Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I first read Stranger in a Strange Land sometime in the early 1970s. At that point, I’d read perhaps a dozen of Heinlein’s novels and several collections of short stories, and was finally getting around to what was often billed as his major novel. I was looking forward to it, because at the time Heinlein was one of my favorite writers (his best works still rank high on my list). I came away disappointed. While the first half of the book was good, the second half (after Mike leaves Jubal) seemed to spin out of control. It was a half good (or half bad) novel, and certainly not Heinlein’s best (or even one of his half dozen or so best).

I’ve re-read a lot of Heinlein over the years. I greatly enjoy and have reread multiple times Citizen of the Galaxy, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Double Star, The Star Beast, and a number of the short stories. I even re-read Time Enough for Love once; it’s a flawed, very overwritten novel, but there are several very good novellas buried in it. But I never re-read Stranger. But our local Barnes and Noble has an SF reading group, and Stranger is the novel for July, so I decided to re-read it. Besides, I thought, my tastes have changed a lot in 30+ years. I’ve read a lot of different kinds of things (ranging from more SF to Jane Austen to James Joyce to Leo Tolstoy), and I’ve like some things that I’ve reread far more than I liked them as a teenager, noticing more levels or appreciating that there is more to a book than an interesting plot.

Unfortunately, my opinion of Stranger hasn’t change. If anything, the second half bothered me more than it did all those years ago, and I think I can say more of why I didn’t like. I’m going to talk about that a bit here. This “review” really isn’t something that someone who hasn’t read the novel may relate too, since I presume some knowledge of the book on the part of the reader.

When I first read it, the point where I thought the novel went down hill was when Mike left Jubal. I felt that Jubal had kept things under control. That was part of it, but there is more to it than that. The big change actually happens about a chapter earlier. The Mike of the first half of the book is learning what it means to be human. He doesn’t understand much, and thus his views are an interesting glimpse at our customs from the outside. Mike in the second half has grown up, and now seems to understand everything. He is a less interesting character (and we actually see less of him), but more importantly his knowing everything makes the social commentary less pointed.

Moreover, the first part of the novel is structured around Mike’s coming to earth, his imprisonment, his escape, and the negotiations that essentially save him and establish his rights. There’s a lot of interesting story in the midst of the social commentary, and it’s only occasionally broken up by speeches by Jubal. The second half is drowned in the speech making. Everyone pontificates at great length. Nobody can have a simple conversation without it turning into a several-page-long lecture.

The novel as a whole but especially the second half is also a textbook example of one of Heinlein’s most annoying traits in some of his later books. The viewpoints of his main characters are right, by definition, no questions asked, and the events of the book are structured to show that they are right. Mike groks rightness and wrongness, and, by definition, he’s right. We aren’t supposed to question him, and neither are the other characters. He’s even right when he kills (transports into another dimension) a burglar in the church. After all, Mike knows he’s right so why should he, for example, simply transport the burglar, naked, outside (something he can do) rather than killing him? Mike doesn’t question it, and neither does anyone else. But of course, at this point everyone else – our main characters – have all learned Martian, and once you can think in Martian you know there is life after death, what’s right and what’s wrong, and so on. . Near the very end – before he discorporates – Mike murders (“discorporates,” to use his term) about 450 criminals. Again, since he is, by definition, right (and since he also knows that there is life after death), this is presented as being quite OK. Frankly, it made me more uncomfortable than most of the things Heinlein included to make his readers uncomfortable.

Mike’s superpowers are also too much. He can do anything. James Blish in his essay “Cathedrals in Space,” summed it up:

He can control his metabolism to the point where any outside observer can judge him to be dead; he can read minds; he is a telekinetic; he can throw objects (or people) permanently away into the fourth dimension by a pure effort of will, so easily that he uses the stunt often simply to undress; he practices astral projection as easily as he undresses, on one occasion leaving his body on the bottom of a swimming pool while he disposes of about thirty-five cops and almost as many heavily armored helicopters; he can heal his own wounds almost instantly; he can mentally analyze inanimate matter, well enough to know instantly that a corpse he has just encountered died by poisoning years ago; levitation, crepitation, intermittent claudication, you name it, he’s got it—and besides, he’s awfully good in bed.

Near the books end, it’s even noted that he could destroy the planet if he wanted to. It’s all too much, and we’re supposed to take it all as a given (or as a result of being able to think in Martian).

There are good things here. There is good social satire – both biting and at times funny. Some of the sidetracks and speeches are interesting in their own right. I’ve always enjoyed Jubal’s sidetrack on Rodin and representational art. But these good moments do not a good book make. I really wanted to like this book more this time than last. I really went into hoping that my broadened tastes would let me appreciate it. But, I’m sorry. I can’t. This is a flawed book, and in the end its flaws overwhelm it.