by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 26, 2009

"Stranger in a Strange Land" starts with a fascinating premise. A party of astronauts crashes on Mars, but the astronauts are all killed except for an infant son traveling with them. The infant is raised by Martians for 20 years, but then returned to earth. And the entirety of the book chronicles his experience with earth - and earth's experience with him.

Because of this, the title is especially appropriate - but it's actually taken from the Bible's book of Exodus. (Naming his child, Moses remembers that "I have been a stranger in a strange land.") And the religious overtones aren't accidental. By the time the book ends, the Martian native has launched his own mass spiritual movement, which challenges the religions of the world. The book moves from straight science fiction into overt philosophy - and the working title of the book made this even more explicit. While he was writing the book, Robert A. Heinlein had used as its working title: "The Heretic."

Valentine Michael Smith isn't only a Martian. He's also the heir to the vast fortune of his astronaut parents. And due to a fluke of international law, he's also earned hugely valuable commercial rights for the entire planet of Mars. But finally, he's a celebrity, attracting vast attention from a curious world - and virtually all of its reporters. Staying at a heavily-guarded hospital, all the pressure apparently sends him into a strange trance. If this is his first experience of earth, the earthling's aren't making a good impression.

Heinlein writes a funny scene in which the media is diverted by a fake decoy Martian, who's sent to appear on television (relieving some of the pressure on the real Martian). But Heinlein's story gets even more subversive, as he delves into questions about earth's customs around sex. The Martian soon encounters an eccentric millionaire writer named Jubal Henshaw. He serves as an intermediary between the Martian and the government forces who are trying to seize him. And soon the Martian has escaped from the constant public scrutiny, and is viewing humankind from a traveling carnival - where he performs as a magician!

Jubal Henshaw would reappear in two other Heinlein novels - "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" and "To Sail Beyond Sunset" - so it's easy to wonder if he's a stand-in for Heinlein himself. Throughout the book he dispenses bits of philosophy and his own raucous insights about earth's culture. The book was written 50 years ago, but in some ways that makes it even more interesting. It came out just a few years before the cultural revolution of the 1960s - and seems to hint at some of the radical changes that were yet to come.

Did it influence a generation of impressionable readers? (The book was published in 1961, it was an immediate hit, winning the prestigious Hugo award for best science fiction novel of the year.) Seven years later a man applied for a patent on the waterbed, and was denied because Robert Heinlein had already described one in "Stranger in a Strange Land." It's just one of the many ways the book is ahead of its time in predicting a future which had yet to arrive.

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