Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land
Hardcover, showing Rodin's sculpture, Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone, which Heinlein translates as "Caryatid Fallen Under her Stone".
Author	Robert A. Heinlein
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Putnam Publishing Group
Publication date	June 1, 1961
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	NA

Stranger in a Strange Land is a best-selling 1961 Hugo Award-winning^[1] science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians on the planet Mars, upon his return to Earth in early adulthood. The novel explores his interaction with — and the eventual transformation of — Earth culture. The novel's title refers to the Biblical Book of Exodus. ^[2] According to Heinlein in Grumbles from the Grave, the novel's working title was The Heretic. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as "The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written." ^[3]

When Heinlein first wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, his editors at Putnam required him to drastically cut its original 220,000-word length, and to remove some scenes that might have been considered too shocking at the time. The resulting edited version was, according to Heinlein, 160,067 words. (He joked about sending in the last 67 to the publisher on a postcard.) In 1962, this version received the Hugo Award for the Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year.^[1] After Heinlein's death in 1988, his wife Virginia arranged to have the original uncut version of the manuscript published in 1991 by Ace/Putnam. Critics disagree over whether Heinlein's preferred original manuscript is in fact better than the heavily-edited version originally published. There is similar contention over the two versions of Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars.

While initially a success among science fiction readers, over the next six years word-of-mouth caused sales to build, requiring numerous subsequent printings of the first Putnam edition. The novel has never been out of print. Eventually Stranger in a Strange Land became a cult classic, attracting many readers who would not ordinarily read a work of science fiction. The late-1960s counterculture, popularized by the hippie movement, was influenced by its themes of individual liberty, self-responsibility, sexual freedom, and the influence of organized religion on human culture and government, and adopted the book as something of a manifesto.^{[citation needed]}

In 1968, Tim Zell (now Oberon Zell-Ravenheart) and others formed a Neo-Pagan religious organization called the Church of All Worlds, modeled after the religion founded by the primary characters in the novel.^[4] Except for correspondence with Zell (a lengthy letter to Zell appears as a letter to "a Fan" toward the end of the book in Grumbles from the Grave) and a paid subscription to the Church's Green Egg magazine during the 1970s (as Heinlein refused to accept a complimentary subscription), Heinlein had no other connection to the project.^[5]

Plot

The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture, which is portrayed as an amplified version of consumerist and media-driven 20th-century America.

Valentine Michael Smith is the son of astronauts from the first expedition to the planet Mars. Orphaned when the entire crew die, Smith is raised in the culture of the Martian natives, beings whose minds live in another world (compare Waldo).

A second expedition to the planet some twenty years later brings Smith "home" to Earth. Smith becomes a political pawn in government struggles as he is heir to the fortunes of the entire exploration party, which includes several valuable inventions.

Since Smith is unaccustomed to the atmosphere and gravity of Earth, he is confined at Bethesda Hospital. Having never seen a human female, Smith is attended by male staff only. Seeing this restriction as a challenge, Nurse Gillian Boardman eludes guards to see Smith and in doing so inadvertently becomes his first female "water brother" by sharing a glass of water with him. To him, this is a holy relationship based on the customs of arid Mars.

Gillian tells reporter Ben Caxton about her encounter with Smith, and they, together with Jubal Harshaw, try to counteract the government's lies about Smith. Gillian persuades Smith to leave the hospital with her, but they only get as far as Ben's apartment before agents attempt to kidnap them. Smith causes the agents to disappear, and he is so shocked by Gillian's terrified reaction that he enters what seems to be a catatonic state.

Smith continues to demonstrate psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence coupled with a childlike naïveté. When Jubal tries to explain religion to him, Smith understands the concept of God only as "one who groks", which includes every living person, plant, and animal. This leads him to express the Martian concept of the oneness of life as the phrase "Thou art God". Many other human concepts—such as war, clothing, and jealousy—are strange to him, while the idea of an afterlife is something he takes as a given because the government on Mars is composed of "Old Ones", the spirits of Martians who have died. It is also customary for loved ones and friends to eat the bodies of the dead, in a spirit of Holy Communion.

Eventually Harshaw brokers a deal which includes 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 aliens.

Now free to travel, Smith becomes a celebrity, and is feted by elite of Earth. He gets involved with religious cults and the circus, and eventually starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds," which teaches its members how to rise above suffering.

Smith's church combines elements of the Fosterite cult with mystery religions and initiation. Members learn the Martian language and acquire psychic abilities. The church is eventually besieged by Fosterites for practicing "blasphemy" and the church building is destroyed. However, Smith teleports the members of the Church to safety.

The book ends with Smith promoted to another plane of existence.

Characters

• Crew members of the Envoy, the first human attempt to travel to Mars. Their ship survives the trip to Mars, but then ceases transmission, and their fate is unknown for the next 20 years.
  • Mary Jane Lyle Smith — power technician. Before leaving Earth she patents technology, placed in trust, which was subsequently developed into the Lyle Drive, the principal form of spaceship propulsion. Biological mother of Valentine Michael Smith, who legally owns the fortune accrued from the profits on sales of her invention.
  • Dr. Ward Smith — ship physician and legal father of Valentine Michael Smith
  • Captain Michael Brant — captain and biological father of the baby boy — Valentine Michael Smith
• Valentine Michael Smith — known as Michael Smith, or just "Mike", the "Man from Mars", raised on Mars in the interval between the landing of his father's ship, the Envoy, and arrival of the second expedition, the Champion; about 20 years old when the Champion arrives and brings him to Earth
• Officers of the Champion. These people became "water brothers" to Mike on Mars or during the trip back, but this information is only revealed to Mike's earthbound human friends when they meet the officers
  • Captain van Tromp
  • Dr. Mahmoud — semanticist, of Arab descent, and a devout Muslim; the second human (after Mike) to gain a working knowledge of the Martian language
  • Dr. Sven Nelson — ship's physician and personal physician to Mike at Bethesda Medical Center until he withdraws from the case in a confrontation with the Secretary General (see below)
• Government officials — Several government officials have roles at least at the beginning
  • Secretary-General Joseph Douglas ("Joe Douglas") — the head of the Federation of Free States, which has evolved indirectly from the United Nations into a true world government
  • Gil Berquist — assistant to Secretary Douglas. Mike makes him and a policeman disappear during a confrontation with Jill (see below).
  • Alice Douglas — (sometimes called "Agnes"), wife of Joe Douglas, not a government official but, as a First Lady, orders her husband and his staff around. She frequently consults an astrologer for major decisions. It is implied that she is an agent of the same afterlife that Foster, Digby, and later Mike find themselves and that her true name there is Agnes.
  • Jim Sanforth — Douglas' press secretary
  • Assemblyman Kung — de facto head of the Eastern Coalition, a political bloc opposed to Douglas in the Federation
  • Senator Tom Boone — besides being a politician, he is a senior member of the Church of the New Revelation(Fosterite), and wants both Mike's wealth and prestige to accrue to the faith.
• Becky Vesey (stage name Madame Alexandra Vesant) — Mrs Douglas' astrologer, and later a member of Mike's Church of All Worlds. When Harshaw (see below) has a sudden urgent need to contact Douglas, Vesant provides the way when all official roads are blocked.
• Gillian (Jill) Boardman — nurse at Bethesda, the first woman on Earth to become a "water brother" to Mike
• Ben Caxton — investigative journalist and boyfriend of Jill. He makes her aware of Mike's legal significance (potential ownership both of enormous amounts of Earthly wealth and the planet Mars itself, at least according to Federation law), and persuades her to bug Smith's hospital suite, revealing an attempt by Douglas to defraud Smith of this wealth and power.
• James Cavendish — a Fair Witness employed by Ben in an attempt to expose a fake Man from Mars shown on stereovision. Fair Witnesses are a legal institution created to provide impartial and accurate observation of potentially contentious legal situations. Apart from Cavendish, Anne (see below) is also a Fair Witness.
• Jubal Harshaw — popular writer, lawyer, doctor, now semi-retired to a house in the Poconos northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Harshaw's age is never given but is probably at least 80 by indirect indications. When Ben Caxton disappears, Jill takes Mike to Harshaw to defend his rights, but finds Harshaw not eager to defend Mike's right to unearned wealth. However, when the authorities get rough he changes his mind.
• Anne — (no last name given) oldest and tallest of three female secretaries to Harshaw. Has total recall and Fair Witness standing (see Cavendish above)
• Miriam — another female secretary to Harshaw, red-headed
• Dorcas — third female secretary. Dark-haired. There is some suggestion of Islamic background during a conversation with Dr. Mahmoud.
• Larry and Duke — two men that Harshaw employs to keep the high-tech part of his isolated and private household running so he doesn't need external, expensive, and disruptive repairmen.
• Patricia Paiwonski ("Pat") — circus performer that Mike and Jill meet while Mike poses as a magician in a small travelling circus. Loves snakes, especially pythons. Her body is completely covered with tattoos.
• Angels — provide some commentary and act quite apart from the humans. A third angel is introduced at the end of the book.
  • Foster — The founder of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) upon death becomes an angel
  • Digby — Supreme Bishop Digby, Foster's successor as head of the Church of the New Revelation, also becomes an angel when he dies.

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"

Fair Witness

Fair Witness is 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. An eidetic memory is a prerequisite for the job, although this may be attainable with suitable training.

In Heinlein's society, a Fair Witness is a highly reputable source of information. By custom, a Fair Witness acting professionally, generally wearing distinctive white robes, is never addressed directly, and all present are supposed to avoid acknowledging the presence of the Witness in any way.

The character Jubal Harshaw employs a Fair Witness, Anne, as one of his secretaries. Unlike the other secretaries, she does not use dictation equipment when Jubal speaks. She can even keep track of several works at once, despite Harshaw's frequent switching between them.

Unlike the superficially similar profession of Mentat in Frank Herbert's Dune, Fair Witnesses are prohibited from drawing conclusions about what they observe. As a demonstration, Harshaw asks Anne to describe the color of a house in the distance. She responds, "It's painted white on this side". Harshaw explains that she would not assume knowledge of the color of the other sides of the house without being able to see them. Furthermore, after observing another side of the house would not then assume that any previously seen side was still the same color as last reported, even if only minutes before.

When Ben Caxton decides to do something that might result in litigation—namely accusing a government official of substituting an actor for Valentine Michael Smith in a televised interview—he hires a highly respected Witness, James Oliver Cavendish, to record everything he sees, and to ensure that Ben isn't accused of slander. They visit the alleged Man From Mars in his hospital suite in the hope of determining whether he is actually Smith or the actor who had apparently impersonated him the night before. Because of Cavendish's professional ethics, he is unable to suggest when on duty that they look for telltale calluses on the supposed Smith's feet; by the time he is off duty and makes this obvious suggestion, it is no longer possible to get back into the hospital suite again and Smith and Caxton are both in danger of foul play.

Literary significance and criticism

Like many influential works of literature, Stranger made a contribution to the language: specifically, the word "grok." In Heinlein's invented Martian language, "grok" literally means "to drink" and figuratively means "to understand," "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. Heinlein wrote most of the novel completely in dialogue, containing often long monologues; there are only a few pages of narration that depict the state of the world during the ensuing plot.

A central element of the second half of the novel is the religious movement founded by Smith, the "Church of All Worlds." This church is 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 Stranger in a Strange Land. 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 done with frequent correspondence between Zell and Heinlein, and he was a paid subscriber to their magazine Green Egg.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[6]

Stranger 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."^[7]

Stranger contains an early description of the waterbed, an invention which 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 and another novel, Double Star, constituted prior art. ^[8]

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 being started by Harshaw at the end.)

In popular culture

The Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" references the book in the sung list of 1961 items, together with others like Ernest Hemingway and the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Editions

Two major versions of this book exist:

• The 1961 version, which was cut about 25% from Heinlein's original manuscript. The publisher disliked the original length and wanted to excise some objectionable material.
• The 1991 version, which reproduces the original manuscript and restores all cuts. Heinlein's widow retrieved the manuscript from Heinlein's archives in the University of California, Santa Cruz special collections department, and published it after his death. Both Heinlein's agent and his publisher, which had new senior editors, agreed that the uncut version was better. (What was objectionable in 1961 was no longer so thirty years later.)

Many printed editions exist:

• June 1, 1961, Putnam Publishing Group, hardcover, ISBN 0-399-10772-X^[9]
• Avon, NY, 1st paperback edition, 1961.
• 1965, New English Library Ltd, (London).
• March 1968, Berkley Medallion. paperback, ISBN 425-04688-5 or ISBN 0-425-04688-5
• July 1970, New English Library Ltd, (London). 400 pages, paperback. (3rd 'new edition', August 1971 reprint, is NEL 2844, no ISBN quoted.)
• 1972, Capricorn Books, 408 pages, ISBN 0-399-50268-8
• October 1975, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03067-9
• November 1977, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03782-7
• July 1979, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04377-0
• September 1980, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04688-5
• July 1982, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-05833-6
• July 1983, Penguin Putnam, paperback, ISBN 0-425-06490-5
• January 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-07142-1
• May 1, 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-05216-8
• December 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 0-425-08094-3
• November 1986, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-10147-9
• January 1991, uncut edition, Ace/Putnam, hardcover, ISBN 0-399-13586-3
• May 3, 1992, original uncut edition, Hodder and Stoughton, mass market paperback, 655 pages, ISBN 0-450-54742-6
• October 1, 1991, uncut edition, Ace Books, paperback, 528 pages, ISBN 0-441-78838-6
• 1995, Easton Press (MBI, Inc), uncut edition, leather bound hardcover, 525 pages
• August 1, 1995, ACE Charter, paperback, 438 pages, ISBN 0-441-79034-8
• April 1, 1996, Blackstone Audiobooks, cassette audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-0952-1
• October 1, 1999, Sagebrush, library binding, ISBN 0-8085-2087-3
• June 1, 2002, Blackstone Audiobooks, cassette audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-2229-3
• January 2003, Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media, hardcover, ISBN 0-606-25126-X
• November 1, 2003, Blackstone Audiobooks, CD audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-8848-0
• March 14, 2005, Hodder and Stoughton, paperback, 655 pages, ISBN 0-340-83795-0

References

Bibliography

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Stranger in a Strange Land

• Stranger in a Strange Land publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• List of Characters
• Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
• "Junior, you aren’t shaping up too angelically": Queerness in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, by Allyn Howey
• Stranger in a Strange Land at Worlds Without End

v • d • e Robert A. Heinlein novels, major collections, and nonfiction (Bibliography) Future History & World as Myth The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950) · The Green Hills of Earth (1951) · Revolt in 2100 (1953) · Orphans of the Sky (1963) · Methuselah's Children (1958) · The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) · The Past Through Tomorrow (1967) · Time Enough for Love (1973) · The Number of the Beast (1980) · The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985) · To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987) Scribner's juveniles Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) · Space Cadet (1948) · Red Planet (1949) · Farmer in the Sky (1950) · Between Planets (1951) · The Rolling Stones (1952) · Starman Jones (1953) · The Star Beast (1954) · Tunnel in the Sky (1955) · Time for the Stars (1956) · Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) · Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958) Other novels For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs (1939/2003) · Beyond This Horizon (1948) · Sixth Column (1949) · The Puppet Masters (1951) · Double Star (1956) · The Door into Summer (1957) · Starship Troopers (1959) · Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) · Podkayne of Mars (1963) · Glory Road (1963) · Farnham's Freehold (1964) · I Will Fear No Evil (1970) · Friday (1982) · Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984) · Variable Star (1955/2006) Nonfiction Take Back Your Government (1946/1992) · Tramp Royale (1954/1992) · Expanded Universe (1980) · Grumbles from the Grave (1989)

l