This book definitely left a lasting impression on my mind. Don't know what to think of it yet, but as my first Heinlein I can say that I love his writing.

Pretentious.

An interesting mix of progressive thought on science, religion, and politics with some antiquated 60s sexism and homophobia mixed in to muck up the overall message. I finished with a shrug thinking, "well that was f'ing weird," and probably won't think about it much ever again.

In lieu of a review (because what would be the point?), a few notes intead:

(1) I can see why it's considered a science fiction classic. On an intellectual level, I "get" that part. Hence getting shelved as "important". Creating a character and a milieu and a plot to lampoon all of our socio-cultural conventions? Even cannibalism? Brilliant! But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

(2) How did this book get lauded and praised as the "bible" of the counter-culture/sexual revolution? Heinlein's narrative stilts toward homophobic and what was up with the line (from Jill!) re: "nine times out of ten if a woman gets raped, it's her fault"? Terrible.

(3) Just like I couldn't stand what Melville did with n  Billy Buddn, I couldn't stand the "Christ-figure" thing that Heinlein did with M.V.Smith either. I feel like there's this impulse in Western literature to write a Christ-figure into your story. And I think that there's this impulse on the part of critics to just orgasm all over themselves to praise it when an author does it. But this never seems to add anything to the narrative — it always just comes across as heavy-handed and abusive. Stop it.

Yes, I gave this one star. Yes, I think this is one of Heinlein's lesser works, despite it's "classic" status. Yes, I don't think it's particularly well-written, well-plotted, or well-paced, with paper-thin characters and a surprisingly shallow "revolution". And yes, I think it's entirely too heavy-handed and evangelical -- even for Heinlein! Despite all of those factors, I have not put it on my "tripe" shelf because I also think it's a remarkably harmless evangelical tract and I appreciated the few further glimpses into Martian culture (assuming, as I did, that these were the same Martians featured as those in childhood-favorite Red Planet).

Stopped at 20% - too much politics and talking for my taste right now. Also, is it just me or it really seems artificial? The characters are just sketchy, some lines on a page. Maybe when I’ll be in the right mood, I’ll make a comeback. Not sure, tho…

The Good:
It was truly fascinating to see what the future looked like (or at least, how so many wished it would be) in the early sixties. There might still be some philosophy of use here to anyone who grew up with no access to popular culture, or who doesn't have the internet. For the rest of us, these big ideas are nothing new.

The Bad:
This book is a boring soapbox written by a creepy old genius who probably meant well. Is Jubal Harshaw really Heinlein's Mary Sue? Yuck! Stranger in a Strange Land shows how quickly radical liberal ideas can become old and conservative. What are people going to say about our subversive literature in fifty years time?

'Friends' character the protagonist is most like:
Mike, the 'Man from Mars', is an illegal exotic pet. He is childlike and stupid, and when he reached sexual maturity he started humping everything. He closely resembles Marcel, the white-headed capuchin.

Stranger in a Strange land is considered one of the seminal works of science fiction. Considering the time, 1961, one could say that Heinlein's works helped to catapult sci-fi into one of the more popular genres. Stranger in a Strange Land was the first sci-fi book to hit bestseller lists in both hardcover and softcover.

The story is of Mike, a human being that was raised on Mars by Martians. The story goes through his rescue by humans and his troubles acclimatizing to Earth modes of behavior. The first part of the book is quite good. I enjoyed reading about the adventures of Mike and his "adopted family". Heinlein is able to truly show the radical differences between Humanity and Martians in terms of thoughts, philosophies and simple existence. I thought this part was rather clever and the conflicts between Mike and the government were quite interesting.

It is in the second part of the book where Mike finds/founds religion is rather less of a enjoyable read. The ideas put forth by Heinlein about plural marriage, God and religion were fairly shocking considering the time it was written. Still I found certain parts of the conversations about their new religion (which has rather old earth traditions like Bacchanalia-like orgies) rather tedious. Perhaps Heinlein, a product of the early part of the 20th century, found such topics to be titillating to the prurient sensibilities of normal people. Well as a product of the latter part of the 20th Century I didn't find it titillating. The story actually begins to bog down at this point.

Still there is an interesting point being made about Mike as a messianic figure. Not to mention there are some truly interesting ideas being bandied about in this story. Still, after the decidedly religious turn, the latter half of the book seemed to drag down the story. I really didn't care to read chapter upon chapter of justification for their orgastic rituals. I understood the point he was trying to make, but felt it was rather a belabored point.

I am glad I read this book and I can see the obvious influence it has had on many a modern sci-fi tale. The first part of the book is very enjoyable and the second half, not so much. Too bad his fixation with mass orgies and "open" relationships seems to have been the driving muse behind the second half of the book. It did nothing for me. Still I will give credit where credit is due and admit this plot has had many influences on our modern sci-fi genre.

Wtf did I just read

I didn't grok this shit at all. Unbelievably bloated and dull.
Away and grok yoursel'.
Beautiful cover, though <3

Stranger in a Strange Land is the purest science fiction book I've ever read. It may not have laser beams or rocket ships but it does have aliens and alien culture. That is, Stranger in a Strange Land strives for what great science-fiction should always strive for: taking the reader on a journey of perspective. From the comfortable outlook of our daily mundanity to one far-removed. Sure, this is ostensibly the goal for all fiction: here learn what it's like to be a lumberjack from Bolivia with a penchant for poetry or a post-Victorian mademoiselle searching for a husband. But these are human people, not so far removed in time and place as we might think. Science fiction attempts an even larger gap, in which the distance-gap is measured not in miles but in light-years and the time-gap measured not in centuries but in eons. And in the case of Stranger in a Strange Land, the protagonist is human only in genetics:

Valentine Michael Smith was raised in Mars amongst the Martians. He knows nothing of humanity. He does not understand love or laughter or religion. He has to learn everything from scratch, and we get to learn it right along beside him.

If you can get past the rampant sexism (e.g. the line: 'Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped it's partly her fault' said by a female character) and the homophobia and other cultural artifacts of the 1960s, there is a great wealth of thought to be found in this book. It's a very pure approach to understanding humanity and what makes humanity tick. You'll find thoughts on the male<>female duality that fuels much of our culture, some biting satire on media and government and religion, even an attempt to shake the 'traditional' pillars of society like monogamy and marriage and the pursuit of wealth as the American dream. I personally didn't buy some of this, especially the libertarian/hippy approach to life, but that's OK. As the author himself said, the book is an "an invitation to think--not to believe." And in that it was successful.

--

The above is my review but for those inclined, I wanted to add a little extra, especially what I mean by 'pure.' What I found really enjoyable about this book is that the protag Mike approaches everything with a clean, free, unbiased mind. Which made it really easy to gather and formulate my own thoughts on the topics which are discussed/approached in the book.

At least at first. Unfortunately, this purist approach was, I felt, eventually corrupted. I give Heinlein top marks for sustaining it as long he did (longer than any other book I've read), but as soon as more sexual elements are introduced, his own tendencies as a male and a human begin to show.

The turning point, for me, is when Mike finally 'groks' (an all-encompassing word that can best be translated to mean 'ingest' or to fully understand) laughter and people. He claims that laughter exists only in response to pain; his regular ol' human companion Jill is unable to come up with any examples in which this didn't happen. REALLY? Laughter is often cruel and in response to pain, but it is far more than that. Laughter derives from irony, a play between what happens and what is expected. I laugh all the time, on a daily basis, about things that are not painful. The other day one of my fifth grade students asked me what blood type was. It was such a strange question that I laughed. Was my laughter in order to cover up pain? No.

Unfortunately, it is this 'grokking' of laughter that then leads Michael to 'grok' humans.

Which I believe is impossible.

Of late, I have been pondering how the larger, 'macro' behavior of humans and other objects in general can be tied back to behavior on the quantum level. In quantum mechanics, there's a well known principle called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which at its lowest level means we can either know the velocity of an electron or its position but not both (that's because in order to 'discover' the electron, we would need to hit it with energy of some type, which would alter its velocity. We extrapolate this to mean that the act of observation will always alter the behavior of that which is observed). Upon pondering why the mis-'grokking' bothered me so, I realized:

Historians, poets, writers, politicians, philosophers, and even the old granny who runs the local grocer all attempt to define humanity in some way. Just what is it that makes a person human? A soul? A genetic code? Hatred? Violence? Hope? Love? Yet if you take the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle* and carry it on up to the macro-level, it's easy to see that humanity is undefinable. Because what it means to be human is not a static thing. Every day our technology changes, our society changes, our economy changes. You can look at the past and say, 'Ah this is what it meant to be human then.' Or maybe even look at the present and say, 'Ah this is what it meant to be human today.'

But humans are not creatures merely of the past, or of the present. We are creatures of the future, which is one of the many reasons why we are the ultra-apex predator on the planet. At any given day, you might live in the past, or the present, or the future. No philosopher or poet or cab driver can know all of these things at once and without knowing them all at once, the 'definition' of humanity will remain elusive.

*I'm well aware this is pseudo-science and invoking a scientific principle doesn't make my point any more valid; I merely brought it up to provide a nice framework with which to 'grok' my meaning.

The story of Valentine Michael "Mike" Smith, a human raised on Mars by Martians, who returns to Earth to eventually start a cult-like commune is another Heinlein mid-career stab at social satire. Heinlein feeds his own ego by creating an alter-ego personality - Jubal Harshaw, author extraordinaire - who befriends Mike and spouts drivel at great length, often picking straw-man arguments with various throw-away characters which allows Heinlein to debate himself until he reaches consensus with himself, an absurdity worthy of Kafka or PKD if it could be proven that Heinlein was self-aware enough to be in on his own joke. The novel reached ludicrous popularity levels upon its 1961 publication - spawning household use of the word "grok" - and may even have laid the groundwork for some of the counter-culture trappings of the Hippie Era, although one suspects that the free love in the novel is more related to Heinlein's own inner fantasies and yearnings than his expressed desire to encourage critical thinking.