Robert A. Heinlein
ISBN 0-441-79034-8
48th Birthday, February 26, 2004 from Viannah (wrapped 2003 August 9)
Read: 2004 April 21 – May 17
Read by Viannah: 2003 June 22 - July 26
Reviewed: 2004 October 6 - 7
For her first year at college, Viannah hid our presents in her room and, on our birthdays, called up to tell us where to look for them. This was mine, somewhere behind things on a shelf in her closet. She said it dealt with her favorite subjects, religion and spirituality and one of mine, Mars (although on the copyright page, there appears: NOTICE: All men, gods, and planets in this story are imaginary. Any coincidence of names is regretted.").
Heinlein is among my favorite authors. I particularly remember The Rolling Stones from grade school and more recently Revolt in 2100. Although the cover claim "The most famous science fiction novel ever written" seemed a bit hyperbolic in light of the fact that neither I nor anyone I could find could remember ever hearing of it (as opposed, for instance, to 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Foundation Trilogy), it is a good story with fascinating insights. It starts out quite strong and settles into a classic science fiction mode for the most part although I thought it goes kind of crazy at the end.
The basic story is of Michael Smith who is the product of early Martian colonists on the Von Braun model of colonization with limited communications bandwidth by today's standards and the Kim Stanley Robinson model of Nobel Prize winning colonists. When the entire crew is lost (to interpersonal and other tragedy), native Martians take this seedling, an infant, and raise him the only way they know how. Martians and Martian life are radically different from that on Earth, which is explored at length.
As a young adult, Smith is "rescued" and returned to earth where the ways are so different from those on Mars that he nearly doesn't survive at first. As he figures things out, adding to his vast and impressive repertoire of Martian skills, he gains more and more notoriety and influence and eventually founds a new religion (which really isn't a religion), ending up as a messiah figure of sorts. All the underlying philosophy is scantily clad Bertrand Russell and Freud. Basically, if we just had a little more control over the physical and spiritual, we could live happily without the need for money or clothing, having all the sex we wanted in the name of closeness, all consequences of all types controlled, with all interpersonal conflicts minor. (This is all, of course, fantastic nonsense, but well presented nonetheless.) Only one who masters the Martian language, which makes Chinese look trivial, can understand all this, so the basics of the religion are instruction in the language and its derivative powers.
One major character is an exception in that he never has to learn Martian to be a peer of Smith, an eclectic author Jubal Harshaw who just happens to be a medical doctor, a licensed lawyer, and the destination of an escape from government confinement by Smith and his happenstance friend and nurse Gillian Boardman, or Jill. Harshaw, a leader of superpeople of the Freud/Heinlein ideal, lives on an isolated estate with several assistants, three of whom function as secretaries and transcriptionists, clearly the fantasy of the author Heinlein himself. Whenever Jubal has an idea for a story, poem, or non-fiction piece, and feels like working, he yells "Front!" and whichever of these three assistants is next in line appears ready to work, fresh out of the pool, or bed, or the dinner table, or wherever she happens to be. She receives the material as dictation and takes care of the details of producing and submitting it, or filing for future reference. One of these women has perfect recall; she needs take no notes. Another is a "Fair Witness" an official functionary (like Notary Public) that facilitates strictly factual observation and guaranteed accurate legal testimony without opinion or elaboration. She's probably also a lawyer and PhD in several sciences in addition to being a raving beauty and Olympic swimmer for all we can tell.
All these characters become "water brothers" with Michael, arguably the most profound Martian relationship, by simply sharing water, a necessity quite rare on Mars and thus highly important.
One of the first adventures they all go on is to take the Man from Mars out to meet the President of the World. Harshaw, acting as counsel, wants Smith to be recognized as sovereign in the affair and for Mars to have half of everything, meeting room real estate, invite list, national anthem (Holst, The Planets, Mars, of course). It's fun to watch the President squirm between this display and his own wife, a devout follower of an astrologer who is also one of Harshaw's acolytes. Heinlein also takes on the military-industrial complex in all this, a favorite target of authors in the 50s and 60s.
Heinlein uses all of these tools, the Man from Mars (the StrangerÉ); the Martian beings conventions, control, and language; the institutions; the concept of 'grok' (a profound level of understanding, or is it eating and absorbing food?); the Fair Witness; and so on to observe our earth and its politics, religion, and other features through radically different eyes, gaining us many insights. The Martian Man's near magical abilities, such as an ability to hold his breath under water for hours through extreme control of metabolism and spirit (the subject of the cover art) or survive a blizzard in comfort without special clothing, lend many interesting and humorous scenes.
Heinlein also projects technology a little from the publication date of 1961, things like helicopters that autonomously fly themselves on voice command. My favorite exclamations, however, are Jubal's names for the "stereo-vision receiver", Heinlein's projection of the television. Harshaw calls it, quite accurately, the "goddam noisy box" and later the "babble tank". The humor is heightened when our Martian is in a phase of learning where he takes everything totally literally and so he refers to the set himself as a "goddam noisy box" as well without any notion of impropriety as if this were a perfect proper noun.
Martians have the power to send things to other dimensions. Michael uses this to rid our small but expanding party of enemies and their weapons. The Martians have even destroyed the fifth planet from the sun. No, not Jupiter, but the one resulting in today's asteroid belt. Why? For aesthetic reasons as far as we can tell. Will they rid the solar system of their other pesky neighbor, the third planet? Perhaps, but not for some hundreds of years. They think for a long time about anything. No one is ever in a hurry. No one needs to be but, as Michael puts it, "But much waiting would be, before fullness would grok decision." The "Old Ones" (spirits of the discorporated) decide all. A Martian will discorporate over nearly anything and this nearly happens to Michael several times before he catches on to the ways of this world.
A discussion of Stranger in a Strange Land would not be complete without mention of the Fosterites, a huge religion/business with features similar to today's Trinity Broadcasting Network but with a lot more flare and charisma and lock-step follower-ship. They have Foster himself in taxidermy as an object of worship at some level. When Michael encounters this he "groks a great wrongness" (wasted food?) but Jill, savvy to the ways of this world whispers urgently, "Don't you dare do anything," and he doesn't. Michael was in the habit of sending "great wrongnesses" out of this existence. Foster had actually been the victim of a young upstart who is now a leader of the sect. When this new guy gets Michael alone to himself, he ends up joining his former leader among the Old Ones from earth (from Fosterite earth). "You had your chance, son, now get to work," Foster tells him.
Woven throughout, in the manner of Doestoevsky, are the author's own thoughts and struggles on the matters of God and religion. Spoken through Harshaw, he's cautious about canning all things religious. After all, one of the many who claims to be the Òonly true wayÓ could, by long odds, be right!
Smith models his own Martian cult on the Fosterites to the extent that it is necessary and this is so effective that he ends up with significant enemies from all other faiths, as one might expect. Ultimately he sacrifices himself to and for them. His followers join gladly in grokking his remains, a Martian mandate so as to not "waste food." After hinting at this throughout the book it's not quite the cannibalism that we expected, just broth. Even mechanic-groundskeeper Duke partakes, though he quit his job with Harshaw for a time over the very concept.
There are many other major characters and events that I haven't mentioned but this gives the flavor of this good novel. It is a vehicle for some very clever and revealing insights. I don't buy much of the modernistic assertion that if we just had sufficient mental control, all things would be possible, but I'm not reading books to buy into everything they offer me, I'm there to inform my own process and for this, Heinlein has done a great job.