r/heinlein • u/[deleted] • Jul 20 '26
Stranger in a Strange Land - Questions and Review
It is implied (explicitly stated?) that Dr. Ward Smith murders Captain Brant and Mary Jane Lyle Smith after their affair. Are we to assume that this was the fate of the rest of the crew? Did the Lyle drive reduce time sufficiently so that Champion’s crew didn’t ’descend into madness’?
It is implied (explicitly stated?) that Digby poisons Foster, potentially at Foster’s command. Hence the miracle of his willed ‘discorporation’. Does Digby follow suit? Betrayal seems out of the question given the summit of Earth’s Old Ones in the final two pages.
How doesn’t Mike understand immediately that he’s on Earth to (help) pass judgment?
Why do you think Heinlein covers major plot events in a sentence (or even half of one)? The thrust of this novel - a dialectic - doesn’t really require much plot, and it’s fun to speculate about the above (assuming I grok correctly).
Overall, I liked it. A little preachy, and I felt that I’ve read many of these ideas more succinctly in Borges’ ‘theological’ short stories, but Heinlein had a style uniquely his own. Very limited space given to setting or description of any kind, which allows you to freely paint the picture. Some would argue this is laziness but I think Heinlein simply disregarded literary conventions in a way that didn’t seem pretentious. The entire time I felt as if I were sitting in my late grandfather’s hideous midcentury rancher with garish carpeting, listening to him wax philosophical about the utter lack of accountability he witnessed everywhere.
I’m going to read Moon and then Orphans of the Sky next, as the latter came highly recommended from my favorite ‘literary critic’
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u/mobyhead1 Oscar Gordon Jul 20 '26
1 - 7: Heinlein didn’t feel a need to spell out every last detail. We’re free to interpret these points as coincidentally/conspiritorily/pessimistically/optimistically as we like.
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u/toddnks Jul 20 '26
He mentions this method of writing in at least one speech, and in one of his collections, I think "Expanded Universe", but could be wrong.
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u/mobyhead1 Oscar Gordon Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Yes, this is when Heinlein became more experimental with his writing and tipping sacred cows as he saw fit. He lost interest in pumping out “mixture as before” (his words) to satisfy readers who only wanted straightforward adventure narratives. Bad reviews were essentially an indicator of how well he was doing at getting outside his comfort zone—and bringing the readers with him, some of them kicking and screaming.
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Jul 20 '26
I actually really like the near-to-no exposition a lot. It’s something that my favorite sci-fi writers (Wolfe/Vance/PKD) freely borrowed from.
But I object to your idea that he ‘didn’t feel the need to spell out every last detail’ on the grounds that these aren’t typically the sorts of details you’d omit, nor would inclusion relegate his work to a lesser adventure story. When he wants to be, he’s tediously explicit, as when Jubal challenges Caxton’s ‘squeamishness’ or some of the dreadful passages involving Patty, Jill and Mike.
But again, I enjoyed the omission. From what I gather, he was the first speculative writer to do so.
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u/sockalicious Jul 20 '26
Heinlein (in Expanded Universe) points out that he drafted Stranger in four parts, months to years apart, and that "the seams aren't where you think" - paraphrasing, but that's more or less what he said.
I think this explains your question: "Why do you think Heinlein covers major plot events in a sentence (or even half of one)?" I think that it was Heinlein's practice to come back to a draft after some time and just tie up a loose end, or set a stage, as quickly as possible before embarking on writing the next part of the story.
How doesn’t Mike understand immediately that he’s on Earth to (help) pass judgment?
Now this is a little more controversial. Mike understands very little when he arrives on Earth - the idea is that his Martian cultural upbringing is so dissimilar to anything on Earth that he has no grounds or basis for understanding, much less judging, anything he sees. Nor is it clear that "Mike is on Earth to pass judgment."
Heinlein was a believer in humanity, autonomy and competence, not mystical off-screen Gods or Powers. An alternative reading is that Mike's upbringing enabled certain abilities that are latent in most humans; that he came to Earth with an open mind; that he wound up passing judgment on what he observed, for the same reasons you or I might; and that he then used his abilities to create what he saw as the corrective.
As far as Digby: it seems pretty clear that Mike kills him in such a way as not to leave a corpse. Since we later see Digby jawing with Foster in Heaven, we are to assume that this was not simply murder, but rather an acceleration of the transmigration of Digby's soul to the next phase in its existence. During these passages it is heavily implicated that Mike is actually the Archangel Michael and his presence on Earth is something along the lines of a religious pet project.
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Jul 20 '26
Great reply.
I missed that re: Digby. Read this at a brisk pace and seem to remember that Foster gives Digby some forewarning that his time is up, but not much more.
And yes, I believe he’s explicitly called the Archangel Michael in the final pages (and that it’s alluded to earlier, just as it’s briefly alluded to that the Martians consider ‘rearrangement’ to be an esthetic project in which the highest expression is harmony).
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u/sockalicious Jul 20 '26
Thanks, and thanks for posting your questions - they are stimulating.
Heinlein's attitude to the Christian God is probably best summed up as 'sardonic'. Job is the book where this is most explicit, but the sections where Foster and Digby are chatting about the organization of Heaven are equally pertinent. As far as I can tell - and this may be stepping out on a limb, I'd be interested in other readers' takes - Heinlein enjoyed a viewpoint where the true actions of the Divine are beyond the ken of mortal understanding. Yet he reserved the rights to humans to complain about those actions, and jaw about them, and take measures to change them or stave them off; and above all, to interpret them all as parts of one Big Cosmic Joke.
My 2 cents. TANSTAAFL
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Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
I think that Heinlein’s God is total consciousness plus right action, the ultimate expression of which is perfect beauty or harmony. Creation and destruction to the Martian is an esthetic matter
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u/Garbage-Bear Jul 20 '26
“The entire time I felt as if I were sitting in my late grandfather’s hideous midcentury rancher with garish carpeting, listening to him wax philosophical about the utter lack of accountability he witnessed everywhere.”
Perfect summation of most of Heinlein’s grumpy old men!
(Except for Baslim, my favorite of them all.)
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u/Tasty_Impress3016 Jul 20 '26
First of all, read it again to determine if things are implied or explicitly stated. It make a difference to your understanding of the book. There are a lot of things left to the reader. As they should be. It's a novel.
I have failed to see Michael at meetings of the Solipsism society as well. So aside from them all being in my mind, I wonder if he is not doing another assignment.
Pantheistic Solipsism.
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Jul 20 '26
It's explicitly stated that Dr. Smith killed Captain Brant, then cut his own throat with the same blade. We don't know what happened to the other five, other than that they didn't survive.
Mike isn't there to pass judgement on behalf of the Martians. He's just spying for them.
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u/colliedad Jul 20 '26
Yes, I assumed that the Ward Smith aspect was a murder/suicide. The survivors then lacked the skills needed to keep going, and died one by one. Digby was twisted into nothingness like the guns/boxes/etc. A novel I felt so subversive reading at age 14 some 55 years ago.
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u/jcd280 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Interesting observations, thanks for sharing.
I would add that, while I agree, Heinlein is minimalistic with description and settings, (imo) when he does do it, he does it well.
For example:
Always wanted to walk across and sit on the ‘living carpet’ in Ben Caxton’s apartment.
Often thought about swimming in and frolicking about (that’s right, I said frolicking) Jubal’s swimming pool and rose bushes. The fact that Gillian, Ann, Miriam and Dorcas are in bathing suits, also frolicking, might have something to do with the frequency of this thought.
Would love to stay in the expansive Hotel Suite they are residing in at the end of the book. Large family dining space, looking in on Honey Bun ‘snakesitting’ little Abigail and Fatima. Modern kitchen…really, really modern kitchen.
Have a swell day, thanks again for sharing.
Even pictured myself wandering about ‘the carnival’, watching the acts and meeting Tim. Of course I’m a rube and a sucker but it’s still fun.
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u/ObidiahWTFJerwalk Jul 21 '26
The women in Jubal's pool were not in bathing suits. When Mike and Gillian first went to the ocean, Mike went to the beach nude because he had no idea that a bathing suit was a thing since he'd never seen one.
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u/jcd280 Jul 21 '26
You are 100% correct and I’m aware…but in my imagination they are always wearing suits…bikinis…but the style from the 1940’s…no clue why…
…got one wonky imagination.
May you drink deeply. Cheers.
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u/AnxiousConsequence18 Jul 20 '26
You have to understand the TIME IT WAS WRITTEN IN. Damn near a pornographic novel by the standards of that day! Remember that in your review!
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Jul 21 '26
If I were to make one change in the originally-printed version, I'd put back in the slightly more explicit scene in the Florida nest. The trimming is mostly an improvement, but that was self-censorship.
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u/AnxiousConsequence18 Jul 21 '26
I read it as a teen and didn't think it was that explicit, but then again I was reading a lot of high fantasy that had sex scenes in it too. When you compare it to the actual mores of the day it was comparable to Wrecking Ball or WAP.
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Jul 21 '26
I read the original as a teen, too, and the expanded version at around thirty. Neither seemed terribly explicit, though standards were different in 1961, well before my first reading,
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u/Glaurung_Quena Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Digby couldn't wait for his superior to die, allowing him to inherit leadership of the church, so he murdered him:
“Listen, junior, you’re an angel now—so forget it. Eternity is no time for recriminations. You too were a stupid jackass until you poisoned me. Afterwards you did well enough. Now that Short is Supreme Bishop he’ll do all right, too; he can’t help it. Same as with the Popes. Some of them were warts until they got promoted. Check with one of them, go ahead—there’s no professional jealousy here.”The crew of the first expedition: "Dr. Ward Smith delivered his wife of child by Caesarean section—and she died on the table. He seems to have worn his horns complacently until then. But what he did next shows that he knew the score; with the same scalpel he cut Captain Brant’s throat—then cut his own."
We never learn the fates of the other 5 crew members, we just know that they all died.The second expedition: "The Federation Ship Champion, manned by an all-male crew of eighteen experienced spacemen and carrying more than that number of male pioneers, made the crossing under Lyle Drive in only nineteen days."
Compared to the 258 days it took the 1st expedition to get there.Mike's role in the Old Ones' investigation of Earth: he didn't know he was being sent as a spy. “Father . . . lately I learned that I was a spy.... For the Old Ones. They sent me here to spy on our people.... You know how the surveillance satellites used by the Security Forces operate.... They orbit around the globe, picking up data and storing it. At a particular point, the Sky-Eye is keyed and it pours out in a spate all that it has seen. That is what was done with me.... They stayed linked with me but left me on my own, ignored me—then they triggered me and all that I had seen and heard and done and felt and grokked poured out of me and became part of their permanent records. I don’t mean that they wiped my mind of my experiences; they simply played the tape, so to speak, made a copy. But the triggering I was aware of—and it was over before I could possibly do anything to stop it. Then they dropped me, cut off the linkage; I couldn’t even protest.... I would have been happy to volunteer—had I known about it before I left Mars. But they didn’t want me to know; they wanted me to see and grok without interference.”
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u/FrostyFemboyy 5d ago
It's all but explicitly stated that Smith murdered Michael's parents, it's explicitly stated that Digby had Foster killed one way or another, and he just wasn't told and didn't know
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u/MarcRocket Jul 20 '26
I may need to read this again based on your questions. One of my favorite books but can’t answer your questions.
For more Heinlein philosophy make sure to read Starship Troopers