Also in , Charles Prior Hall sought a patent on a modern mattress filled not with solid stuffing but with water. Heinlein later acknowledged his personal hospital stints had driven him to design a more comfortable sickbed, but he never pursued the project beyond illustration in his fiction.
In , Hall finally won legal rights to a variation on his waterbed design. Hoping to free Heinlein of the anchor that was any association with—or worse yet, blame for—the atrocities committed by the Manson Family, novelist and journalist J. Neil Schulman contacted the incarcerated Manson in and asked him outright about his relationship with the novel. According to Schulman, Manson claimed to have never even read Stranger in a Strange Land , which would wholly negate the connection between the novel and his crimes.
When probed by readers to expand on his presumed solutions for fixing the world, Heinlein had trouble disguising his frustration.
I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. But the introduction clearly states how Heinlein was trying to break every taboo he could think of, up to and including cannibalism. But no gay dudes. Even the Martian is like "Of course, as I preach the power of sexual utopia, I could never ever, never ever, never ever hook up with a dude.
But I could totally teach all the ladies to be better at hooking up with dudes. I could do this by having sex with all of them. We need to talk about Jubal Harshaw.
If you talk to anyone about this book, after you get through the rampant misogyny and the no-gay-dudes and the this-book-is-terrible, some asshole will go "Yeah, but Jubal Harshaw, amirite? By the end of the book, the Martian cult members all believe he is the father of their Martian Jesus, and then he gets laid by a young woman who's used her spooky Martian powers to transform herself into a clone of the one female character everyone in the book is in love with.
So maybe that sounds like a cool spot to be in, right? Not to mention Harshaw is written as being the smartest person on the planet, negotiating with the media and the government in one swoop in order to protect the Martian Jesus -- not in a pure-holy-genius way, but a this-old-maverick-can-outthink-all-you-whippersnappers-and-corporate-shills kind of way. Like the pure doggone common sense of being a fat middle-aged fiction writer will get you a harem of mom-secretary-daughter-girlfriends, make you more powerful than the UN, and make you the father of Martian Jesus.
Heinlein was a fat middle-aged fiction writer when he wrote this. First, I'm calling it this because it's totally what it is, even thought technically it's a bunch of humans living in sexual utopia through learning Martian mind tricks. But Martian sex cult is funnier and truer. As I said earlier, there's at least pages devoted to an attempt to break down the reader's preconceived notions about sex cults not being creepy, and how they make everyone happier.
But look, maybe Heinlein didn't have old episodes of "Real Sex" to watch on the internet, but now we do, okay? And sex cults are creepy, fireals. In fact, pages talking about their non-creepiness does not make them less creepy. Guess what it makes them the exact total fucking opposite of. And I'm just saying, maybe if there'd been one little guy-orgy in all those pages, like to replace all the dudes talking about how they were having sex with each other's wives?
I'm just saying that would be a start. But mostly no. Because even then? You have this psychotic group-think thing that is totally mind-wipingly terrible and makes me hate everyone alive for liking anything about this book. I fucking hate it. I fucking hate this book. I was never actually convinced that Heinlein wrote all this stupid contradictory gender-politics stuff or insane cult stuff in order to troll the reader, which would be the one way I could possibly excuse everything else.
The book is ethically dishonest, Heinlein was a scumgoat, and Jubal Harshaw is a turd. But the cover? It's pretty cool. Note: Original pub date is Fuck you, Heinlein!!! This isn't a book, it's a pompous recitation of every one of your pet peeves and pet theories, delivered through the mouths of your utterly two-dimensional "characters" during the course of a nonexistent plot.
You can throw all the orgies and kinky sex you want in there, but it doesn't make your book edgy or profound, and it sure doesn't make you a good writer. Although, bonus hilarity points to Mr. Yeah, whatever Heinlein.
Go tend to your masculine insecurities elsewhere. Ok, moving on. Robin Hobb. Author books I will state, without apology, that I have enjoyed every Robert Heinlein book I have ever read. Do I always agree with his philosophy or his observations on life. But he tells me a story, and while he is telling it, I don't put that book down.
I don't read books to find authors who agree with me or match some political template. I read books for stories. And diversity in story tellers is good. Petra is in Delray Beach having fun,No books. He's right it is. A woman should shroud herself in black, even wear a veil over her eyes and for extra protection she should wear a big size of Doc Martin boots so it could be a man under the shroud Michael Jackson used to do that and always be accompanied when she goes out.
Which should be rarely. Very rarely. When she is in the house most of the time she should have the view through windows obscured and a chain on the door. No man who is not related to her should enter. Not workmen, not the police, not her son's friends from school. No one.
Then she won't be raped. If she doesn't do all of the above, and she she is raped it is obviously her fault. If she does do all of the above and she is raped, then she should examine her conscience and see if there was something else she could have done to protect herself and didn't.
This sounds like Saudi Arabia right? Or Afghanistan or any of those countries. This is because I was reading how there are very few rapes in these countries. It wouldn't have anything to do with the harsher penalties that the courts often apply to the victim rather than the rapist would it? Rape in Saudi Arabia worth reading this in it's short entirety. I suppose if you hold the attitude of it must be her fault '9 times out of 10' her punishment is just and knowing that, she isn't going to complain.
Is this the world Heinlen, a large number of British and Caribbean judges I don't know about American ones so much would like to see? I don't think so, but then they still blame women. Normal men don't rape, they like the woman to enjoy sex too. Rape is a crime of assault and violence. Normal men who like the idea of hard, violent sex like women who enjoy that kink too. Rape is never, ever, ever the response to lust by a normal man.
It would be best if a woman home-schooled her daughters so that they are never exposed to risk but since they will not be going out very much, probably education beyond reading, writing and using a computer is pointless as housework, cooking and childcare will be all she really needs and she can get that from the endless reality shows she will no doubt watch as there isn't anything else much to do.
A lot of men in the world would like to see this, minus the computer use. A lot of men in the world actually enforce this on women. And they still have rape in those countries. The book was brilliant and I read it years before I had my consciousness raised horrible phrase.
Just glanced at it again today and was reading some reviews and this rant just bubbled up, as they do. Average 3 stars. Leonard Gaya. Author 1 book followers. Stranger in a Strange Land could have been titled more straightforwardly Jesus Christ in pre-hippie America.
As time goes on, this small group of fans becomes a cult; the general hoi polloi gets angry at the Man from Mars because of his blasphemous Peace-and-Love doctrine and end up bumping him off; the end.
The novel is a bit surprising, coming from the author of Starship Troopers , where he displayed many militaristic right-wing opinions about society and politics. The structure of the novel, however, is very similar to that of Starship Troopers : most of it is long-winded, mushy conversations, maundering about religion, sexuality, money, art and whatever else, from one chapter to the next, with a few exciting or funny wisecracks here and there.
And I say that their rejection of not only Valentine Michael Smith, but his creator, too, is an act based on social prejudices, and that intellectual and esthetic standards have nothing to do with it.
The great critic H. Mencken confessed as much without shame, saying that he could not appreciate the works of Willa Cather since he simply wasn't interested in people from Nebraska. That isn't criticism. That is snobbery. In the Soviet Union before glasnost the Writers' Union regularly said that some writers weren't really writers, no matter how much and how well they had written, since they were politically incorrect.
In this country the same thing is done to writers like Robert A. Heinlein because they are socially incorrect, because their stories are about places members of the literary establishment do not care to visit and about characters, many of them not even human or humanoid, they simply do not care to befriend.
Truth be told, the establishment, on the same grounds, isn't all that fond of "Candide" or "Gulliver's Travels," either, both of which I should have championed at Tom Maschler's house. I should have at least mentioned "Stranger in a Strange Land" as well, a wonderfully humanizing artifact for those who can enjoy thinking about the place of human beings not at a dinner table but in the universe.
We are approaching the 30th birthday of "Stranger in a Strange Land. Raised by Martians on Mars, he is brought to Earth where he must adapt not only to our social prejudices, but to our strong gravitational field and rich atmosphere.
Some 60, words that were cut from Heinlein 's manuscript for reasons of economy back in are at last taking their rightful place in the body of world literature. There is a preface by the author's widow, Virginia Heinlein , which speaks not at all of the neglect of her husband's work by the establishment.
It tells the history of the uncut manuscript, which, if it weren't for her, might have remained in total darkness forever in a vault in the library of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Is the story much improved by the restored passages?
I leave it to someone else to compare the two versions line by line. The thought-provoking premise is unchanged and could scarcely be enriched. Nor did the consequences of that premise as extrapolated by Heinlein seem to me garbled or anemic or whatever in the abridged edition I read years ago.
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