Stranger in a Strange Land

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Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set in the first decades of the twenty-first century; published in 1961.

SYNOPSIS

The child of space explorers who perished during the first mission to Mars is brought to Earth, where he struggles to both adapt to and reform human social habits.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Novel in Focus

For More Information

Robert Anson Heinlein was born on July 7, 1907, in Butler, Missouri. He dropped out of the University of Missouri in 1925 to enlist in the U.S. Navy, in which he served as an officer on several ships, including the first U.S. aircraft carrier, before taking a medical discharge in 1934 because of tuberculosis. Afterwards he studied physics and mathematics at the University of California in Los Angeles, going on in 1939 to publish his first short story, “Life Line,” in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Heinlein proceeded to write many short stories and several novels. His Stranger in a Strange Land, the first science fiction novel to make the New York Times bestseller list, appealed to readers not only as a fantasy but also as a reflection on social attitudes and change.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The space race

In Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein parodies the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into the earth’s orbit. Whereas the powerful nations of Heinlein’s earth vie for control of distant Mars, the United States and the Soviet Union competed first to send a manned spacecraft into orbit around the earth and then to land a human on the moon.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, a satellite about 22 inches in diameter, into orbit around the earth. The successful launch astonished and alarmed U.S. scientists, who had misled the American public into believing that the United States would be first in space. The success of the Soviet mission prompted many U.S. citizens to panic. Not only did they conjure up vague visions of Soviet satellites launching missiles at U.S. cities, but they began to doubt the technological superiority of the United States. The New Republic warned that Sputnik was “proof of the fact that the Soviet Union has gained a commanding lead in certain vital sectors of the race for world scientific and technological supremacy” (Divine, p. xv).

During his presidential campaign of 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy capitalized on this distress by reprimanding his opponent Richard Nixon, who had served as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, for having “allowed” the Soviets to lead the quest into space (Breuer, p. 2). In a dramatic confrontation with Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev, Nixon had once responded, “You may be ahead of us in rocket thrust, but we are ahead of you in color television” (Nixon in Breuer, p. 2). Kennedy profited from this hasty remark. “I will take my television in black and white,” he declared before a cheering crowd. “I want to be ahead in rocket thrust” (Kennedy in Breuer, p. 2). Kennedy won the 1960 election by a slim margin. He immediately established a committee headed by his scientific advisor, Jerome Weisner, to win support for his proposals to fund space exploration. Among them was a proposal by Kennedy to land a man on the moon. Then, on April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union dealt another blow to faith in American ingenuity. Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Army major, was launched into space and orbited the earth for more than one hundred minutes. Khrushchev proclaimed Gagarin “the new Christopher Columbus” (Khrushchev in Breuer, p. 3).

Less than three weeks after Gagarin had returned to earth, New York Times headlines proudly boasted “U.S. Hurls Man 115 Miles into Space” (Breuer, p. 3). Alan B. Shepard Jr. had become the first U.S. citizen to leave the earth’s atmosphere. Although the entire flight lasted a mere fifteen minutes, it indicated that the United States was making substantial advances.

Kennedy resolved to take the lead in the space race in spite of the Soviet Union’s unquestionable head start. On May 25, 1961, he declared before Congress, “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive” (Kennedy in Breuer, p. 4). Congress responded to Kennedy’s speech by agreeing to double the funding for space exploration. The space race against the Soviet Union would proceed for the remainder of the decade, beyond the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, until it reached his goal. In 1969, Neil Armstrong would finally make the famous giant leap for mankind onto the surface of the moon, carrying with him an American flag.

The 1950s

The 1950s are often referred to as a decade of both economic prosperity and social contentment. Certainly the nation enjoyed economic growth bolstered by marketing innovations such as the installment plan, which allowed customers to purchase goods and pay for them over time, paying less interest than they would to a bank. In 1954, the earnings of the General Electric corporation rose 68 percent over a nine-month period, and Westinghouse, a rival corporation, boasted a 73 percent increase. The percentage of white-collar workers grew to exceed that of blue-collar workers.

As the nation’s economy prospered, the standard of living rose as well. Contractors built lush suburban neighborhoods to house the burgeoning middle class. Consumers took advantage of low interest rates to purchase labor-saving devices like washing machines and dryers as well as sleek new cars. Sales of barbecue pits with matching patio furniture, popular items in the suburban home, rose from 53 million in 1950 to 145 million in 1960.

Yet beneath the veneer of contentment lurked simmering anxieties. The adults who enjoyed the economic prosperity of the 1950s were children of the 1930s. Having lived through both the Great Depression and World War II, they were not only attracted to material success, but also anxious about the stability of their lifestyles.

To quell these anxieties the adults of the 1950s sought comfort in conformity. Identically dressed businessmen left their jobs to return to similar suburban homes tended by their stay-at-home wives. From the mass media came broadcasts that promoted images of the contented mother and the hardworking and successful father.

It was no doubt natural for this generation to stress the merit of teamwork and cooperation as well as to defend the image of their country, which had emerged as the only real victor of the Second World War, given the damage the others suffered and America’s development of atomic weaponry. Yet the zeal with which the conservative elements in the country lashed out against nonconformists in the 1950s was dangerous. Senator Joseph McCarthy exploited these fears by denouncing his political opponents and many others as communists. Although McCarthy offered little evidence to support these allegations, the mere accusation sufficed to ruin many people’s careers. McCarthy seemed to succeed simply because the public was overly suspicious of anyone who did not conform to a rigid definition of “American.”

Children of the fifties: seeds of social upheaval

If, for the adult generation of the 1950s, the term nonconformist was a nasty epithet, it was for their children a compliment. Many of the white middle-class youths coming of age at the time had never known economic deprivation and did not have the same apprehensions that troubled their parents. Whereas the older generation took pride in conformity, the youths delighted in challenging accepted norms.

The popularity of certain media icons reflects the frustrations of the youth of the 1950s. Movies like The Wild One and Rebel without a Cause glamorized the social deviant who chose nonconformity. J. D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye (also covered in Literature and Its Times), the popular adolescent classic, told the story of a middle-class boy disgusted with a world of materialistic “phonies.” Many of these youths longed to shatter the narrow molds cast by their parents. “The only people for me,” proclaimed popular author Jack Kerouac, “are the mad ones . . . the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn” (Kerouac in Stevens, p. 99). The generation that would come of age in the following decade would see the rise of a much larger group of young rebels, which became known as the counterculture. Again made up largely of young, middle-class whites, its adherents found much to criticize in the various manifestations of what they called the “establishment.” New expressions in art, music, politics, and even value systems would all coalesce to give evidence to the progressiveness of the counterculture, and to grow into a major movement by the end of the decade. Vehement protests against U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam were also a major component. Much larger and more outspoken than the nonconformists of the 1950s, the members of the counterculture staged a music festival at Woodstock, New York, in 1969 attended by 400,000. It was the culmination of years of protest and nonconformity, a fitting end to a decade that had begun shortly before Stranger in a Strange Land was published. The decade would be remembered in history as one in which nonconformist elements in society not only voiced protest, but also inaugurated change.

The sexual revolution

In 1948 sociologist Alfred Kinsey published an extensive statistical report on the sexual habits of American citizens. The report, based on thousands of interviews, revealed not only that 60 percent of married men and 40 percent of married women confessed to having sex with someone other than their spouses, but also that homosexuality, promiscuity among adolescents, and masturbation were far more common than previously suspected. Although the report stirred noteworthy controversy among sociologists and psychologists, it did not by any means convince the public to question conventional values and customs regarding sex.

Although it is unlikely that the majority of adolescents growing up in the 1950s read Kin-sey’s research, it is certain that they questioned their parents attitudes toward sex. When the Food and Drug Administration approved the oral contraceptive pill in 1960, the youth of the United States began to fling aside the staid faith in monogamy professed by their parents’ generation. Premarital sex started to seem less of a taboo.

The sexual revolution did not really begin, however, until after the publication of Heinlein’s novel. Heinlein’s fictional man from Mars, who advocates casual sex and group cohabitation, anticipates the cult leaders of the 1960s who would exhort their adherents to relish promiscuity. During the 1960s even married couples would, like some of the couples in Heinlein’s novel, swap mates and experiment with the concept of group marriage. In the mid-1960s some students from the University of California at Berkeley would, like the followers of the man from Mars in Heinlein’s novel who casually commingle in the nude, organize a nude wade in San Francisco Bay.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

The popularity of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a hallucinogenic drug, in the late 1950s and 1960s again reflects the desire of youths to escape what they perceived as the dull world of middle-class suburbia. First synthesized in 1938 by Albert Hof-mann, a Swiss chemist, LSD was used during the 1950s first by the Central Intelligence Agency as a potential truth serum and then by psychologists as a promising treatment for both schizophrenia and depression.

By 1960 the use of the drug had become a popular pastime among artists, writers, and other progressive intellectuals. Some followed the advice of men like controversial Harvard professor Timothy Leary and British novelist Aldous Huxley and volunteered to serve as subjects for experiments with LSD. Popular counterculture poet Allen Ginsberg described his use of LSD as an attempt to “resurrect a lost art or a lost knowledge or a lost consciousness” (Ginsburg in Lee and Shlain, p. 60). Actors like Cary Grant took LSD at the advice of their therapists. “All my life,” Grant stated, “I’ve been searching for peace of mind…. Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment” (Grant in Lee and Shlain, p. 57).

The declarations of proponents of LSD are remarkably similar to the phrases used by Heinlein’s protagonist to explain his philosophy. Whereas the man from Mars pleads with his fellow humans to believe that “Thou art God” (Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 406) and “[love] is the greatest gift we have” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 397), Timothy Leary wrote “Listen! Wake up! You are God!” (Leary in Stevens, p. 133), and Huxley asserted that his experience with LSD convinced him that “Love [is] the primary and fundamental cosmic fact” (Huxley in Lee and Shlain, p. 48). LSD did not become a widely used drug until after the publication of Stranger in a Strange Land, however, so while Heinlein’s protagonists seems to echo advocates of LSD like Leary and Huxley, the similarities merely reflect the intellectual climate of the times.

The Novel in Focus

The plot

Toward the end of the twentieth century humans launched the first manned craft bound for Mars. Four married couples were chosen to make the journey of almost three earth years. Before the end of their journey, one of the women was pregnant, but not by her husband. The doctor, her husband, delivered the infant boy by cesarean section and the woman died on the operating table. The doctor proceeded to slit the throat of the child’s father, then his own. The rest of the crew died on Mars and only the boy, raised by Martians, survived.

Two decades after the first mission to Mars a technological advance allowed humans to make the journey to Mars in nineteen days. A second expedition to Mars was planned with the goal of determining whether or not Mars was inhabited and whether or not there were any survivors of the first mission. The crew returned both with startling reports concerning native life on Mars and with Valentine Michael Smith, the survivor of the first mission.

Smith is brought to earth, where he is kept under guard by the government. Maladapted to earth’s stronger gravity and ignorant of the English language, he is a docile guest and relies on the help of the doctors. Armed guards spare him the ordeal of having to speak to the crowds of eager reporters outside the hospital.

Smith is not only physically unsuited to earth; he has grown up among Martians, who are cerebral creatures, and is perplexed and frightened by human displays of emotion. Should he perceive that he has offended anyone, he closes his eyes, slows his breathing, reduces his heartbeat, and “discorporates.” Because he is so sensitive, doctors recommend that he be sheltered from the flash cameras of inquisitive reporters.

The government is particularly interested in Smith’s fate not merely because he may serve as a wellspring of scientific information, but also because, as the first living human to have been on Mars, he can, under legal precedent, claim ownership of Mars. Smith himself does not realize this, nor will he ever fully understand the concept of ownership, but the many countries of the globe recognize him as having a rightful claim to the planet. The government hopes to force Smith to cede to them his claim to Mars, but in the meantime it fears that rival nations may be plotting his assassination.

Jill Boardmen, a nurse, and Ben Caxton, a muckraking journalist, kidnap Smith and spirit him away to the Pocono Mountains. He arrives at the home of Jubal Harshaw, a cynical attorney who gave up law because he found writing sensationalist novels more amusing. Acting as Smith’s attorney, Jubal relinquishes all claims to Mars to the Martians themselves, thus saving Smith from the danger of being kidnapped by countries hoping to colonize Mars.

CLAIMS TO MARS

When Jill discovers that the nations of the earth are squabbling over legal claims to Mars just as they had over the legal claim to the moon, she protests that Mars, unlike the moon, is inhabited. It is absurd, she contends, for human nations to vie for dominion over territory that belongs to the Martians. Ben pointedly argues that European powers like Britain, Spain, and France fought for control of North America in spite of the fact that this continent was already inhabited.

Jubal, Jill, and Ben begin teaching Smith the tricky ceremonies humans have concocted to complicate communication. Smith begins to grasp sarcasm but is unable to comprehend either humor or the vague word “God.” Although he reads several volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica a day, the outsider relies on his friends to explain the mysteries of human conduct.

In turn Smith explains to them that he can control his metabolism to such an extent that he can voluntarily grow muscle or hair. He can also survive for hours without oxygen and days without food. These abilities seem trivial, however, when Smith demonstrates that, without even lifting his hand, he can make objects, guns, cars, even people, vanish.

Having spent many months with Jubal, Smith finally leaves with Jill so that he can sample life among strangers. The couple joins a carnival, where Smith performs as a magician, levitating Jill or making objects disappear. They leave the carnival, however, because he cannot seem to entertain an audience.

Jill and Smith linger in various places. While he has accepted that God is a vague abstraction meaning different things to different people, Smith has not yet grasped humor. Jill takes him to a zoo, where he notices for the first time the similarity between apes and humans. Smith erupts with laughter. Jill is troubled and hurries him out of the zoo. Later Smith explains, “I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I’ve seen and heard and read about . . . and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 300).

Believing that he has grasped the causes of human joy and anguish, Smith resolves to explain to the human race its folly. He hopes to convince mankind that one need not invent a vague abstraction like God to stifle fears of the unknown. Rather, all living things are God and there is nothing to understand apart from oneself.

Smith founds a church. With Jill’s help he leads services that resemble both a carnival magic act and a Catholic sermon. Dedicated disciples struggle to learn the Martian language, because this is the only path to self-realization. As they learn they find that not only does their health improve, but they, like Smith, can communicate telepathically.

Smith’s success provokes the rancor of other churches. Angry mobs denounce him as the anti-Christ. His church is burned and the congregation is forced to relocate to another city. When crowds mob his new establishment, Smith resolves to confront them. Standing before the mob he banishes the clouds from the overcast sky, bathes himself in sunlight, and announces that he is a son of man. Someone hurtles a brick against his face, but he continues. “Hear the truth, you need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear.” “Blasphemer,” the mob answers (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 405). Someone takes off one of Smith’s arms with a shotgun. “Give him the other barrel,” the mob jeers (Strange in a Strange Land, p. 406). The crowd overwhelms Smith and smashes his rib cage. As Smith smiles and whispers once more “Thou art God,” they douse him in gasoline and set his body aflame (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 407).

The stranger’s perspective

Michael Smith views American society without the blinders of conventional prejudice. He is the ultimate stranger in a strange land. Not merely a foreigner who judges Americans by the moral code of his nation, Smith is an alien with no preconceptions to hamper his perception.

Seen through Mike Smith’s eyes, some of the habits and mores of American culture seem absurd or even hypocritical. For example, Mike astounds his new acquaintances when he reveals that when a Martian dies, its friends express their love by devouring the corpse. When an earth-ling scoffs at this “cannibalism,” Jubal comes to the Martian’s defense, likening the practice to participating in the sacrament of the Eucharist in the Catholic church. “Tell me,” he chides, “how did you feel when you took part in the symbolic cannibalism that plays so paramount a part in your church’s rituals?” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 126).

Smith’s introduction to human sexuality, for which there was no counterpart among Martians, convinces him that physical love is “the source . . . of all that makes this planet so rich and so wonderful” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 397). He is confounded to discover that human children are “brought up to think that sex [is] ’bad’ and ’shameful’ and ’animal’ and something to be hidden and always distrusted” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 398). “This lovely perfect thing,” he laments, “[is] turned upside down and inside out and made horrible” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 398).

Yet Smith perceives that the puritanical ethics of American society do not effectively conceal the nation’s preoccupation with sex. He is aware that “[i]n the twentieth century . . . nowhere on earth was sex so vigorously suppressed—and nowhere was there such deep interest in it” (Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 277). Like the cult leaders of the 1960s, Smith rejects the conventions of chastity and monogamy.

Sources

Heinlein made some use of his experience as an engineer when devising his science fiction fantasies. In fact, his wife alleged that he often drew graphs and charts to determine how long space travel between two planets might last, or even how long an expedition might have to tarry on the surface of Mars before the planet was realigned with earth.

Heinlein, however, asserted that there were only two basic types of science fiction story, the gadget story and the human interest story. His writing, he insisted, was human interest fiction. His purpose in writing Stranger in a Strange Land, said Heinlein, “was to examine every major axiom of Western culture, to question each axiom, throw doubt on it—and, if possible—to make the antithesis of each axiom appear a possible and perhaps desirable thing” (Heinlein in Pan-shin, p. 98). He playfully mocks the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, corrupt legal systems, manipulative politicians, religious practices, and even conversational habits. The most daring of Heinlein’s challenges, however, was his critique of the nation’s attitudes toward sex. He anticipated the social upheaval that postdated the publication of the novel. “I saw [the mores of America] changing,” he wrote, “and my timing was right” (Heinlein in Stover, p. 54).

Reception

Stranger in a Strange Land was Heinlein’s greatest commercial success, selling well over a million copies. While cynical critics contended that the popularity of the novel was due to the host of female characters who frolicked in the nude, others insisted that Heinlein had addressed fundamental issues at the heart of the unrest of the 1960s. “The values of the sixties,” said one review, “could hardly have found a more congenial expression” (Scholes and Rabkin in Stine, p. 166).

Critics fond of science fiction disputed the merit of the novel. Some complained that Heinlein had ruined a delightful and imaginative tale by proselytizing. “[A]s Heinlein the preacher has come to the forefront,” one critic lamented, “the quality of his fiction has declined” (Parkin-Speer in Metzger and Straub, p. 223). Other critics, however, praised Heinlein for having “suggested to the public that the genre had possibilities for objects other than adventures in outer space” (Samuelson in Stine, p. 167).