Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Source: Amazon.com

From the book's cover:

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love. 

The review:

My first exposure to Heinlein's work, I must admit, was the movie version of Starship Troopers.  I was in living a busy but fulfilling life in Arizona when that film came out, and didn't see it, except for a minute or two glimpsed on TV after it released on home video.  In fact, I can't say as I've seen the whole film ever in my life.  Maybe I watched it once on TV, long after the fact.  I can't say.  The things I recall from my initial impression of the film was that I found Heinlein's use of Mormons as fodder for the alien bug species' wrath to be more than a little annoying (in the story, so far as I've come to understand, Mormons go off to some other planet to be weirdos, and are then attacked by the bugs aliens of the plot and nearly wiped out; the portrayal of Mormons is as askew as if an author depicted all catholics as bred, wed, and dead and the rest of the time being drunkards and dogmatics).  Also regarding Starship Troopers, I recall hearing, and perhaps later seeing for myself, that Heinlein had wrote the soldier characters who go off to fight the bugs as being very much hyper-sexualized and into a lot of "free love."

Now that I've read Stranger in a Strange Land, I get the impression that Heinlein doesn't fall too far from his own philosophy.  Both the aspects of a general ambivalence which is tinged with mocking skepticism and knowing shakes of the head at religions, and the whole "free love/sex is the best and to hell with the rest/there is nothing higher than the human orgasm in mankind's existence" idea are highly prevalent in Stranger in a Strange Land.

The author, Robert A. Heinlein. / Source: Heinleinia.com

Having said that, you'd think I didn't like the book.  On the contrary, I found it to be brilliantly written, though of course, a bit dated.  And I felt Heinlein had some real strength in his ideas and in his ability to turn a phrase.  I just didn't buy into his book's conclusion.  In fact, I'd say that the first half of Stranger in a Strange Land was among my favorite sci-fi book experiences, ranking up there with Battlefield Earth in its execution.  But when Heinlein's pet theories seem to take over the second half, I started losing interest.

I thought the weaving of philosophy into the story is really well done, despite my disagreement with the basic tenets Heinlein is putting out there.  I found the characters to be interesting and fairly believable.  I especially liked the character Jewbel Harshaw (who acts as lightning rod for main protagonist Valentine Michael-Smith throughout the book, deflecting other people's objections to the "Man from Mars" strange ways with his quick wit and seemingly bottomless depths of insight into humanity), though I saw Harshaw in my mind's eye as a black man, which I believe is not what he is meant to be in the book. 

"Grok" is a term used repeatedly in Stranger in a Strange Land.  The novel is highly inventive in some, if sadly not all, of its aspects. / Source: grok.org.uk

I also found the ideas of relative morality and the vast difference between someone who was raised on another planet vs. the majority of humanity to be pretty spot-on in general.  Truly, the ideas in Stranger are really thought-provoking and well crafted.  It's a good mental exercise in the what-if.  If, that is, you can set aside some of the stickier questions the author seems to be shoving your way.  Is Heinlein really shoving such, or just spit-balling?  I couldn't say, myself.  Sometimes, and enough so as to annoy me, he seems to be selling something.  It's almost used car salesman-ish near the end, in my opinion. 

The datedness of the book was also a bit funny, but what can you expect from a novel written before computers were personal, or even in the palm of your hand, and there was a rover or two on Mars, seeing what is actually there, and World War III was averted... so far, at least?  The "future history" of Earth sounds like what you'd get if you asked someone in the 1950s to tell what they thought fifty years later would be like. 

An episode of the classic '60s version of Star Trek featured a character based on Valentine Michael-Smith.  The character in the episode could do things regular humans could not, having lived on a far away planet for most of his life.  But he couldn't relate well to other human beings.  It's a good spin of the Stranger in a Strange Land motif, but I recall thinking this was not one of the stronger Star Trek installments. / Source: cindybruchman.wordpress.com 

Heinlein just did what any theoretical skeptic does, and took existing trends and ideas of his era and ran with them.  Can't blame his misses on that.  I liked "bounce tubes" especially.  A transportation method that propels human, or anything else subjected to them, through a sort of "anti-gravity" field that makes the rider move from a low point to a high point (or vice-versa) without a elevator lift or other mechanical conveyance.  Reminded me of the ubiquitous jump pad device found in some first-person video games.

Back to the plot, and my few concluding thoughts.  The excitement which revolves around getting Michael-Smith away from the government and then beginning his basic education as a member of the human race was quite satisfying, and I could have stopped right after he discovered the act of sex, and subsequently went off to gain greater enlightenment in the wide world.  That was the first half of the book, in a very tight nutshell. 

Regarding that sex I keep mentioning, it wasn't too graphically portrayed.  And the ideas covered on the topic seemed relevant to the plot.  But then comes the book's second half, where Michael-Smith becomes a carnival act, using his Martian-taught powers to do things that regular audience-going people take to be sleight of hand.  Then he takes this carny style "magic," marries it to religion, and becomes a quasi-messiah.  I found this ending to be highly unsatisfying, although I thought Heinlein wrote it quite well, for what it was. 

A quote with the words, "Stranger in a Strange Land" in it, from another accomplished author, Madeleine L'Engle.  It was either this or an image from Starship Troopers.  Searching Google Images for "Stranger in a Strange Land" doesn't come up with much usable material from Heinlein's novel.  I understand that a famous actor (I forget who specifically) has long had it as a pet project to bring Stranger to the screen, but it seems as though it'd be a terrifically difficult enterprise.  Further, I don't know that I'd go see it, having read the novel.  If it was true to the book's plot, it'd be less-than-satisfying to me, and if it diverged, I'd have to hope it didn't turn out much worse. / Source: izquotes.com

I know it says as much about me as it does about the book, but I found the last half of the novel to be too overboard.  Subtly goes out the window, and I felt like the author was lead-piping his Christ analogy way too much.  It missed the mark, in my opinion.  The very fact that he felt he had to turn it into that sort of story disappoints me.  Heinlein was obviously brilliant.  He couldn't have done something more clever than pseudo-deification?  When I closed the book, I wanted to say, "You couldn't come up with anything better than that for a conclusion?"

In the end, I'd recommend the first half of Stranger to most people, but the second half only to those who can have both an open mind, and also to those who are interested in reading it all the way through, knowing what they are getting into. 

Learn more about Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A Heinlein, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:


Does it have anything to do with Heinlein's novel, other than the coincidence of the title?  Not that I can tell.