RadicalStu Blog

Stranger in a Strange Land

There are some experiences that everyone should have in adolescence.  Things like your first political thoughts, a re-appraisal of your parents’ attitude to religion and, of course, your first experiments with masturbation.  Robert A. Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” covers all of those themes and should also be an integral part of any adolescent’s experience.

I first read it in my late teens and it made a profound impression on me, opening up a world where things could be different from society‘s norm.  It focused many of the questions that were playing on my mind at that time although I came to different conclusions on many issues to the author’s surrogate, Jubal Harshaw.

First published in 1961, it caused a sensation with it’s controversial spin on religion, politics and sexuality.  Despite being a commercially successful author, Heinlein had to shorten the book by 60,000 words before a publisher would take a risk on it.  Forty five years later, a lot has changed in our society but there are still plenty of people who will be shocked by what is Heinlein’s most ambitious work.

The basic story is of a man, Valentine Michael Smith, raised by an alien species, who is returned to Earth.  It follows his adventures as he gets to grips with the complex human society armed with a completely alien world view.  At first he is overwhelmed and very little makes sense to him but as he learns about human society he eventually gets to grips with his own identity and then starts a movement that will have profound effects on humanity. 

I have just re-read it and like many of the things that make a big impression on us in our youth, it seems to have subtly changed when re-read as an adult.  In this case, not all of the changes were subjective.  With the author’s death, his wife, Virginia has authorised the release of the original uncut version.   This has substantially the same plot and it is not immediately obvious that the longer version was significantly better.  However, it still reads very easily and my memory of the shorter version will be fairly hazy after two decades.

It is set in a future that is remarkably like 1960.  The science fiction elements are really there to support the basic premise of a child raised by aliens.  The clash of cultures that this allows is what the book is about.  It allows Heinlein to espouse his opinions and satirise many of the foibles of mid 20th century American culture.  There is much to satirise here but this does tend to date as that society has changed in many ways in the intervening years; much more profoundly in many ways than Heinlein could have imagined. Heinlein produced this book at a time that was ripe for change in American society and the book found itself on the crest of all of the changes that started in the 1960s.

Heinlein had a surrogate in many of his novels; a character who would espouse the author’s opinions; sometimes to great length, and I mostly found this character to be fairly irritating as a youth.  Heinlein was basically a conservative, with intellectual leanings towards libertarianism but was often instinctively reactionary.  In “Stranger in a Strange Land”, Heinlein set out to shock, and some of it still shocks, but often for it’s reactionary content rather than it’s liberalism.  I may have mellowed in my later years, though, as I no longer find his opinions quite so annoying.  I can see that he was a creature of his time and that he was often unable to see beyond his prejudices.

Heinlein was not a great writer or a great story teller; his characters tended to be there for a purpose other than being living characters; and his dialog tended to move between the inane and the pontificating.  Despite all of these failings, “Stranger in a Strange Land” still manages to be a great book and like much of science fiction it is the ideas that are the mainstay.  

Headaches (Cont.)

I've still got a cold with it's associated sinus problems so I've had a low level headache for much of the time.  I have been taking cold remedies reasonably often and these have kept the headaches, more or less, at bay.

My First Harry Potter Experience

I have a sister, Sharon, who stays in Essex.  Despite the obvious Essex girl jokes, and the fact that she has lived there for nearly 15 years now, she is still very Scottish.  For Christmas, she comes home to my parents house.  This Christmas, on the day after Boxing Day, Penny and I went out for lunch with Sharon.  Sharon’s birthday is at the beginning of January, so we planned on buying something for her birthday after lunch and then going to see a film. 

So, we picked her up at my parents and headed into Glasgow.  The nearest car park to where we wanted to go was at the St. Enoch Centre, so we headed for there; along with the rest of the West of Scotland.  When we eventually managed to park, we headed for Princess Square for lunch.  When we got into Princess Square we found ourselves in Crabtree & Evelyn where I spent several years getting hungrier and grumpier.  We did manage to get Sharon’s birthday present, so it was productive at least.

We then had a look around the various eating establishments in Princess Square before settling on Barça.  This is a Tapas Bar and served a wide range of delicious dishes, most of which we had between us, as well as a bottle of Australian Shiraz.  This took up quite a chunk of the afternoon but we eventually dragged ourselves outside to Borders Books.  This took another chunk of time while Penny and Sharon each collected a pile of books.  We then collapsed in the Starbucks to take stock. 

While there, Penny asked what time the car park closed.  The answer of “seven” initiated a whirl of activity; it was already 10 past.  Sharon and I paid for the books while Penny, the only one who hadn’t been partaking of the wine raced back to the car park to get the car.  A sob story about a pregnant sister-in-law enabled her to convince someone to let her in and she collected us outside in plenty of time to head for the cinema.

Now, I had successfully avoided reading any of the Harry Potter books or seeing any of the films and I was quite prepared to keep that up indefinitely.  So, on this day, it was by dint of a bit of an ambush that I ended up watching the latest Potter film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Obviously, there has been a lot of publicity about every new Harry Potter release and I had still managed to avoid them.  My prejudice was that it all sounded a bit like the Enid Blyton boarding school books that I had read during my pre-adolescent read-anything-ever-written period.  They were OK for an eight year old but I had no wish to revisit them.  For many people, the fantasy element would have been an attraction but I am very selective about my fantasy.  The Lord of the Rings is great but I have no time for the many imitators of it.  Harry Potter didn’t sound anything like as interesting as even these; very much a children’s fantasy.

In general, my prejudices seemed to be pretty accurate when I watched the film.  It was well made with lots of fine acting performances, the special effects were very effective and the story hung together well enough.  However, it was clearly a juvenile story, lacking in depth and subtlety.  As such, it was very good but  I won’t be desperate to renew my contact with the series.