicting changes to society and mores--in fact, he didn't even try. His future society (undated, but judging from references to the timeframes of certain characters' childhoods, meant to be somewhere in the 1990s) is much like that of the pre-beatnik '50s, complete with grotesquely cheesy advertising, traveling carnivals, and Puritan hypocrisies. Women who are married work at being wives. Unmarried women work as secretaries, nurses, or performers, and are the continual target of what comes off now as offensively sexualized condescension, although it was then considered benign, and none of the female characters are in the least offended by it. (There's a case to be made that Heinlein's view of the sexes had its origin not in the '50s, but in the '20s, when he came of age.) It's that 1950s world of the future, not the futuristic overlays of flying cars and world government that it's combined with, that now seems the most mind-bendingly unbelievable.

But if you can get past the fifties-with-jetpacks setting, it's a remarkably engrossing novel: the closest that Heinlein, a proud commercial artist, ever came to creating literature. The characters have more complexity than in most of his other books, and their personal and situational dilemmas are convincing. The central idea--the "what if?" that must lie at the heart of every successful science fiction story--can be put this way: What if all human beings are capable of seemingly superhuman, even supernatural powers, and need only the insight that comes from learning a foreign language--Martian--to unlock them? What if the learning of this language also means that one necessarily becomes free of neuroses, jealousy, and all urge to harm? A human baby, the newborn survivor of an Earth expedition, is raised by Martians and brought back to Earth at the age of 25. At first a helpless political pawn, he comes to maturity at the same time that he learns the customs of his biological people, and devotes his life to sharing what he alone, of all the humans on Earth, understands about human potential.

Before the plot comes to its only plausible conclusion, we've been drawn into what is possibly the most warmly pleasant Utopian community in fiction.

This is an adventure story and a philosophical provocation in one. Although in parts it's so retrograde as to challenge your suspension of disbelief, it's astoundingly beyond the bounds of the conventional thought of its pre-Mad Man era, whose tiny black-and-white televisions broadcast shows presented by chain-smoking, narrow-tied pitchmen. And if ultimately, its implied prescription for the human condition doesn't match what we've since learned about the variety of human experience, the book will still entertain you and make you think twice about what you know.

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LibraryThing member lorsomething

Full of ideas and new ways of looking at things. I especially liked the fair witnesses. Loved it.

LibraryThing member kawgirl

I think perhaps I had heard too much hype about Heinlein and this book before I read it. I didn't feel the book matched the hype. Still, it's worth reading.

LibraryThing member Arctic-Stranger

This book blew my head apart when I read it as a high schooler. It just gets better with age. Perhaps this is a good book for our times.

LibraryThing member elmyra

The first part is superb. The second is entertaining. When he got to the third part, Robert Anson found the crack. It goes downhill from there.

The fourth and fifth parts are what a charitable reader might describe as Heinlein's pre-1960s version of free love. I am not feeling quite so charitable.

As far as I'm concerned, Heinlein had a wet dream and decided to make a novel out of it.

Ultimately, there are some interesting themes and concepts in the book. But there is something slightly ironic about setting out to write a book which is supposed to challenge all the preconceptions of Western society, setting the books a good half-century in the future and not imagining that in those 50 years society might actually have evolved.

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LibraryThing member russelldad

I got through it and was mildly interested throughout. It really has two totally separate parts. The first half was great, the second half was weird.

LibraryThing member ClownishAtBest

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is better and shorter. I think the plot loses its steam about 2/3 through the book. Still a classic, and still Heinlein, and thus, still worth the read.

LibraryThing member burningtodd

Amazing, better than the cut version, remarkable the way the story moves and the things that Heinlein is trying to say about society.

LibraryThing member br77rino

Story of an outsider come back to Earth with a new philosophy for living.

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