Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land

Hardcover, showing Rodin's sculpture,
Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone.
Author Robert A. Heinlein
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction novel
Publisher Putnam Publishing Group
Publication date
 June 1, 1961
Media type Print (hardcover & paperback)
ISBN 978-0-441-79034-0

Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and eventual transformation of—terrestrial culture. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as "The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written".[1]

The title "Stranger in a Strange Land" is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22.[2] According to Heinlein, the novel's working title was The Heretic.

Heinlein got the idea for the novel when he and his wife Virginia were brainstorming one evening in 1948. She suggested a new version of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894), but with a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. He decided to go further with the idea and worked on the story on and off for more than a decade.[3] His editors at Putnam then required him to cut its 220,000-word length down to 160,067 words before publication. In 1962, it received the Hugo Award for Best Novel.[4]

In 1991, three years after Heinlein's death, Virginia arranged to have the original uncut manuscript published. Critics disagree[5] about which version is superior, though Heinlein preferred the original manuscript and described the heavily edited version as "telegraphese".[6]

In 2012, the US Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America".[7]

Plot

The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture. It is set in a post-third world war United States where organized religions are politically powerful. There is a World Federation of Free Nations, including the demilitarized U.S., with a world government supported by Special Service troops.

A manned expedition is mounted to visit the planet Mars but all contact is lost after landing. A second expedition twenty five years later finds a single survivor, Valentine Michael Smith. Smith was born on the spacecraft and was raised entirely by the Martians. He is ordered by the Martians to go with the returning expedition.

Because Smith is unaccustomed to the conditions on Earth, he is confined at Bethesda Hospital, where having never seen a human female, he is attended by male staff only. Seeing this restriction as a challenge, Nurse Gillian Boardman eludes the guards and goes in to see Smith. By sharing a glass of water with him, she inadvertently becomes his first female "water brother", considered a profound relationship by the Martians.

When Gillian tells reporter Ben Caxton about her experience with Smith, Ben explains that as heir to the entire exploration party, Smith is extremely wealthy, and following a legal precedent set during the colonisation of the Moon, he could be considered owner of Mars itself. His arrival on Earth has prompted a political power struggle that puts his life in danger. Ben persuades her to bug Smith's room and then publishes stories to bait the government into releasing him. Ben is seized by the government, and Gillian persuades Smith to leave the hospital with her. When government agents catch up with them, Smith sends the agents irretrievably into a fourth dimension, then is so shocked by Gillian's terrified reaction that he enters a semblance of catatonia. Gillian, remembering Ben's earlier suggestion, conveys Smith to Jubal Harshaw, a famous author who is also a physician and a lawyer.

Smith continues to demonstrate psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence coupled with a childlike naïveté. When Harshaw tries to explain religion to him, Smith understands the concept of God only as "one who groks", which includes every extant organism. This leads him to express the Martian concept of life as the phrase "Thou art God", although he knows this is a bad translation. Many other human concepts such as war, clothing, and jealousy are strange to him, while the idea of an afterlife is a fact he takes for granted because Martian society is directed by "Old Ones", the spirits of Martians who have "discorporated". It is also customary for loved ones and friends to eat the bodies of the dead, in a rite similar to Holy Communion. Eventually Harshaw arranges freedom for Smith and recognition that human law, which would have granted ownership of Mars to Smith, has no applicability to a planet already inhabited by intelligent life.

Still inexhaustibly wealthy, and now free to travel, Smith becomes a celebrity and is feted by the elite of Earth. He investigates many religions, including the Fosterite Church of the New Revelation, a populist megachurch wherein sexuality, gambling, alcoholism, and similar vices are not considered sinful but encouraged, even within the church building. The church is organized in a complexity of initiatory levels: an outer circle, open to the public; a middle circle of ordinary members who support the church financially; and an inner circle of the "eternally saved" — attractive, highly sexed men and women, who serve as clergy and recruit new members. The Church owns many politicians and takes violent action against those who oppose it. Smith also has a brief career as a magician in a carnival, where he and Gillian befriend the show's tattooed lady, an "eternally saved" Fosterite woman named Patricia Paiwonski.

Eventually Smith starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds" combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language and thus acquire psychokinetic abilities. The church is eventually besieged by Fosterites for practicing "blasphemy" and the church building destroyed; but unknown to the public, Smith's followers teleport to safety. Smith is arrested by the police, but escapes and returns to his followers, later explaining to Jubal that his gigantic fortune has been bequeathed to the Church. With that wealth and their new abilities, Church members will be able to re-organize human societies and cultures. Eventually those who cannot or will not learn Smith's methods will die out, leaving Homo superior. Incidentally, this may save Earth from eventual destruction by the Martians, who were responsible for the destruction of the fifth planet, eons ago.

Smith is killed by a mob raised against him by the Fosterites. From the afterlife, he speaks briefly to grief-stricken Jubal, to dissuade him from suicide. Having consumed a small portion of Smith's remains in keeping with Martian custom, Jubal and some of the Church members return to Jubal's home to regroup and prepare for their new evangelical role founding congregations. Meanwhile, Smith re-appears in the afterlife to replace the Fosterites' eponymous founder, amid hints that Smith was an incarnation of the Archangel Michael.

Characters

Heinlein reportedly named his main character "Smith" because of a speech he made at a science fiction convention regarding the unpronounceable names assigned to extraterrestrials. After describing the importance of establishing a dramatic difference between humans and aliens, Heinlein concluded, "Besides, whoever heard of a Martian named Smith?" ("A Martian Named Smith" was both Heinlein's working title for the book and the name of the screenplay started by Harshaw at the end).[8] The title Stranger In a Strange Land is taken from Exodus 2:22, "And she bore him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land".

In the preface for the re-issued book, Virginia Heinlein writes: "The given names of the chief characters have great importance to the plot. They were carefully selected: Jubal means 'the father of all,' Michael stands for 'Who is like God?'".

Reception

Heinlein's deliberately provocative book generated considerable controversy.[9] The free love and commune living aspects of the Church of All Worlds led to the book's exclusion from school reading lists. After it was rumored to be associated with Charles Manson, it was removed from school libraries as well.[10]

Writing in The New York Times, Orville Prescott received the novel caustically, describing it as a "disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism"; he characterized Stranger in a Strange Land as "puerile and ludicrous", saying "when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers".[11]

Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale gave the original edition a mixed review, saying "the book's shortcomings lie not so much in its emancipation as in the fact that Heinlein has bitten off too large a chewing portion."[12]

Despite such reviews, Stranger in a Strange Land won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel[13] and became the first science fiction novel to enter The New York Times Book Review's best-seller list.[9] In 2012, it was included in a Library of Congress exhibition of "Books That Shaped America".[14]

Influence

Like many influential works of literature, Stranger in a Strange Land made a contribution to the English language: specifically, the word "grok". In Heinlein's invented Martian language, "grok" literally means "to drink" and figuratively means "to comprehend", "to love", and "to be one with". One dictionary description was "To understand thoroughly through having empathy with". This word rapidly became common parlance among science fiction fans, hippies, and computer hackers, and has since entered the Oxford English Dictionary among others.

Another term introduced in the novel is "Fair Witness", a fictional profession invented for the novel. A Fair Witness is an individual trained to observe events and report exactly what he or she sees and hears, making no extrapolations or assumptions.[15]

A central element of the second half of the novel is the religious movement founded by Smith, the "Church of All Worlds", an initiatory mystery religion blending elements of paganism and revivalism with psychic training and instruction in the Martian language. In 1968, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (then Tim Zell) founded the Church of All Worlds, a Neopagan religious organization modeled in many ways after the fictional organization in the novel. This spiritual path included several ideas from the book, including polyamory, non-mainstream family structures, social libertarianism, water-sharing rituals, an acceptance of all religious paths by a single tradition, and the use of several terms such as "grok", "Thou art God", and "Never Thirst". Though Heinlein was neither a member nor a promoter of the Church, it was formed including frequent correspondence between Zell and Heinlein, and he was a paid subscriber to their magazine Green Egg. This Church still exists as a 501(c)(3) recognized religious organization incorporated in California, with membership worldwide, and it remains an active part of the neopagan community today.[16]

Heinlein was surprised that some readers thought the book described how he believed society should be organized, explaining: "I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers ... It is an invitation to think – not to believe."[9]

Stranger in a Strange Land was written in part as a deliberate attempt to challenge social mores. In the course of the story, Heinlein uses Smith's open-mindedness to reevaluate such institutions as religion, money, monogamy, and the fear of death. Heinlein completed writing it ten years after he had (uncharacteristically) plotted it out in detail. He later wrote, "I had been in no hurry to finish it, as that story could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right."[17]

Stranger in a Strange Land contains an early description of the waterbed, an invention that made its real-world debut a few years later in 1968. Charles Hall, who brought a waterbed design to the United States Patent Office, was refused a patent on the grounds that Heinlein's descriptions in Stranger in a Strange Land and another novel, Double Star (1956), constituted prior art.[18]

In popular culture

Publication history

Two major versions of this book exist:

Many printed editions exist:

References

  1. ↑ Heinlein, Robert A. (1974). Stranger in a Strange Land. New English Library. Cover.
  2. ↑ Moses flees ancient Egypt, where he has lived all his life, and later marries Zipporah: Exodus 2:22: "And she [Zippo'rah] bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land". KJV Wikisource
  3. ↑ "Biography: Robert A. Heinlein". Heinlein Society.
  4. ↑ "1962 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  5. ↑ "Virginia Heinlein, 86; Wife, Muse and Literary Guardian of Celebrated Science Fiction Writer". Retrieved 5 August 2013.
  6. 1 2 "Heinlein`s Original `Stranger` Restored". Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  7. ↑ "Books that Shaped America". Library of Congress. 2012.
  8. ↑ Patterson, William; Thornton, Andrew (2001). The Martian Named Smith, Critical Perspectives On Robert A Heinlein’s ‘Stranger In A Strange Land'. Nytrosyncretic Press. p. 224. ISBN 0-9679874-2-3.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Heinlein Gets the Last Word". Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  10. 1 2 3 Dawn B. Sova (1 January 2006). Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds. Infobase Publishing. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-8160-7150-0.
  11. ↑ Prescott, Orville (August 4, 1961). "Books of The Times". The New York Times. p. 19. Retrieved 2 June 2011.
  12. ↑ "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. June 1962. p. 194.
  13. ↑ Scott MacFarlane (12 February 2007). The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture. McFarland. pp. 92–. ISBN 978-0-7864-8119-4.
  14. ↑ "Library of Congress issues list of "Books That Shaped America"". Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  15. ↑ Mark Herrmann (1 January 2006). The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law. American Bar Association. pp. 74–. ISBN 978-1-59031-676-4.
  16. ↑ "What is the Church of All Worlds?". Church of All Worlds Website. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  17. ↑ Expanded Universe, p. 403.
  18. ↑ Garmon, Jay (2005-02-01). "Geek Trivia: Comic relief". TechRepublic. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
  19. ↑ Heinlein, Robert A. (November 1941). "Lost Legacy". Super Science Stories. Chapter 10
  20. ↑ ""Don't Stand So Close to Me" / "Friends"". sting.com.
  21. ↑ BookCaps; BookCaps Study Guides Staff (2011). Stranger in a Strange Land: BookCaps Study Guide. BookCaps Study Guides. ISBN 978-1-61042-937-5.
  22. ↑ "Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein". ISBNdb entry. Putnam Adult. Retrieved 2007-07-21.

Bibliography

  • Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1995). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 1386. ISBN 0-312-13486-X. 
  • Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1995). The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (CD-ROM ed.). Danbury, CT: Grolier. ISBN 0-7172-3999-3. 
  • Nicholls, Peter (1979). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. St Albans, Herts, UK: Granada Publishing. p. 672. ISBN 0-586-05380-8. 
  • Jakubowski, Maxim; Edwards, Malcolm (1983). The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists. St Albans, Herts, UK: Granada Publishing. p. 350. ISBN 0-586-05678-5. 
  • Panshin, Alexei (1968). Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical Analysis. Chicago: Advent Publishers. p. 214. ISBN 0-911682-12-0. 
  • Patterson, Jr., William H.; Thornton, Andrew. The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Sacramento: Nitrosyncretic Press. ISBN 0-9679874-2-3. 
  • Pringle, David (1990). The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction. London: Grafton Books. p. 407. ISBN 0-246-13635-9. 
  • Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent Publishers. p. 136. ISBN 0-911682-20-1. 

External links

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