"Thou art God": Heinlein's Sexual Revolution
Written: Oct 14 '08 (Updated Mar 12 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A strong opening with plenty of possibilities.
Cons: The possibility Heinlein pursues proves less interesting.
The Bottom Line: I suspect the original editors were right to ask Heinlein to cut 70,000 words.
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| panguitch's Full Review: Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger In A Strange Land Bo... |
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, 1961 (1991)
I learned from Wikipedia (the ultimate arbiter of Truth and Right) that Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land has been called "the most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written," which is the type of thing only a publicist could say. To me it simply felt like one of the longest.
Alien Among Us
A bloody love triangle ravages the first human expedition to Mars, leaving the newborn orphan Valentine Michael Smith to be raised by the slow, inscrutable, and seemingly omnipotent Martians. When a later expedition returns Mike to Earth he suffers culture shock trying to learn human language and customs while adapting to a more oppressive atmosphere and gravity. Furthermore, by some weird legal precedence the world government considers him the inheritor of a vast fortune, including the entire planet of Mars. They quickly bottle him up in a military hospital until they can figure out what to do with him.
Jill Boardman, an attractive young nurse, and journalist Ben Caxton conspire to spring Mike from his prison. When government agents attempt to stop them Mike uses his Martian-trained powers over time and space to set the bad guys at right angles to reality, making them disappear.
Jill takes Mike to the estate of lawyer/doctor/author Jubal Harshaw, a vulgar version of Tolstoy whose household includes three nubile secretaries and a couple handymen who function as his staff while he churns out pulp media. There Mike is awakened to the joys of human life, a list topped by swimming and sex. Once Harshaw secures Mike's liberty Mike is free to roam the planet on his quest to "grok" (comprehend, empathize with, internalize). As soon as he has grokked the human condition he sets about changing it.
Thou Art God. I Am God. Old MacDonald had a . . .
Stranger in a Strange Land is a smorgasbord of concepts, from frighteningly powerful world governments to frighteningly aggressive religions. Heinlein skips across the surface of these, passing up opportunities to dwell more deeply on Smith's experience as an alien human in order to construct a long religious satire that challenges the mores of Western civilization.
Mike understands the concept of God as "one who groks" and promptly deduces that every living being is God. He senses "wrongness" in the belligerent, post-Christian, evangelical mega-church of the Fosterites, but does not hesitate to adapt their practices to his own purposes when he launches his own church.
Not a religion per se, the Church of All Worlds concentrates its efforts on teaching humans to speak Martian, whereby they attain the same dominion over time and space that Mike demonstrates in his stage shows. Adherents advance through a series of rites until they arrive at the inner circle and become "Water Brothers." This mystery cult is a bizarre conglomeration of evangelism, charlatanism, occultism, and lofty intentions.
More than anything it feels like 1969. Either Heinlein was a prophet or his novel was taken as a textbook by every freelove hippy commune that burned itself into the collective consciousness during the counterculture.
Presaging the Sexual Revolution
Mike sells the Martian worldview as an antidote to the human experience, which is exemplified by monkeys beating each other in a zoo. It's a gospel of liberation:
• From violence (I'm personally unconvinced that Mike's making people disappear is less morally absurd than monkeys hitting each other over peanuts)
• From money (Mike has enough to render it meaningless among his followers--an economic situation that's odd but hardly insightful)
• From death (in the Martian fashion your existence will continue as an Old One, kind of like a ghost or angel)
• And from sexual restraint.
Pornography, voyeurism, and exhibitionism all become self-affirming celebrations of the human body. Clothing is purposeless (luckily the Martian discipline provides immunity from cold weather). Kisses, preferably given with whole attention, are the standard greeting. Orgies are the common pastime. And since not everyone can be there in person telepathic ride-alongs allow equal opportunity for participation.
Note that the ideas, not the descriptions, push the boundaries here. After all, this was 1961. Suffice it to say, the Man from Mars earns it when his female followers cry "Thou art God!"
Revolution Gone Halfway
This ground has since been trod unremittingly, and these once shocking propositions can leave today's reader feeling blase. Indeed, we're more likely to notice those occasions when Heinlein fails to anticipate how far matters would progress.
For instance, even as Jill's exposure to Martian ideals brings her to terms with men's need to ogle and her own suppressed need to waggle, she still believes that "Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault." Moreover, she considers homosexual men "poor in-betweeners" and thinks Mike would grok a "wrongness" in them rather than be seduced--they would never be admitted to the inner circle.
Fans of the book have tried to reconcile such sentiments to current mores, arguing they indicate Jill has not fully grokked. But it is clear Mike prizes the distinction of male and female, and the interaction between the two. Celebration of sex and gender is at the core of Mike's thought. It's the one thing that humans have that Martians lack, and it's worth the balance.
Pity and Terror
This is all very interesting to me. I'm a sucker for religious themes in science fiction, though here it's the cliche that religion is a scam run by the greedy or power-hungry. Even the story's subversive underpinnings, though tame in today's eyes, are worth some thought. But Heinlein lingers too long, repeating the same points in long expositional dialogs.
I've only read the restored 1991 edition, but I suspect it was not only controversial scenes, but some of these bloated passages that Heinlein's editors had in mind when they asked him to cut the manuscript by a third. In any case, while Stranger in a Strange Land is an interesting project, it's not a particularly strong novel.
Many of the characters become dull by book's end--vehicles for Mike's theology. Mike himself loses the sympathy he elicited earlier, becoming removed from the reader as he fills his messianic function. The bright point of consistency is the cantankerous, indulgent Jubal Harshaw, whose incorrigible, chauvinist relationship with his secretaries is somehow endearing, and whose philosophies are more convincing than are Mike's.
He takes a tongue-in-cheek attitude to his career as a pulp writer, but defends it eloquently: "I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer . . . reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror . . . or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for 'technique' or other balderdash."
If Harshaw voices Heinlein's philosophy Stranger in a Strange Land is a partial success. But in terms of storytelling it falls short.
- Panguitch
The Legitimacy of Violence: My review of Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
"Excuse me, Doctor; I did not mean to criticize your planet": My review of Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Recommended:
No
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