Stranger in a Strange Land had an outsize impact on me the first time I read it, nearly four decades ago. It was my first exposure to heady concepts like philosophical anarchism, free love, and the Eastern mysticism inherent in its oft repeated phrase, “Thou art God.” These were parameter changing ideas for a young man of twenty to consider.

So I approached this reread (my third overall time reading it, but my first reread in over thirty years) with curiosity, wondering how well it would match my memories of it. My rereads of other Heinlein novels in the last couple of years had been disappointing, and I had been putting this one off, not wanting to knock it off its memory pedestal.

What I discovered on this reread is that Heinlein put a lot more thought into communicating his iconoclastic ideas than he did into his actual story. The story isn’t bad — the idea of a human raised by an advanced alien race and then sent back to interact on his own planet, an alien to his own race, is a fascinating set up. But Heinlein spends so much ink on monologues and dialogues expounding his ideas that character development suffers. There is a large cast of characters, but most are interchangeable props throughout most of the novel. Jubal Harshaw is interesting, but mainly because he is a thinly veiled stand in for Heinlein himself. The text is heavily salted with memorable quotes, which is good, but can devolve into long, dull passages, which is not. Often it feels like the story is little more than a thin scaffolding for Heinlein to build his pontificating around.

Original rating (assigned from memory of book’s impact): 5 Stars

Reread rating: 3 Stars (but still recommended reading as a Sci/Fi classic)

This is a book that it seems like I should like. It deals with issues of religion, including a strong critique of religion as we know it, presents socially progressive ideas about sex and relationships, and relies upon a fundamentally humanist, individualist philosophy.

In the end, however, I can't get past a few things to really like this book.

1. The word "grok." I understand the meaning and significance of the word within the book and I understand why Heinlein chose to create a new word to carry this meaning, but "grok"? It's an ugly word and it gets used about 150 times too many in the book.

2. The use of mystic religious concepts and practices. Heinlein critiques traditional, human religions, but he is unable or unwilling, finally, to leave behind the trappings of religion, relying upon them to bolster his argument. This bothers me because it feels like manipulation, like a man trying to have it both ways by using the religiosity and losing the religion. Michael admits that his philosophy, his truth, "couldn't be taught in schools" and says, "I was forced to smuggle it in as a religion--which it is not--and con the marks into tasting it by appealing to their curiosity" (419). He admits that he is manipulating his audience (just as Heinlein manipulates his) as well as admitting that the people he is trying to save are no more than marks, dupes to be conned. This is entirely too cynical for my taste and does not accord with the whole "Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God" philosophy.

3. The sexism of the text, which is inseparable from its heteronormativity and even homophobia. Despite Heinlein's progressive (especially for the time) ideas about sexuality and desire, he reinforces the gender dichotomy repeatedly, putting women and homosexuals in their place as he does so. Sometimes this is obviously negative and hard to miss, especially for a modern reader: "Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault" (304). At other times this is done with apparently positive statements: "Male-femaleness is the greatest gift we have--romantic physical love may be unique to this planet" (419). A statement like this one is troubling not because of its emphasis on romantic physical love but because of its insistence on the male-female gender dichotomy as a necessary component of that love.

A more substantial example arises when Jill discovers that she likes to be looked at it, that it makes her feel desirable. She says, "Okay, if a healthy woman liked to be looked at, then it follows as the night the day that healthy men should like to look, else there was just no darn sense to it! At which point, she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures" (302-3). The realization that she likes to be looked at is fine as far as it goes, although the immediate leap from there to pornography is definitely a problem (pornography of course having huge and unavoidable issues of power wrapped up in it that this analysis neatly sidesteps). Following Jill's realization of her own desire to be looked at, Mike comes to see that "Naughty pictures are a great goodness" and they go together to strip clubs to enjoy the live version. However, "Jill found that she 'grokked naughty pictures' only through a man's eyes. If Mike watched, she shared his mood, from sensuous pleasure to full rut--but if Mike's attention wandered, the model, dancer, or peeler was just another woman. She decided that this was fortunate; to have discovered in herself Lesbian tendencies would have been too much" (307). Here, Heinlein brings together his progressive, free love ideas about sex itself with his more traditional ideas about gender roles and his leaning toward homophobia. The conclusion Jill arrives at here is that a) sex and desire are good, b) women are the spectacle, never the spectator, and c) lesbianism is completely taboo, even for someone who is otherwise interested in opening herself up to sexual love in its many forms. This one scene simply brings together these ideas that recur throughout the second half of the book. Repeatedly, it is made clear that homosexual behavior is a danger for Mike to avoid and that women's role in sexual behavior is essentially passive.

4. The emphasis on self, whether in self-love, self-pleasure, self-control. There are two basic ideas here. One is stated by Patricia Paiwonski, Mike's first convert, who says, "God wants us to be Happy and He told us how: 'Love one another!' Love a snake if the poor thing needs love. Love thy neighbor . . . . And by 'love' He didn't mean namby-pamby old-maid love that's scared to look up from a hymn book for fear of seeing a temptation of the flesh. If God hated flesh, why did He make so much of it? . . . Love little babies that always need changing and love strong, smelly men so that there will be more babies to love--and in between go on loving because it's so good to love!" (288). Love is wonderful, love is a good goal, but this is a love I am suspicious of, for it is a love based on feeling good, based on happiness. There's nothing wrong with feeling good and being happy, of course, but if feeling good and being happy are the primary goals of life, then that opens the door for abuses of others in the name of love or happiness and seems a rather meaningless goal in and of itself. Hedonism alone is not enough for me.

The second basic idea is Mike's final message to the people: "The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes" (429). Again, this is not a bad goal--for once, finally, Mike brings a message of personal responsibility to add to the free love and grokking that has constituted most of the rest of the book. However, to expect the rest to follow from that kind of responsibility and self-control is just silly. This is The Secret, this is "name-it-and-claim-it" theology, this is bullshit. Like the idea that God wants us to be happy so if we all try to live for our own happiness, it will all work out, this is a philosophy that believes that YOU are the center of the universe, that everything will work out for the best.

This is the complete opposite of the philosophy provided in Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan. Vonnegut also emphasizes love and finding a kind of happiness, but in his universe, those things are refuges in the midst of chaos, small things we can each do to make the world we live in a little better, a little more livable, not means to become masters of the universe. For Heinlein, God moves from out there to in here, validating each individual person's individual desire and decision; for Vonnegut, there is no God, not out there and not in here. For me, that is much more appealing.

I'd heard about this Science Fiction classic for years before I finally decided to give it a whirl. For some reason I had always put off reading it... and to be totally honest I should have listened to what my gut was telling me. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that Stranger in a Strange Land came out in 1961, a period in time when values and mores were different, but the level of sexism and homophobia in this book is simply too much for me to bear.

Just read the following passage: "Jill had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok—and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke—fortunately Mike’s male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as his others were very female women. Jill suspected that Mike would grok a ‘wrongness’ in the poor in-betweeners anyhow—they would never be offered water."

And another one: "After looking over a bushel or so of Mike’s first class mail Jubal set up a list of categories: (…) G. Proposals of marriage and propositions not quite so formal … Jill brought a letter, category “G,” to Jubal. More than half of the ladies and other females (plus misguided males) who supplied this category included pictures alleged to be of themselves."

And yet another--hold on to your seat, this one is a biggie: "Nine times out of ten when a woman gets raped it's partly her own fault."

Really, Heinlein, really? A DNF for me.

OLIVIER DELAYE
Author of the SEBASTEN OF ATLANTIS series
n  n

I enjoyed this one so much!

This was my first ever sci fi novel and it was brilliant.

Twenty years ago, a space shuttle lands on Mars and all contact with the crew is cut and they are presumed dead.

Forward twenty years and when the next crew arrive on Mars, they meet Michael. A human, son of two previous crew members and since brought up by Martians.

When Mike is brought to earth for the first time it's a media circus and Mike has to learn the human ways and culture.

I found this incredibly funny and forward thinking for its years.

This is the uncut version that was released after the authors death and although it's over 500 pages I didn't notice it.

Five stars.

I really enjoyed this book. The concept of a man who had grown up on Mars and never seen another human until he was in his twenties is such a fun idea - and a rich canvas. Watching Mike try to grok humans gave a Heinlein great opportunities to point out some of our faults - and our advantages.

I think my favorite part of this book is the word 'grok'. I would bet that there are deep discussions over the true meaning of this word - but I will contend that its closest meaning in English is 'to be enlightened about something'. If you grok God you have reached enlightenment. If you grok music you truly understand in the way that Mozart understood it. If you grok another person you love them. If you grok programming then you truly love and are really good at programming - that, and you're also a probably a pretty big nerd for using a word like 'grok' :) I used it in front of my girlfriend and she still hasn't forgiven me, since I had to explain that it was "a Martian word"!

One thing that I grokked (yes I'm going to keep using it dammit) after finishing this book is that it is kind of a 60's manifesto for free love. I wasn't alive in the 60's, but given everything I know about the 60's from movies, books, etc it seemed that my grokking was right.

I am yet to read Christopher Hitchens but his reputation precedes him for his acerbic pen (& tongue !) has been celebrated and reviled in equal measure. There is this book by him named God is not great and the second line of the book's title is most apt as a summary for Heinlein's story : How religion poisons everything . Hailed as a classic, hugo award winner and quite controversial at its time of release, I found this to be filled with nothing but religious patronizing and a whole lot of it too. Prime example of how a brilliant idea gets convoluted with religious claptrap.

Some books stand the test of time for it makes perfect connect with a reader who comes to it even after a good hundred years. Some other books are like a mirror that reflects the world of that day and to a person who approaches the book after a good few decades, there is no connect to speak of and the entire plot is wasted on them. I suffered a similar fate in the hands of this book. It has been some forty plus years since the age of flower power, psychedelic ways to attain nirvana, the paranoia surrounding the space race and all that circus which I can digest but not fully. It's not the first time that I have done time travel with a story and its characters ! But what completely fizzed my circuits out was Heinlein's way of infusing a messianic plot line into the whole mix.

I was very satisfied with the story until the point of religious blah blah intervening. Imagine : One man who was born and raised in Mars.The guy has unbelievable superpowers which would send Superman crying back to his mamma. The man is as naive as a newborn but slowly comes to grips with the world around him. The world is a nasty place out to take him for a ride too. He takes baby steps in this world being assisted by a few kind hearted folks and what do you know....he turns out to be a messiah ! Free sex and orgies would have been a rage years ago but it bores my pants off trying to read it now. I could see a lot of parallels with Osho in the reformed Valentine Michael Smith ( the creation of an a total style of living for the people around, belief in open and unbridled love, extreme erudition to name a few traits). Considering the fact that he travelled all over India in the 60's and obtained the stature of a love guru , my hunch grows even stronger.

A book becomes controversial when it takes up subject matter that had been delicate for the public till then and goes into territory which till then had been untouched. An onslaught of sex, gurus, cannibalism and rebellion against the system would have been controversy then but is quite archaic now. Which is to say, the only value here is its antique value ! I would have foregone all this if not for this one line in the book Nine times out of ten, when a woman gets raped ; it's partly her fault. You can offer me a thousand arguments for the inclusion of this piece of appalling junk in a book but brother, I am not buying any of them. Initially I thought of a two star rating for this book but this one line and the outstandingly irritating pest of a character named Jubal Harshaw did the job of making this a one star book.

I will read your other books Mr.Heinlein but I am not touching this one with even a ten-foot pole again !

Wow, a lot of mixed reviews of this book here.

First, the edition referenced is the 1991 UNCUT version, which is about 33% longer than the version published in 1961. So for those of you who felt it was over long, there you have it.

Second, about those offended by the book's purported misogyny and homophobia, keep in mind it was written in the late 1950s. By the standards of the day, this book was comparatively forward-thinking. Should we fault Shakespeare for his politically incorrect foibles? Read Catcher in the Rye lately?

Third, the social impact of this book is given short shrift in these reviews, especially in regards to the early psychedelic adventurers around the SF Bay Area who adopted the word "grok" to describe the contemplative aspect of the LSD experience. Throw Free Love and waterbeds into the mix while you're at it.

Fourth, as a work of fiction, this book has tremendous scope. A rich diversity of characters whose stories come together with that of Michael Valentine Smith, a well-imagined future that perfectly comments and satirizes the present one. (Consider the focus of the public imagination on the various happenings of celebrities and their excesses, satire still valid nearly 50 years later.) And most of all, the intimated future destruction of Earth at the hands of the Martians, not unlike what happened with the planet that has since become an asteroid belt.

As far as the book's take on religion and spirituality, Heinlein has borrowed less from the Eastern traditions (as so many other reviewers have indicated) as early Christian ones.

Remember, religion is a human construction. A church is a human institution. Those who confuse church and religion with the Mystery they are intended to honor deserve what they get.

This one transformed and cemented me as a young adult, totally screwing me up and enlightening me at the same time, showing me that living in a crazy christian culture doesn't mean I have to stay there, or that great imagery can be used soooooo damn subversively. :)

And above or below that, it was a fantastic tale of striving for wisdom, learning that semantics MEANS something, and that I can be blown away by the fact that so much philosophy and striving and understanding, (read Grok,) could be thrown into one single novel and still be a wild tale.

So why all the hate, Ya'll? Oh good ole' Jubal is a stand-in for Heinlein's soapbox tendencies, sure, but he's also a wild character in the sense that he is what he is. He loves women, but says awful things, but on the other hand, these women respect him enough to throw him in the pool and blow raspberries at him, too. As we all should, today, to all men who act as a Mad Man from 1962, all heavy-drinking, heavy-opinions, and "apparently" sexist. But no one really believes that about him when they get to know him. He's a good man and a loudmouth author and all his other progressive ideas like equality between the sexes are SHOWN to us, repeatedly and repeatedly, by actions and deeds and a closer look at all the philosophies. It's the difference between expression and reality. He expresses as the time allows, but in reality he supports everyone. That's Jubal for you.

But he's not even the main character, just the most loud one.

Mike is. He's an alien, yo, born of man but raised by Martians with heavy-ass psychic powers, yo. And he's innocent of mankind, too.

This is his story. Who tries to capitalize on the man who owns Mars, who protects him, how he learns to adapt and later to understand us crazy humans, and what he does with his gifts.

The novel could be an indictment of modern times, a brew-on of absurdity when it comes to religion and religious thinking, a wildly prescient vision of the sexual liberation movement just a few years down the road, (or perhaps the seminal novel that informed the sixties love movements,) or it could be a wonderful shout-out to us all to start trying to UNDERSTAND one another, for grok's sake.

So I think it's wonderfully delicious. You know. To say that Heinlein is a sexist reactionary? When he, like, is the spirit of the sixties? Huh, water-brother? You Grok?

This is easily one of my favorite, if not my most favorite Heinlein, not just because it got into my soul when I was a kid, but because it's just one of those works that lives and breathes and still brings a big smile to my face. :) Oh, and it's one of my top 100 works of all time and it won the Hugo of '62, not that anyone really cares, because it just SPEAKS to so many people. :)

That's controversy for you. :)

The first 250 pages were good, the rest is 1960s free love propaganda, which is not what I expect in a Sci-fi novel.

This book is too much a product of its times for me to fully enjoy it, but that night I dreamed of Mars.

The Hugo Award winning book, some say, the best of Heinlein's many novels. A man, Valentine Michael Smith who grew up on Mars, returns to Earth extremely wealthy (inheritances, plural) and comparatively more advanced and evolved, albeit completely new to mankind. Earth is a consumerist ridden, capitalist, soulless world. This is the story of how he acclimatizes to Earth, and how he uses Earth's consumerist tools and methods, coupled with his power and 'truths', to creates a 'religion/cult' that challenges the status quo. A very interesting and very original look at a 'stranger' in a strange land. 5 out of 12

(Note: Original pub date is 1961)

Fuck you, Heinlein!!! That's like 3 or 4 hours of my life I'm NEVER GETTING BACK. This isn't a book, it's a pompous recitation of every one of your pet peeves and pet theories, delivered through the mouths of your utterly two-dimensional "characters" during the course of a nonexistent plot. You can throw all the orgies and kinky sex you want in there, but it doesn't make your book edgy or profound, and it sure doesn't make you a good writer.

Although, bonus hilarity points to Mr. Heinlein for putting tons of lesbian stuff in there, but going out of his way to say that the men don't touch each other AT ALL, because that would totally be GAY, and I'M TOTALLY NOT INTO THAT, OKAY? HEY, HOW 'BOUT THEM NAKED CHICKS? Yeah, whatever Heinlein. Go tend to your masculine insecurities elsewhere.

....Ok, moving on.