Welcome everyone to the first actual book club discussion thread of hopefully a long and illustrious monthly group! I'm truly looking forward to hearing what all of you have to say in discussion of our monthly works, and more importantly, what you noticed about the craft elements of the works. It was a pleasure to receive as much response as I did in the initial probing thread, and I sincerely look forward to what we all can come up with. With out further adieu... Yes, what is revered to be Heinlein's quintessential science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land was honestly a mystery to me in a number of critical and thematic ways. There's quite a bit of speculative ground to cover here as, of all things, science seems to take a back seat to a considerable amount of fantastical elements loosely explained (or entirely omitted purposefully), and an overload of anti-establishment themes. Heinlein appears in this novel to show his hyper-critical side of humanity, especially in regards to religion and sexuality. It is pure, completely adulterous, anarchy. The novel itself was banned immediately by a huge number of institutions due to its concepts of free-love, and painstaking breakdown of religious establishment, especially that of Christian religions. It remains banned some places to this day. Which leads me to ponder on what Heinlein's actual goals were here. In an interview, Heinlein specifically stated that his book was not science fiction, and yet it received the highest honors a science fiction novel can receive. His novels are often extremely political in nature, but not usually so anarchistic, or heavy-handed on the critical themes over story-telling. But before I dive too far into the discussion of the topic, I've laid out a number of discussion prompts to get the ball rolling, not just an echo-chamber of my own musings. Feel free to discuss anything you wish from the novel, but keep in mind that although theme is heavy here and certainly worth being discussed, we should also take a keen interest on what craft elements made this novel a permanent fixture on endless science fiction greatest lists. Literary Perspective Prompts: 1). As mentioned, Heinlein denied that this was a novel of science fiction, and I truly agree with him. What do you think this novel actually falls under genre wise? Is it even genre fiction at all? What makes literary bases everywhere file this novel as that of science fiction, rather than something else? 2). The themes follow an extremely thorough breakdown of established religion and accepted morality, among a number of other things, in Valentine Michael Smith's quest to convert humanity to that of Martian society. Yet, the end of the novel turns humanity over as decidedly independent. What was the point of this exercise? Why spend four hundred pages breaking down establishment in a sometimes grotesque manner, only to establish by the end that the Martians were malevolently spying on the planet for extermination and that humanity must grow to fight them? Did the ending feel a little weak to you, or did it stand as a prominent statement? 3). Everything seems to have communication, a voice of sorts, allowing Michael to perform what is amounted to miracles most often. I especially liked the mention of Friedrich Nietzsche the cat who was an unrecognized part owner of Jubal's estate. What did this communication explanation for the connections of the universe and the "science" that dictates its progress meant to you? Was there an underlying message involved? Craft Analysis Prompts: 1). Heinlein appears to primarily utilize third-person omniscient perspective, though I would probably say there's a solid argument for it being third-person multiple limited perspective as well. In any case, it is often jarring in its shifts, and irritatingly made me reread previously lines to figure out where the writing dove off to. What perspectives would you argue Heinlein utilized, and what did you think of his execution of point of view? 2). There is a ton of explanatory and expository dialogue. I found it to come in waves, especially anytime Jubal would show his face. These moments also happen to be where the bulk of Heinlein's ideas are internally analyzed. Was this method effective, or did it detract from the narrative? After understanding the points Jubal was trying to preach, did you bother listening to the rest of his speech, or skim? 3). Lastly, Heinlein utilizes a strange sort of world-building. At the beginning of each of the five segments, there is a short synopsis on what is happening in the world or sometimes off-world, which gives a snap-shot to the time his novel takes place. Yet, most of the actual scenes take place in small rooms, or kitchens, maybe even at the pool. Does this pedestrian amount of world-building work, or did it negatively draw from the narrative as a whole? I sincerely hope to hear from you all. I had difficulties at many moments, and certainly struggled to see why this, as what my picture audaciously states, was the most famous science fiction novel ever written. As requested, here are your tags @ruskaya @MusingWordsmith
Well, I hope I'm allowed to do this without signing up somewhere or something. I can see the thread, so I guess it's ok. I was hoping there would be some posts this morning, wasn't expecting to be the first. In fact I'm very hesitant because I want to wait and see what kind of craft stuff we're looking for. I'm afraid I didn't highlight or take notes on anything craft related. I was spurred though to do a bunch of research into Heinlein and what i found is fascinating in its own right but probably only nominally relevant here. As for what makes it science fiction, well I would say mainly because Mars. And from my research it turns out that was his wife's idea—he was a huge Rudyard Kipling fan and she suggested he take the basic concept from Jungle Book and transfer it to Mowgli being raised by martians rather than wolves. And of course he already had a complex and well-developed set of ideas for Martians from Red Planet and possibly another book or 2. Also sci-fi because of the futuristic stuff like flying cars and Holovision tanks (whatever they were called). But of course all that stuff is just trappings. Essentially the book is about the life of Valentine Michael Smith as a sort of Christ figure. I loved the word-play in the title "His maculate conception" (or was it birth?). Born of woman and man, though outside of wedlock, and then raised by Martians who basically are Gods in many ways. At some point I'd like to read the book as it was originally published. There was a LOT cut out, probably much of the lengthy diatribes about his religious, political social and sexual philosophies. I'll bet the edited version is a lot more readable, though probably less revealing of his personal ideas. The thing that struck me the hardest is the way his wording propels you through the story at breakneck pace—especially the dialogue. There's something about it that feels so powerful and compelling that you just want to keep reading, even when you find yourself mired in a 4 page explanation about his philosophies. I was also fascinated by his 'competent man' stuff. Jubal Harshaw (Hem-haw as I was calling him until I was able to memorize the name) seemed almost godlike in his ability to take control of every level of conflict, even against the government and police etc, just because he was a high-powered lawyer who was able to Grok everything and everyone so clearly. But I notice he warmed us up to Harshaw by first presenting Ben Caxton, another competent man, though not on Harshaw's level. It's like he's scaling the reader up from ordinary human beings through Caxton to prepare us for Harshaw. And of course, ultimately, in the coming-of-age tale, Mike Smith became the ultimate competent man, when he was able to merge his Buddhist-like training on Mars with his developing understanding of his human side. Ok, that's enough to kick this off. I'mma duck out for a while and see what other peeps say. I also want to thank you @EFMingo for doing this. I had never read this book before and found it a very eye-opening experience into what a novel (and especially a supposedly genre novel) can be and do.
Thank you for taking the plunge and going first! I understand the hesitancy, as I experienced it as well when trying to start this thing. Those "trappings" are why I think it was dumped in the science fiction section in libraries as well, but I don't believe it really belongs there. The book is highly philosophical in nature, as it is a proponent of true anarchy. Michael is simply the vehicle for presenting his statements. I also get the feeling based on research that many of the literary fiction groups were trying to push the novel as far away as possible, tossing it to the relatively new science fiction genre to hope it would die off in obscurity. This plan, of course, didn't work out. I thought about this, and the link I placed at the end of the forum book club is, I believe, the re-released edition by his wife that includes the more controversial sections. I'm only partially interested in that though, considering the number of Jubal's explanation scenes got to be quite ridiculous. I'm pretty sure the added bits are just a lot more of those. Also probably a more graphic description of the cannibalism by the end. I'm pretty sure his editor was correct in cutting out a lot. Too much and he would have lost hold of an audience already reeling from the de-centering of their common ideals. I can't say I agree with you here entirely. The Jubal portions ended to drag, and after the first few, I could see them coming so I had to brace myself to be talked at for a solid half hour before I could get on to anything else. What I did like for pacing however, was Ben Caxton's segment in part four. This pseudo-second person shift on Michael's story rolled off as an actual story rather than a sermon. I flew through that section. Same with the beginning. Though I like Jubal as a character, I don't believe his sections were paced very well, and I ended up mired often. We actually come to a core issue I take with the novel here. Ben Caxton is essentially washed out as a character. He's eclipsed by Jubal immediately, captured to build tension but simply bypassed in that ordeal, and later on simply disappears into the mass of connections with Michael. He essentially becomes purposeless other than section four's perspective, where he seems to come out of his own character and become someone entirely different. Not that I mind how he is used there, but it doesn't feel like the same person we started with, and I began liking from the start. Also, is Michael the ultimately competent man? In the end, he is essentially found to have been fooled into being an unwitting spy. Also, he had been converting humanity to Martian, and though he seemed to realize his error, did anybody realize or understand that? They cannibalize him in the end, but isn't that distinctly Martian in culture, not human? I was a little perturbed by what seemed a rash ending, considering the slow speed of the rest of the novel. Jubal falls apart as a character too in many ways, having a stroke, yet not. Thinking clearly as he had, yet clouded by the communist collective in thought for assimilation. The last twenty pages become very contradictory for me. Of course! This is fun for me. I enjoyed the format so much in classes, I wanted to share it here with novels of our choosing, rather than the standard affair.
I’m referring to Heinlein’s ‘Competent Man' trope. He liked to write about men of great competence across many fields. Heinlein apparently was like that himself to a large extent, but was also very—let's just say self-absorbed. I believe it was a self-insertion of sorts, and in the case of Mike I think it was a fantasy self-insertion as the most competent of them all. He was the only one who grokked better than Harshaw, naturally anyway, before he trained up his disciples. Plus by the end he could do anything he wanted, and nobody could stop him unless he allowed it. His death of course was self-chosen and the final parallel with Christ, who famously said “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” (Book of Obi-Wan, 9:14). He allowed himself to be sacrificed and in doing so became a god. I got the feeling that at that point he was about to head upstairs and start making big changes up there as well. It seems by merging humanity with Martian godliness he had become a new kind of god, not as dispassionate and bloodless as the Martians, but also not subject to the infirmities and weaknesses (mental/emotional as well as physical) of his human brethren. That was my interpretation anyway, but I only read it once and haven't analyzed it to any degree. As I understand it, I think the version you linked to is (as you said) the one released by his wife after his death, which is supposedly his original manuscript version, untampered-with, and includes all the stuff that was edited out in the original release version. Maybe that’s what you meant, I couldn't’ quite follow. I wasn't talking exactly about pacing—it’s hard to explain. Not pacing of the story itself anyway, I mean just the flow from word to word and sentence to sentence, regardless of how it affects the story. For me anyway his delivery, especially of dialogue (even when it’s one of the endless diatribes) just pulls me through with almost breathless speed. It hooked me in, in spite of any ideas I found bizarre or poor pacing on a story level. I guess you could say on a cellular level (word and sentence) rather than the levels of organ or organism (chapter and story maybe? I don't know, I'm, just inventing this analogy, gimme a break!) At a story level I definitely got mired and toward the end I seriously wanted to skip Harshaw’s massive walls of text. Interestingly, early on while reading Harshaw, I got a sudden image of Lionel Barrymore playing him. It was the cadence of the speech and the mannerisms, which sounded a lot like some character Barrymore would play. I haven’t seen him in much, but I did once see him play a lawyer who talked very much like Harshaw. Of course, in many of his stories, Heinlein created settings analogous to familiar frontiers, and sometimes he’d use stock characters who seem to be drawn straight from old Westerns. He definitely used some weird techniques, but as awkward as they often are, for me anyway he manages to create something compelling. But again, I don’t mean compelling as a story, but just the concept itself, he somehow makes it feel fresh. I don't know how to explain it, and that’s what draws me to his work. Though I also started re-reading Starship Troopers, which I had read when I was like 13 or so maybe, and that one doesn't seem to work the same way except maybe now and then. Maybe I got overdosed on it in Stranger and the magic wore off? Not sure. Totally agreed about Caxton. Once he had played his part of introducing the idea of the Competent Man and led us to Harshaw, he faded completely for most of the book, and when he returned it's like he was somebody else. I guess he had served his purpose. Of course much of what we’re discussing is explained by the Heinlein Method of not editing at all, allowing his editor to do that or tell him how to. For this reason I suspect the edited versions of his books are probably the best ones, unless you really want to know as much as possible about Heinlein’s beliefs and ideas. Here, I'll pop this in here for reference: Heinlein’s Rules: You must write. You must finish what you start. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order. You must put it on the market. You must keep it on the market until sold. And of course, I think Harshaw dictating off-the-cuff stories to Anne throughout and being a best-selling author is another bit of self-insertion. Maybe the fact that he wrote purple prose pulp material was his own judgement of his earlier work? Not sure on that one. But the way he threw them off so quick and obviously didn't edit and could remember exactly where he left off no matter how much time had elapsed or what had happened in between, sounds like his Method taken to an extreme. Mike was an unwitting spy, yes, and to the Martians that he originally thought were so amazing. But that plays into the idea that he grows (groks) at the end into something greater than the sum of its parts, the merging of Human and Martian. He transcends both and then heads for his place in Heaven to shake some shit up. My thought anyway, not sure if it’s supported by the book. It seems like one of the things he had to learn by living as a human was the vulnerability and unpredictability of life when not protected by the all-powerful Martian Elders, which shook him out of his belief in that system. He seems to have realized that life in its unpredictability requires you to adapt, learn and improvise. Almost the classic Kirk vs Spock attitude. Whew! So much writing! So much thinking!
Okay, I feel like my Analytical Skills will be a bit lacking compared to y'all but! I'm gonna do it anyway lol. First, general statements. Books that do what this one did, in getting heavy-handed with Author Views, are a biiiiiig turn off from me. It probably hampers my ability to be objective and analytical because I'm so 'I don't like it!!' at it. I also borrowed a copy through my library's overdrive so it may be I got the less-edited version? They did cannibalize Mike at the end, if that's a hint. I did like the first two parts pretty well. I really liked Jubal as a character-- but I think the strongest part was before he was even introduced on-screen. We had a fairly rapid pace there, the stakes being Mike's freedom and perhaps even life. But once they got to Jubal's estate, the stakes seemed to shift. It wasn't so much about Mike's freedom as his growth, and his status versus his life. Once they got to Jubal's I went 'ah I must be about halfway through!' and then looked and was like 30% of the way through. On to questions! I do see why Heinlein would say it's not sci-fi, and also why it got shunted into sci-fi. Mars, hovercars, sterovision. (I was amused at how in the future they were cranking film reels.) But I don't think I have an answer to what genre it should be. Perhaps it should be sci-fi and we should acknowledge that sci-fi is also the genre that people will use to look at the human condition sometimes, through the lenses of aliens, robots, and other things too. And here's the part where I'm so mad at what the book did do I am having a hard time thinking about what it was trying to do. I think the thing that Heinlein was trying to say is that if people would only behave like he thought they should, humanity would be better for it. The Martian thread was an external measuring stick to put the 'new and improved' humanity up against to 'prove' that humanity is better off behaving like this. As for the ending, at that point my feelings were more 'oh thank goodness it's over' than anything else. The last two parts were a slog I only kept reading through because it was Book Club Book. It was just sort of... there? It was an added part to Mike's differences to humans because of his Martian upbringing. I liked it in the first two parts as a way to show just how different Mike was to his birth people, but then in the third and fourth parts it turned into a way to show how superior Mike was, so that got annoying. Hm, I didn't track POV too closely while I was reading but shifting from limited third to omniscient sounds right. I didn't have to re-read to figure something out all that often, so it worked for me. I think that's about the best I can say for it though-- the POV style worked, it didn't detract from the story, but I don't know if it added all that much either. Oh yeah the expository dialooooouge. I didn't mind it so much when it was outlining Mike's situation, it's when it started getting political/moral that I got irritated. I wish that there hadn't been so much analyzing of Heinlein's ideas period, but if it had to be there making it a conversation between characters is the best way to do it. Although that did end up reducing characters like Ben into shallow puppets only there to learn what he needed to learn-- according to Heinlein. I read through all of the dialogue-- though if it wasn't dialogue I probably would have skimmed. I think it did work, having one particular character (Jubal) having an innate ability to grasp where Mike was coming from. I just did not like the messages being preached. I honestly really liked the snapshot worldbuilding. Even if it wasn't relevant, it added character to the novel and narration. And sometimes something mentioned in a snapshot would be off-hand mentioned again as a reason for this or that-- like Douglas's stroke. It didn't directly contribute to the story, no, but it was fun to read and that's good enough for me. In fact I think I might keep this in mind to steal for some of my books.
I read the long version. For the prompts: Literary. 1: Genre. I'm going to cop-out, step a metre back, and say it's speculative fiction. It's a what-if about Jesus 2.0. 2: Themes. The author-insert, Jubal, was intellectually honest about the validity of all religions, which he demonstrated best when he suggested that Jesus 2.0 give the glistening new Fosterites the same ear as any other more established religion. That was well done. The morality, however, was horrendous. Jesus 2.0 did not value life: he killed countless people without remorse, even a lowly thief. That's how you solve small conflicts, o' enlightened one? His end, martyrdom, was ultimately contradicted by his own "never really gone" notion. He made no sacrifice, and as others are indoctrinated, they will also grok he made no sacrifice. Don't get me started on how Dawn started to look like Jill. The over all loss of individuality and mind-privacy was horrific. Damn near unaddressed was that children were a part of his hippie-esque cult at some point, and I don't think the statutory rape charges were an attempt to slander. As far as I can tell, Heinlein implied that the children were 'growing closer' with the group as well. Indoctrinated youth suffer that fate in most cults, so nothing new there I suppose. What was he trying to say? It certainly wasn't positive. Lastly, his ideal society was reliant upon super powers. I don't see how that could apply to the real world, other than in a few failed concepts like communism and polyamory. That message was left on Mars, I think. 3: Mike Logic. It was neat, then it got down right crazy, leading to the effed up stuff above. Craft. 1. Perspective. For me, as soon as there is a head-hop, the entire story must be third omniscient. I found it easiest to read with that expectation. I got used to it pretty quickly, even though I don't like that style. 2. Dialogue. The dialogue was almost always one-sided, and I was often just reading Heinlein through Jubal. That's... okay. I don't mind author inserts, mainly because I grew up reading Crichton. That said, his exploration of topics was too one-sided for there to be any depth. Some dunce like Ben or Jill or Jesus 2.0 or Duke would patiently sit and offer one-word counters to the rambling old goat, inviting him to blather more basic rhetoric in the talking-head hell that was this book. A good exception was his occasional tango with Dr. Mahmmoud. I felt starved of discourse between the two. And in fairness, there were certainly more than a few snappy dialogue lines: Oh I most carefully burned the toast. As for most of it being exposition, I'm neither here nor there on it. It's not the worst way to tell a story, but Heinlein could have made it more engaging. 3. Worldbuilding. The world building was fantastic. He just listed things happening in the same way we encounter them in the news. And they have as much meaning in the story as they do in our day-to-day lives. In some ways the details were just there to stress how unimportant they were. 4. Pacing. None. I should have read the version that had been peed in. General: I was intrigued until I found out where it was going, then it shambled and crawled there so awkwardly it hurt. I consider this a case of the premise being better than the story, so can't recommend it, even for the time.
@Not the Territory Did he only kill in defense of himself or someone he cared for? I seem to remember that he did, but I'm not sure. And of course, knowing what he knows (that there is no real death) where is its sting? I believe in Heinlein's concept the bad gun-people were much better off afterwards, playing harps in heaven.
At the end when he was talking to Jubal, he referenced how he discorporated people too dangerous/violent to be set free in the jailbreak, and how also he'd made a list of people to 'take care of' before they split town. Another detail I recall is how he said Jill had gone from upset about this to chill with it now that she understood you couldn't really 'kill' people. Because their soul doesn't die, just the body.
Man, wow, I didn't think I could agree you anymore than I already did, but then you kept on writing. The morality had me almost more pissed off than when I read 1984, and not because I'm a prude, but because of the utter cancellation of individuality. The Dawn and Jill thing was terrible. It was also contradictory on so many levels. Michael is uninterested in the blandness of the human figure, yet induces a sameness between them that awkwardly played out and never resolved by the end. He celebrates the difference between human and Martian in his revelation, yet, the cult is still moving toward the communal tendencies of the Martians. Which then ends with the same rituals of the Martians even though Michael "grokked" a necessity for human differences. Hmmm. The children stuff was extremely cringe-inducing as well. I mean, it served almost no purpose for driving the narrative, and actually hurt his ground in philosophical points by being disgustingly radical in inference. The downward spiral never really recovered, and I ended up hating Michael by the end, and all of his damn cult followers who were drowned out in character. Even Jubal, who flopped by the end. That world-building was excellent. I'm actually very happy that Heinlein maintained this news story aspect to not only the narrative, but also as a vehicle to display the world's response to his philosophy in development and practice. As a continuation question, why do you all think Heinlein emphasized the press throughout? Was there more underlying purpose than just world-building or breaks in the constant stream of dialogue? This aspect of the narrative I felt most deprived of, though the points they did appear were well-conceived and organized. @Not the Territory , you're last sentence sums up my experience with the last two-thirds of the novel. There were small moments of hope, but then it plunged into craft and philosophical oblivion with some unforgivable errors. One of my most hated ones: when Jill states that 9 out of 10 women raped had it coming. Oh Heinlein, there's quite a bit more you probably could have omitted.
Actually it was "9 out of 10 times if a girl gets raped it's at least partly her fault." Quite a bit different.
I wish I could participate in this discussion. I used to love that book, but the last time I read it (ten years ago maybe?) I recall thinking that it hadn't aged well. One thing that Heinlein is often guilty of is using the same four characters in all of his books. There's the brash younger man (Caxton in this perhaps), the wise older curmudgeonly author insert (Jubal Harshaw is the Professor from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is Farnham from Farnham's Freehold is Lazurus Long etc), the cute younger woman with some sense (Jill, Wyoming Knott), and the wise older woman (probably the tattooed lady in this book, there was another in Farnham's Freehold (which is probably the clearest example of the trope if memory serves)). Always the same four. Lazurus Long's mother Maureen is the wise older woman, Mr. Two-Canes from Friday is the curmudgeon, and so it goes. It's almost like one of those directors (Robert Rodriguez) who like to use their stable of actors in pretty much every movie they make.
Please, feel free to join in with any perspective. It's appreciated, and actually brings up an interesting point. What's funny is that on the contrary, I absolutely love The Moon is a Harsh Mistress though it did use many of the same characters. It was far less heavy handed with The Professor character, and utilized the Ben Caxton-esque character as the narrator. Michael was the artificial intelligence, but far less magical. The perspective was first person I believe as well, which aided the language of the book that cut many articles of natural speech to form the sort of exile prison language in the narration. Took a while to get into, but if you kept to it it read fast and the language became strangely intuitive. With these near direct reflections of characters in other novels, we are left with a few dangling concepts in Heinlein's construction of his works. The stereotypes he presented as characters were widely accepted by the science fiction base, and embraced through much of Heinlein's career. Many times they were rather obvious cut-and-pastes with new names. What I wonder is what process led Heinlein to this stand-in method of character development. To me it seems like the formula for a well-balance party in D&D or something of the sort. Every player works in around the weakness or strength of the others. The trouble I found in Stranger in a Strange Land is that this balance I had read in many of his other novels wasn't all there. It was way heavy-handed on Heinlein speaking his philosophies directly through Jubal, and drowned out the many other voices his characters should have had, especially by the end. Some characters like Ben Caxton were left entirely behind, and when they came back, their literal voice couldn't be strong enough to handle the directional overflow. But as I read the story, I couldn't help but thinking of it in a completely flopped mindset. The morality takes many questionable dives, and the doctrine is pressed almost too hard by Michael and Jubal. Even the physical characters like Jill and Dawn are warped into an other than ordinary likeness that destroys their characters and makes them more machine like. By the end, no one reacts to Michael's discorporation. Their humanity is lost. In Heinlein's other novels, he displays the conditions of many other political government dominance. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a Libertarian revolution of the moon, and successful at that. Starship Troopers follows that of a completely militant government, where only present or former military members were considered actual citizens. This book is the sinking of morality and blending of characters in the communal sense. Is the entire novel more of a warning than anything? Did Heinlein mean to upset the audience by digging slowly into what they could morally accept, and thereby push the reader over the edge into hating the Martian mindset of pure social construct and utter faith in the powers higher than themselves? I think Heinlein is far too clever to be so pushy with his indoctrination. At that point, we need to reverse our look into how Heinlein constructed this narrative. A radical view, sure, but one I'm more willing to dive into.
It seems like he was influenced by things in his life that changed the direction of his stories. Well, I mean duh—obviosuly. But I read somewhere that he lived down the street from a famous Libertarian who might have influenced him in that direction, his women, who were in some ways very independent but also very feminine, were based on his wife. They apparently were frequently nude in the house IIRC, though I don't know if they were swingers or not. It seems like they were from a few hints I picked up. Stranger was the beginning of his third period, after the juveniles. Actually he was writing it when he decided he had to stop and write Troopers real quick as a protest against nuclear disarmament. In the third period his own beliefs and philosophies came forcibly to the forefront, whereas they had been more subtly immersed in the stories before. One thing that strikes me about the fact that death is not the end in Stranger is that it allowed him to justify his stance on capital punishment. He always admired the Spartans, who used to kill off weak babies by exposure, throwing them off a bluff and letting the elements take their toll. It's a way of weeding out the runts of the litter so society doesn't have to support them, an authoritarian's wet dream. He was a weird mix of contradictions—Stranger became practically a bible to the left wing in the 60's, despite some of his attitudes toward women and capital punishment etc. Both the left and right greatly admired him, mostly at different times in his career. But Stranger seemed to include strong elements of both.
I just want to add that I think Caxton and Harshaw represent the middle and late stages of Heinlein's Competent Man trope, and for the first half of the book I think Valentine Mike represented the 1st stage, the naive but gifted youngster. Of course in the second half he grows to another stage, between juvenile and the Caxton age range. I just realized, Mike's growing up in this book is also Heinlein's switching from his Juvenal period to his third period, when he started shoehorning in his political/religious etc beliefs so brazenly.
This is the first Heinlein book I've read and I don't know much about his life, but now I'm thinking it's interesting how much analysis of Stranger is turning into analysis of Heinlein. It's telling as to just how political the book is isn't it? Honestly I'm not willing to give Heinlein credit for trying to reverse psychology the reader into hating the Martian lifestyle. It reads way more like part 3 he got on a soapbox and he never got off it the rest of the book. I'll take you guys word for it his other books are more clever and/or subtle about his politics and manage to also tell entertaining stories, but when you get people with an agenda writing books then I am not surprised when sometimes, it shows. I agree with @EFMingo as to the loss of individuality thing going on in general, but especially Dawn and Jill. I really wasn't impressed with the female characters in general, Dawn and Jill's lookalike-ness at the end was just the worst symptom of it. Jill was actually all right at first, but then part 3 started and she had any sort of character assassinated when she got turned into a mouthpiece for Heinlein's views. Dorcas, Anne, and Miriam never felt like individuals to me either really. They were pretty interchangeable. But if there had been just one of them I probably would have liked her. The dynamic(s) with Jubal was actually fun, it did feel dated but since it is I will give it some slack, except there was no variation between the three. The biggest variation is their looks, and Anne is a Fair Witness. Though to be fair, I suppose other than Jubal and Mike nobody really felt fully fleshed out to me, but the girls should have with the amount of screentime they got.
A few quick points since I'm a day late to the conversation (I didn't finish until last night.): First, is it science fiction? Absolutely. Just because it transcends the genre doesn't mean it no longer belongs. It takes place in the future with aliens and imaginary technology. That's sci-fi no mater what agenda is espoused. Margaret Atwood claims she doesn't write sci-fi. She says sci-fi is "talking squids in space." It's been my experience that people try to pull good books out of the genre when they have a low opinion of the genre itself. Asimov's Foundation trilogy is a historical allegory for the fall of Rome, but it's still science fiction. Heinlein and Atwood and Asimov show us what the genre can be. They redefine it and defy conventions, but just because nobody had heard jazz like Charlie Parker before, doesn't mean his music wasn't jazz. Even Mike's powers are sci-fi (so far as we know.) It's not magic; it's learnable, unlockable functions in the brain, basic mind over matter psychic ability. Second, I loved Jubal, blatant sexism notwithstanding. He was a highlight of the book for me. His diatribes often reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson, not in content so much as style, of course. If you've read his political books, the long-winded, tangent-ridden speeches are very similar. His quips were brilliant (ahem, except for the more misogynistic ones.) Jubal was an important character beyond exposition though. I believe he served as a sort of John the Baptist minus the untimely demise. He prepared the earliest disciples for several tenets of Smith's philosophies, especially hedonism, anarchy and communism. Full disclosure: I listened to the audiobook, so there was no skimming. I enjoyed the expository rants beginning to end. More often than not, he made excellent points, and often ended up in places not suggested by the beginning of the speech. Granted, everything about Jubal has to be filtered through a 1961 lens. He's culturally insensitive in a way that was almost progressive at the time in that he's more or less well informed, but he was still irreverent and un-PC. He also says unacceptable things to and about women. Having read many dozens of mid-century sci-fi books, including another of Heinlein's, I can say that's unfortunately par for the course. Cultures are misrepresented and women are revered but subjugated. At least they usually did things better than Hollywood. I didn't like that Caxton was sidelined for half the book. I understand the book wasn't about him, and I'm not sure what he might have contributed to sections 2 and 3, but I missed him. On the other hand, his roll in the latter sections is an essential one. As a non-initiate invited into the inner circle, he allows the reader to catch up on all that's happened in the "religion" up until now from an outsider's perspective. To me, the revelation that Mike was actually an unwitting spy, and the subsequent what-ifs and inevitabilities all wreak of self-fulfilling prophecy and circular logic. The Martians send Mike to Earth, and he starts a human religion that will grow to the point that Earth cannot be destroyed or conquered just in time for Mars to make a decision as to whether or not to destroy or conquer Earth. As to the morality falling apart toward the end, and I could be wrong about this, I don't know that we were supposed to follow the religion straight through to the end. Much as Jubal slow walked his listener toward epiphanies that often contradicted the beginning and middle of the message, I think Heinlein intentionally took things too far in the end. I don't think we were supposed to agree with some of Mike's final "lessons." They contradicted the spirit of the earlier teachings, and there's no way Heinlein was unaware of that. Again, I could be wrong. It's possible I saw what I wanted to see there. Did Heinlein create his ideal religion, or did he taint it the way he sees all actual religions as being initially promising but flawed in unacceptable ways? Something no one's mentioned is Satire. Am I alone in thinking that Jubal's rants and the opening info dumps fall squarely into satire territory? They reminded me of a more cynical Douglass Adams, Christopher Moore or again, Hunter S. Thompson. An after thought on POV: What a mess. Omniscient is fine, but jumping from character to character, hearing their inner thoughts a paragraph apart (if that) drove me a little bananas at first. We're so used to intimate third person with well-defined boundaries these days that anything else is jarring, to say the least. All in all, I seem to have enjoyed it more than some of you. I wouldn't give it five stars, but I found it compelling, unique and effective. I was somewhat apprehensive, having read The Puppet Masters in January, but this one has me sold on Heinlein. Next stop: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Edit: On second thought, those were not quick points. Sorry.
Ok, I looked back over some of the articles I had read. His marriages, at least the 2nd and 3rd (not sure about the 1st), were open, with both sharing many lovers. In fact he brought future wife #3 home for a threesome with wife #2, they didn't get along, and soon there was a divorce and a new marriage. He's known to have been involved in 3somes with L Ron Hubbard, and one of his early favorite Sci-Fi writers was H G Welles, who fused socialism and free love into his sci-fi. Heinlein really lived what he was writing. Aside from the science fiction aspects I mean. It starts to get psychological and a little dark here. Read if you don't mind that kind of stuff. Spoiler He was also a solipsist. This is from an article: The solipsism set in at an early age. As Heinlein wrote in 1955 to a friend, “I have had a dirty suspicion since I was about six that all consciousness is one and that all the actors I see around me ... are myself, at different points in the record’s grooves.” I think this explains a lot about Stranger. Hold on, let me pull a little more from the article: Many readers have been disturbed by the pro-incest arguments found in such books as Farnham’s Freehold, Time Enough For Love (1973), and To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987). Perhaps the best that can be said on Heinlein’s behalf is that incest served as an objective correlative to his libertarianism and solipsism. What better way of being an independent free agent than by sleeping with your closest kin? Going further: Isn’t the truly self-made man also self-engendered? In his explorations of the mechanics of self-pleasuring and self-creation, Heinlein made Philip Roth look like a piker. In Heinlein’s 1959 story “All You Zombies—,” a combination of time travel and a sex-change operation allows the protagonist to become his/her own mother and father. In I Will Fear No Evil (1970) a 94-year-old billionaire first has his brain implanted in the body of a 28-year-old black woman and then has his frozen sperm impregnate that body. All this, taken in combination with his cozy dreams of complete communism beyond the purely physical, involving the merging of souls or inner lives and people becoming identical etc, present an image of a solipsistic mind dreaming itself as every character, and merging them together in every conceivable way. Wow, in fact I just realized, this closely parallels some ideas peppered throughout David Cronenberg's films, where people's bodies warp and transform, new orifices and strange sexual organs sprout and in the end they all get together and couple in every conceivable way in happy orgiastic bliss, free of pesky humanity. This was at least the proposed ending for Videodrome I think, which was changed, but several of the films hinted at such possibilities. And it seems to me people driven by such fantasies would naturally be drawn to science fiction, for the limitless possibilities of strange worlds and unguessable futures, where these ideas can be explored under the guise of fiction. I think it also explains his use of children in the free-love orgies (in the stories I mean). They're not real people to him, and neither are the women or even the men. They're all extensions of himself, projected out into the world as bodies to be coupled with in fun experimental ways. ... And in the end, after death, they all merge back into—him? God? And go to their special playground called Heaven, where they're totally free of the pesky morality of Other People. Damn, I can't unsee it now, I think this is really what was going on in his head. New revelations keep rolling in. I'm going to write the rest up and post it later though. This one's gonna be a real doozy. Link to article (@EFMingo feel free to remove if this is a no-no)
Am I remembering wrong? Wasn't the line about statutory rape right in the middle of a laundry list of mostly trumped up charges?
Was it near the end? When the authorities were shutting down his church? I don't remember it all that clearly but I think you're right. I'll see if I can find it. But what people have mentioned in this thread refers to other of his stories, where I believe he also included children in the free love. In fact I believe that's referenced in the article I just linked. with my sieve-like memory I don't dare make statements if I'm not sure. Edit—the article mentioned incest, but not children. That's probably what I was thinking of (in relation to the article). But I do think I've seen mention, possibly on angry diatribes online, where people say he did include children in the orgies. In stories I mean.
It might have been that the kids were in the house with nude people walking around and having indiscriminate sex openly.
If I recall correctly, statutory rape was mentioned as a charge against Mike but not specifically addressed as to if it was trumped up or not. Personally I have found enough to be mad about that's clearly written out I haven't bothered to get worked up about off-hand throwaway lines that aren't clear as to what was really happening.
I’m still sorting my thoughts, but anyway: Science fiction isn’t usually the genre I read, so I when it comes to the genre question I have too little to compare. That said I was amazed how easy it was for me to get into the story and I enjoyed the flowing writing style. I loved Jubal, too. During reading I took notes (I had the Kindle edition and I think it was the longer one, 600 pages) and sometimes I just marked a passage because it made me laugh. When his household is introduced and everyone is at the pool, pictures from the older James Bond movies came to my mind (big sun hats, drinks etc.). I think Heinlein used Jubal also to get his readers “back in the boat” when it comes to problematic themes. There is the discussion about cannibalism with Duke and the whole talk with Ben when he reported the events in the “nest”. I must admit this was my least favourite part (the events in the nest not the talk between Ben and Jubal). Everyone was so transfigured, smiling all the time, with the occasional “Mike did that” or “Mike can do this” or “Mike showed us how to do it.” – I guess my feelings mirrored Ben’s and it was intentional This might already be my answer to the “dialogue- in some cases you could even say monologue) prompt- For me it worked, simply because I liked Jubal’s style and “voice”. About the whole “Jill and Dawn are getting more identical over time” – problem: When Jill and Dawn first met I was surprised how fierce Jill’s reaction was (“ ‘You would you sleek bitch!’, ‘Quit squirming your carcass at him, you cheap hussy!’ “), and not long after that she left with Mike. Now if you put in the whole discussion between Ben and Jubal about jealousy, couldn’t it be that getting more similar was their way to get over their differences? (I’m not judging if this a right or wrong way). I don’t think it was Mike’s wish. This would contradict the scene when he has to pick a present for Jubal and chooses the Rodin statue of the old woman (LA Belle Heaulmière) (“ ‘It’s beauty,” he insisted. “She has her own face. I grok.’ ”) and his musing over human faces a few pages before (“As for faces, Jubal had the most beautiful face Mike had ever seen, distinctly his own.”). Well, Jill. I must admit I disliked her when she was first introduced (Gillian Boardman was a competent nurse and her hobby was men). It got better when she decided to help Mike (one of my favourite passages: “There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk “his life, his fortune and his sacred honour” on an outcome dubious: Jill Boardman encountered her challenge and accepted it at 3:47 that afternoon.”), but got worse again after she had left with Mike (It didn’t really help, that Heinlein gave her the line about rape). But I liked Anne, Dorcas and Miriam. As was already said the dialogues between them and Jubal are priceless. My favourite scene is when he is nagging about everything (I think especially about dinner) and they throw him into the pool. Now about the end. I didn’t think it was weak, but it was a bit rushed. The final conversation between Mike and Jubal is so packed with things that it’s quite confusing. One moment Jubal tells Mike he has to be patient, the next moment Mike is on his way down to the angry mob. I also wished, the discussion of the people who Mike discorporated because they had “wrongness” inside them had been a bit more detailed. I think neither Mike nor Jubal think that it’s a good solution (though both because of different reasons). The problem that the Martians might or might not destroy earth is so quickly dismissed, that I didn’t get the impression anyone wanted humanity to become stronger in order to protect them from this threat. I liked the two following scenes. Mike’s preparing for the mob is so full of symbols (the women helping him get dressed; The fruit bowl and the glass of water at the door). Then the mob scene, even more horrible because of the accompanying news report, which is interrupted by silly commercials and moderated like a show event. And then the aftermath with Jubal’s suicide attempt. As I said, I liked Jubal very much. He has a depth as a character that the others are missing. He is funny, cynical and competent and also caring a lot more than he would ever admit (caring might not be the right word, but I can’t describe it better, sorry). There are hints to this at the beginning (“Half a century earlier he had sworn a mighty oath never again to pick up a stray cat -…”) and I think one of the best scenes is when he explains to Ben the Rodin statues he gathered over time. I liked Mike, too. I don’t think his intentions were bad. If you look at some of his ideas, there is some truth in them, though you might argue about the way they were executed. And I think he made a sacrifice, because though he believed that you can’t be killed but only be discorporated he knew that there are no Ancient Ones (i.e. ghosts) on Earth , so he had to leave all the people who mattered to him behind.
