Which edition of SiaSL did you read? The original published one, or the one which was re-issued about 10 years ago, with all the more controversial parts (which were cut for the first edition) restored?
Never make the mistake of taking the point of view of a character in a work of fiction with that of the author. Just because you don’t like the opinions of Mike, doesn’t mean that you can ascribe to RAH the same views.
But yeah, Stranger doesn’t age well, and Heinlein knew it. Hell, he has a character in a later novel comment on it, saying something to the effect of “the things some authors will do for money.” 
I believe that was Number of the Beast*.
I liked SiaSL, but not as much as any of the Lazarus Long novels or Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls was wonderful, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset remains my favorite.
I can understand how SiaSL would get on your nerves. The blatant sexism got pretty annoying.
I’m sure Fenris can do this better than I, should he show up, but I’ll take a shot at it anyway.
RAH always wanted to break out from the pulps and into the hard covers. Many of his earlier works, even novel length, were originally serielized for Amazing Stories and the like. By going for the juvenile market, he managed to escape part of that prison, but I think the turning point for him as an authour was Starship Troopers, originally written as a juvenile. It stirred up quite a controversy and I think he liked the attention and the money. I think he can, in some bizarre way, be looked upon as a literary version of Howard Stern, way back then.
So he continued, trying to stir up controversy, mixing it with some insightful stuff and some that I have a feeling was only there for trolling. Incest, gay sex, transsexual behaviour, political orating, borderline paedophilia, religious conventions.
And in all of it, it’s never quite clear what his own beliefs are. There’s an outline, which some think convey a libertarian mindset, others lump him together with arch conservatives, and my guess is that he was labeled a dangerous liberal or at least libertine, when SiaSL was published. I have a friend, who’s not very religious, but got royally pissed about the heresy in Job.
If RAH had been around to read this thread, I think he would have been pleased that a book written during the 50’s and published in '61 still can piss people off - which is exactly what he wanted (IMO).
And he managed to get into the hard covers and of the SciFi shelf, with SiaSL. I’ve read somehwere that he’s sold more than 100 million books worldwide. I can’t find a cite, but I think Stranger is quite a chunk of that. Starting a religion or not, it was one (albeit small) part of what made the 60’s what it was.
I like SiaSL. I keep a copy in the glovebox of our car. If I’m ever waiting in the car or I end up somplace where I know there’ll be a line, I just pull out SiaSL. You can open it to any page and start reading and time just zips by.
I put a spare copy in our emergency kit for the same reason. When Armageddon hits and we’re all blasted back to pioneer days, trying to survive, I’ll be the one hogging the outhouse with SiaSL in my hand.
I’m with the OP. I read it about 15 years ago. At the time I was a voracious reader getting through most books in just a few days or less. I was especially interested in the sci-fi/fantasy genre so decided I must read this classic. It really annoyed me (probably at the same point everyone else had problems with it) but I refused to give up. It took me two weeks but I finished it. I was very disappointed. I guess I just didn’t grok it. I think it lost me about the time everyone started taking off their clothes all the time and having sex with each other.
So, I decided that it may have been a fluke and I’d give Heinlein another try. I read The Number of the Beast. At some point everyone starts taking their clothes off and having sex with everyone else. It was totally out of place. So at this point I am thinkwhat the hell? Was this guy just a horny old goat or what?
I also read a third book which was so unforgettable I can’t even remember the name or if people take off their clothes and have sex in it.
A Heinlein fan I know tells me I picked the absolute two worst books to start with and to give him another try but so far I haven’t felt that adventurous.
Friday?
Now, this is just hearsay, and I can’t remember who I heard say it, so take it accordingly: it may have been in an interview with Heinlein, but I remember him saying he had a bet on with L. Ron Hubbard about how gullible people were when it came to religion. The result of that bet was allegedly Dianetics.
In an interview I recall with much more clarity, but no more-verifiable cite, Heinlein is said to have snickered over the idea that a religion had been founded upon Stranger in a Strange Land. He said, “Talk about missing the point!”
Anyhow. I thought it was a fun book.
Hearsay.
There are a thousand stories in the field about writers making a bet/suggesting it in fun/supplying an article etc. etc. to Hubbard about religion. I knew a fan who was part of that crowd in the 40s who insisted that he was the one who inspired it, and he backed it up with some very convincing anecdotes. 
The odds against it being Heinlein are astronomical.
Fair enough. Mostly, what got me was the sex. Mind you, I was in high school when I started it… And there was still too much sex for me. The religious angles also started getting very old, very quickly. I just can’t relate to Heinlein setting up a wacko church in one of his books, then having his characters point out that it’s wacko. Well, yeah, of course. And when he then starts arguing that hey, that’s not so wacko after all, well, that’s a bit much.
Tiramisu, your friend was correct. I will recommend that a person give Stranger in a Strange Land a try after they’ve read a few other Heinleins. But I will not ever recommend that anyone try Number of the Beast.
Stranger is not my favorite Heinlein novel, it’s about in the middle for the book overall.
But the conversation between Jubal Harshaw and Ben Caxton, in which Jubal is teaching Ben about how to look at art, is up there as one of my favorite individual scenes in literature. His commentary on the work of Rodin “La Belle Heaulmiere”, about women and aging, and what a good artist can do, is perfect. And I can get tears in my eyes when Jubal uses Rodin’s fallen caryatid statue as the catylyst for his ideas on the nature of courage.
Part of it here:
“Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up, Ben: she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She’s a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more paycheck. She’s a twelve year old trying to mother her brothers and sister, because Mama had to go to Heaven. She’s a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She’s all the unsung heros who couldn’t make it but never quit.”
!!! I distinctly do not remember those bits! (But I’ve never read the expanded version.) And I did read in Heinlein’s collection of essays, Expanded Universe, that he was raised an old-fashioned Bible-Belt Christian and then rejected that whole worldview as a teenager after he got hold of a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Then again, even a scientifically sophisticated writer could “reject evolution” as a plot device – as Heinlein did, in Job: A Comedy of Justice. But that was humor.
I’ve read it twice. It didn’t so much make me mad, as confused. I swear, it’s as if two different people wrote the book. One author for the first 2/3s of the book and a completely different, perhaps drunken and sloppy author for the last 1/3.
I haven’t read it since my 30s, so I can’t recall any specifics, but that was my main thought when reading it at the time. I’m not sure if that was just my personal opinion, or if it was intentional or not.
But IIRC, I liked the first part, and didn’t really like the rest at all. I should probably try reading it again. Maybe I could figure out why it “bugged” me.
Well, the book was written in two parts, and at totally different times. But, as RAH himself observed, no-one has ever correctly identified where the break is.
One problem with this is that a huge number of authors use their characters as a vehicle for expressing their views. It would be silly to automatically assume that just because a character is saying it, the author doesn’t agree.
To determine this you need to look at context. I think it’s fairly clear from context (see Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 303, Ace edition 1987) that the passages related to homosexuality have little to do with the surrounding material in the story and were inserted by the author for purposes irrelevant to the advancement of the characters in the tale, and therefore likely represent the author’s own views. In the same way, the Ben Caxton character is often used as a foil for the Jubal Harshaw character’s ‘wiser’ views and that Harshaw’s views are more likely representative of those the author agrees with.
Sure, Heinlein probably didn’t agree with everything his characters said, that would be silly. As BrainGlutton has pointed out, Heinlein probably believed in evolution, while his Harshaw character does not. But if you look at the statements in context, many of them are probably representative of the author.
Even if you leave out that he sometimes uses the book as a soapbox, that still doesn’t address the use of cheap sex to sell the book, Mike’s repugnant and simplistic characterization, lack of realistic conflict, and poor reasoning.
I do want to especially thank Baker for pointing out a really good part of the book overshadowed by my distaste.
It is just as silly to assume that the author does agree. Do you think Tom Clancy supports a jihad against America. Well by your reasoning he must, because several important characters in several of his books expouse just that! Besides, the lead characters in RAH’s novels often have diametrically opposing views. So which one is Heinlein’s? The lead character in Glory Road supports an abosolute monarchy. The lead character in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress * leads a rebellion* against** Authority. Which does Heinlein support? He has written, over the years, in apparent support of monarchy, democracy, republicanism, anarchy, bureaucracy, total individual autonomy, and about 80 other systems of “government.” Which one does Heinlein truly believe in?
So you see…you can’t lay the opinions of Heinlein’s characters at Heinlein’s feet. They are what they are, and RAH was what he was. To confuse the two is…unfortunate.
I assume this was directed at me?
I’ve read them both, although separted by several years and neither of them recently.
I’ve read exactly three Robert Heinlein books:
[ol]
[li]The original, uncut edition of Stranger In a Strange Land[/li][li]Starship Troopers[/li][li]Job: A Comedy Of Justice[/li][/ol]
From what I understand, based on what I’ve read about Heinlein, only Starship Troopers should be considered “representative” of his work. It seems his later stuff (like Job) is considered to be kind of a separate oeuvre, and Stranger is considered to be way “out there” on its own.
Nevertheless, after having read the above 3 books, I don’t think I’ll read any more Heinlein. What bugs me about him is the preachiness. I see that several posters in this thread have argued that Heinlein’s characters are not representative of his views. I don’t think that’s valid, because it’s so BLEEDING OBVIOUS which characters Heinlein considers the wise and correct ones. He couldn’t possibly put them on any more of a pedestal.
Look, I’m a conservative Christian, so naturally the “points” of Stranger and Job pissed me off. But it’s not just the views Heinlein espoused that bother me, it’s his method of getting them across. Each one of the 3 books I read featured one or several wise, older, sarcastic, cynical men to whom were devoted pages and pages of speeches expounding their political/cultural views. Jubal Harshaw in Stranger, Colonel DuBois and Sergeant Zim in Starship Troopers, and Satan/Jerry in Job. I got so sick of listening to these guys rant. And each book also featured naive, young characters deliberately placed so as to have their innocence shattered as the Dirty Old Men lectured them on why various societal taboos were invalid and foolish. I’ve read that another famous Heinlein character, Lazarus Long, is basically the same as Jubal Harshaw, at least in regards to a propensity for lounging around Hugh Hefner-style, surrounded by beautiful women, and “shocking” innocent characters by telling them that sex isn’t dirty after all.
I often wondered, why did Heinlein write novels at all? I once read a book on writing by Dean Koontz, who said that you should never let your “point” get in the way of the story: “if your goal, above all else, is to communicate a message,” he wrote, “then you are an essayist, not a novelist.” I certainly felt Heinlein’s main goal was to spread his message, as the plots of the novels I read weren’t very enthralling. It was almost as if they existed only as a framework for Heinlein to place his lectures in. Given this, my current view of Heinlein novels is “if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.”
Honestly, I know I’ll piss a lot of people off by saying this, but I don’t understand why Heinlein was considered such a great author. Most people will agree that a great writer “shows” rather than “tells,” yet Heinlein “told” almost exclusively and didn’t seem to get called on it. I’ve read other authors, like Asimov, who most definitely had “points” to make but were much more subtle about it.
I also found his dialogue to be particularly grating; I have never met anyone who talks anything remotely like a Heinlein character. Two frequently used devices that bugged me were the incessant "Eh?"s and the use of “So?” to mean not “so what?” but “is that so?” That kind of thing, plus the ridiculously unrealistic banter, made the author’s personality so dominant over the story that it was just completely unenjoyable to read. I felt like I could almost look at the page and see not the words that were actually printed there, but “I’m Robert Heinlein! I’m Robert Heinlein!” over and over again.
Please, those of you who have given up on Heinlein, go read any one of these books:
Double Star
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Citizen of the Galaxy
The Door into Summer
The Star Beast
Have Space Suit - Will Travel
Starman Jones
Revolt in 2100 (two novellas set in the same universe)
Time for the Stars
Between Planets
Tunnel in the Sky
*
All of them are excellent books. It’s sad when I see so many people finally decide to give Heinlein a try, then start with his absolute worst books. Heinlein is by far my favorite author, and I could barely get through some of his later books.
Stranger in a Strange Land is a different beast, and I think misunderstood by some of you who hate it. The whole book is satire of the Swiftian kind. Mostly at the expense of religion.
I’m truly amazed at the choices people make, apparently at random, to read Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land, Job, and especially the awful Number of the Beast are rotten choices to get a feel for Heinlein – even if Stranger is probably his biggest seller.
It’s been said before, but you really should look at one of his earlier works if you want to see why people get excited about his work. BNot necessarily his “juveniles” (although they are great, and better than 95% of his works for adults), but also books like The Puppet Masters (for God’s sake, don’t judge this one by the movie), Double Star, or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. All of these are still in print, IIRC, so they’re not that hard to get.
Even several of his “later” books are pretty great – Expanded Universe, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (for the most part). I wasn’t personally that thrilled with friday, and I’d leave stuff like To Sail Beyond the Sunset until I’d read his other stuff. I also wouldn’t read his first novel, just released – Us, the Living. It’s preachy, in spades.
Heinlein was a helluva good writer, who could spin a good story, had his science straight (but could use it and even explain it without sounding pedantic), could write wonderful dialogue. His characterization does seem limited, and some of his stuff seems embarassing in recent years (but didn’t at the time). I don’t mind a lot of his preaching, to tell the truth, and it’s clear that his characters don’t enunciate unadulterated Heinlein – there are too many contradictory viewpooints. He loved to play with alternate systems of government, reminding us that ours is not the obvious true Grail. I suspect that the one he proposes in Starship Troopers is the kind he’d prefer, but I don’t have anything concrete to base that on.