Keith's Reviews > Stranger in a Strange Land

Well, I don't quite know what the hell that was. I'd gotten it into my head at some point that you weren't anything until you got reading this out of the way, but it was probably one of the most odious reading experiences I've had in my adult life -- especially for a book I volunteered to read. One bonus star for the last five pages or so being not-quite-as-totally-awful as the rest of it, and that's about it. And I feel dumb writing a bunch of obvious shit for the five people in the world besides me who haven't read this yet.

But for those five people, I can tell you what I've learned:

1) If you have a choice between reading the version of a book that got everyone excited about it, or the unabridged version published decades later because it was the author's "preferred" version, LORD GOD READ THE SHORTER ONE. Do not make the mistake I made. "Unabridged" does not mean "cooler." It means "longer." It means "unedited, sloppy, and even questionable." But mostly it means "longer."

2) Anyone who says they're able to "look over" the unrelenting misogyny of this book is, like, freaking insane. The misogyny. is. Unrelenting. It is so completely unrelenting that I kept wondering if the whole thing was a put-on. Like, huge swaths of text about how Martian idealism will negate Earthly material needs are interrupted just to mention that even with said idealism, women will never want to stop shopping. I mean, are you kidding me? That can't be anything but trolling, right? Like, I have read books written in the past before, dudes. The delivery date on this book is no excuse for the fact that the women in this book -- I mean, I don't know how to describe it. It's crazy. It'e like they're supposed to be a different species or something. Either Heinlein is pulling the reader's leg, or he's a gender-specific sociopath.

3) This is not really a separate point, but since there's like 100 pages (at least) devoted specifically to the beauty of orgies, up to and including lady-orgies, I'm shocked at the lengths Heinlein goes to in order to emphasize that none of the male characters are gay, or would ever consider being gay. Again, it's a dated book, or whatever? But the introduction clearly states how Heinlein was trying to break every taboo he could think of, up to and including cannibalism.

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."

HELL'S YEAH BRO! ALL YOU BRO!

4) Jubal Harshaw. 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?" Like the idea that you have one character that sort of has a personality makes up for all the other characters having less than none. Let me frame it for you this way -- at the beginning of the book, Jubal Harshaw is a hack writer living in self-imposed exile surrounded by women who are basically all secretaries / mothers / daughters / girlfriends to him. 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 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 middle-aged fiction writer when he wrote this. SO IT'S NOT EVEN YOUR WISH-FULFILLMENT. IT'S HEINLEIN'S. AND THAT DUDE'S FREAKING DEAD.

4)We need to talk about the Martian sex cult. 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 100 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, 100 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.

5) In reviewing this, I'm going through it in my mind and heart again, and you know? 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.