I read all of Robert Heinlein’s science fiction books when I was a teenager and haven’t read them since so technically Stranger in a Strange Land was a reread for me but enough years have passed that I remembered very little about it, except that I had thought it was quite sexist when I first read it – I have not changed my view on that after this reading even though I understand that it was written in the 1950s and may have appeared advanced for its time.
Twenty-five years have passed since the first manned trip to Mars was lost, together with all the astronauts, but another trip has found the son of two of those who were lost, living on the planet and being brought up by the native Martians. Valentine Michael Smith (Mike for short) comes to earth but is kept away from the public until the scientists can understand him and the funders of the expedition can work out how to gain a profit from him. Mike is rescued by the actions of a young reporter and his nurse and comes to live with them at the home of a fabulously wealthy lawyer who starts a legal case arguing that Mike owns Mars and everything on it.
This book is set in a future world which is much like our own but where corporations own everything and taxis can fly. It’s a more libertarian world than our own and this allows Mike to try what he wants and the characters to behave as they want. Mike explores this new world hoping to understand it, or “grok” it, as his moral sense and understanding is very alien. Eventually he finds spiritual peace in religion and helping others to understand things better.
This book is very cynical about our existing institutions and shows us this through what happens when Mike comes to Earth and also by his reactions to things. The characters indulge in free sex without relationships. Women seem to do the menial tasks and the men do the important thinking. A lot of this is very interesting but the book is long and I found the ending a bit bemusing.
I enjoyed Heinlein’s fiction when I was much younger because it was very different from the more traditional science based books of writers such as Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Things have moved on since the 1970s and there is a lot of fiction in many genres challenging established ideas in innovative ways. Even though this is science fiction I think of it as being a book of its time which reflects the beliefs of its writer. It is, however, a classic of the genre and I am glad that I reread it.
Anne Is Reading 