Stranger in a Strange Land

strainger in a strange land WAS "THE great american novel" as far as i'm concerned. nothing by anyone has topped it as being such yet.

about the only think i aggree with him on in anything else of his i've read is that he was one hell of a damd good story teller.

although replace his line merrage in friday with intrest group merrages ...

there was something he wrote, something or other road, glory road maybe, that had some good bits and concepts i though interesting.

never read beast, but i remember reading lasarus long's list in analog about the time it came out.

mainstream people who only read one of his books would base some of the damdest psychoanalasys on the basis of their impression from that one book, that anyone who read more then one of his different kinds of storrys would mostly laugh their ass off about.

he WAS a bit 'right' of MY center, yet i somehow suspect, he'd have issues with where today's 'right' is defining their's.
for one thing, he really did believe in science. i'd love to see what he'd have to say about the anti-science of today's so called 'right'.

perhapse it was a mercy to him not to have lived to see it. well he didn't have a problem that i've heard of with raygun, but i think he passed before iran contra broke.

=^^=
.../\...

 

themnax,

Have you read Expanded Universe, the one he only allowed printed in the US. Its also one of the few times he directely editorialized in his own voice rather than his characters saying something. (People who claim "Heinlein thinks... because a character said .... " have problems when Prof. dela Paz is compared with Lt. Juan Rico.)

It's a mix of fiction/non-fiction/opinion shorter pieces.

He went into a fairly detailed discussion of why the US was going to hell and one of the things he mentioned was superstition and anti-science. But, being an optimist, and he finished with an upbeat (fiction) story about how the US would fix itself.

He included Tarot, horoscopy and Creation "Science" as some of his syptoms of decay. He would not like the anti-science.

 

you know, i don't think i have, and it sounds very much like something i would like to.

glad you mentioned it. i'll keep an eye out for it.

(i'm an optomist too, and i believe humanity will fix itself, whether america does or not. i just don't see capitolism as any more or less of a panacea that marxism or any other yet invented idology. i think people tend to put too much faith in what the're familiar with, even when they see with their own eyes many of the problems with it. but people also, at least a few of them, enough, somehow manage to escape their own self inflicted doom, do go on and rebuild, hopefully some future itteration, a little saner then they have yet)

=^^=
.../\...

 

For me the Great American Novel is still Huck Finn. Haven't read Stranger in 30 years or so though, and am getting inspired to give it another go. It's recently been brought to my mind by seeing Jefferson Starship, whose magnum opus Blows Against the Empire was overtly influenced by Heinlein.

 

Well .. is it mysogenist to refer to a character as a "horse-faced spinster"? (Stranger, p3)

I've no doubt RH loved women but that doesn't mean he regarded or treated them as equals: in his best-known novel the female characters are feisty enough but generally subservient to the men. Here's one (male) character's view of Jubal's menage:

Hmm.

 

For me the Great American Novel is still Huck Finn. Haven't read Stranger in 30 years or so though, and am getting inspired to give it another go. It's recently been brought to my mind by seeing Jefferson Starship, whose magnum opus Blows Against the Empire was overtly influenced by Heinlein.

There's a lot to agree with in that short post. Huck Finn is quite a joy to read, in fact I sometimes read aloud to my wife from it, though doing the pronunciations is a pain at times. After reading that, Tom Sawyer was a real let-down though. Anything by Bradbury is also fun to read aloud, even more so actually...

I think Heinlein has been hugely influencial in our culture, more so than mainstreamers would realize. I've noticed many (probably most) people into polyamory are big Heinlein fans. But I didn't know that regarding Jefferson Starship... I'll have to give that a good listen... I love "Let's Go Together" and have always loved the sneaky-sexy lyrics to "Miracles" ("I had a taste of the real world when I went down on you, girl") which even here in a fascist state is still not censored from the radio. But I've never listened to the whole album, and will have to do so.

I'm going to have to read it again also, I know I have a copy somewhere.


"You know we love each other it's plain to see
There's just one answer comes to me
Sister lovers -- some of you must know about water brothers
And in time maybe others
So you see what we can do
Is to try something new - that is if you're crazy too
But I don't really see, why can't we go on as three?"
-CSNY, "Triad"

 

If you're checking out Jefferson they too had a version of "Triad" and the song is based on "Stranger".

 

I read lots and lots of Heinlein in the 70s. This was not a particular favorite.

SPOILER:



I resented the end, where he put me (as a reader)through an especially grisly martyrdom scene for what was to me a poorly thought-out religion, even though I think I shared his priorities. It's been forever since I read it, though.

 

I think you might want to reread it, sounds like you might have missed a few things.

 

Can't agree more.

I first read it as a 17 year old, and it was an immense help in forming my views on religion and philosophy.

I read the uncut version for the first time recently and I believe it is way, way better than the original, if only for it's extreme difference in one part of the story...

I cried three times in that reading, if only for it's great epicness.

It will likely remain my favorite book forever, for it's ideas. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is probably my second favorite, for it's story. The Varieties of Scientific Experience is up there somewhere. Overshadowed by the others for it's dull re-readability due to the fact that I agree with everything Carl Sagan says.

 

Uncut version? I didn't know there was one. How can you tell and what's different?

 

I just realized your name is from SiaSL!

 

Good catch!

 

Funny, I've still gotta read this one

 

I just read this for the first time recently. I think it's brilliant.

Being a hardcore non-conformist, I love the whole story. Seeing how someone can adopt such an "alien" viewpoint about some very important and institutionalized things, and manage to convert a large number of people was very inspiring.

The only other book of his I've read is The Puppet Masters (which, by the way, is nothing like the movie). I liked it because of its totally un-Hollywood ending...

 

I had two problems with Stranger in a Strange Land: 1. My biggest pet peeve in all fiction: turning one of the characters into a pulpit from which the author can rattle on about whatever he or she wrote the entire book to say. Let the damn book speak for itself! Worst examples of this, besides Jubal's speeches, are John Galt's unreadable tirade in Atlas Shrugged and Teabing's mindless rambling in DaVinci Code.

2. His characters have sex with children and the author seems to support and condone this. Completely unforgivable. There's no telling how many real lives were ruined due at least in part to Heinlein's influence on the abusers.

 

Heinlein was a wanabe that had 1 or 2 good ideas and SOLD them.

Compared to say Baxter or Attanasio he is nothing but vapour.
Nothing heinlien wrote is any more original that the wochowski bros sellling off
P K Dicks Maze of death as a new idea called the Matrix.

Roo

 

Heinlein, an American science fiction writer, often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Within the framework of his science fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, explored various unorthodox family structures, and speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His iconoclastic approach to these themes led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works and attempts to place mutually contradictory labels on his work. For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was regarded by some as advocating militarism and to some extent fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of a pied piper of the sexual revolution, and of the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory.

Heinlein won Hugo Awards for four of his novels, in addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for years in which Hugo Awards had not been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for his lifetime achievement.

This is the guy you call; "nothing but vapour" and "a wanabe that had 1 or 2 good ideas and SOLD them"?

I doubt that even Baxter or Attanasio would agree with you on this, in fact they would probably say that reading Heinlein was one of the things that got them into SciFi in the first place.

 

I borrowed/read this book from a small collection of paperbacks in my 4th grade class. It was my first adult book and I read many many of RAH's novels and other Sci Fi greats because of this book. It was an awakening. What was my teacher grokking when she put it there? - Dale

 

She probably grokked that it might wake up a few young minds.