Stranger in a Strange Land (Remembering Tomorrow)

Discussion in 'Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books' started by Paul Bellow, May 20, 2017.

  1. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Valentine Michael Smith is a man raised by Martians. Sent to Earth, he must learn what it is to be human. But his beliefs and his powers far exceed the limits of man, and his arrival leads to a transformation that will alter Earth’s inhabitants forever...

    I wonder how different this would read now that I'm older.

    Do you think it helped spur the 60s era in some ways?

    B000TO0TDK.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
     
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  2. Scargro

    Scargro Level 5 (Veteran) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    This book was one of the most influential books of my early teens.
     
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  3. Crowbaits

    Crowbaits Level 9 (Burgler) Roleplaying Beta Reader Citizen

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    That and "Time enough for Love"
     
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  4. Seagrim

    Seagrim Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    I never read that one. For me, it was, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
     
  5. MrPotatoMan

    MrPotatoMan Level 13 (Assassin) Citizen

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    I read a book that was supposedly like it called the wold walker series confusingly there are two series called this the second is called the unmakeing engine. but ive never reaad this one
     
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  6. Matthew James

    Matthew James Blind Beholder Beta Reader Citizen

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    I'm always on the fence about how much of an impact the writing itself has, and how much of the culture surrounding the novel allows it to have. Friday and Glory Road (I had to look GR's title up) had all sorts of shit in them that I still think back on and ask, "Was that really necessary?" Heinlein's free love stuff takes all the bad parts of Brave New World and the emasculation of "Betas" and gussies it up for 2/3rds of a book and then shits on the free love most of the time. You get the sense that his preference was sexual liberation, but he tacked on moral endings and results to keep the prudes coming back to flirt with the topics that were taboo.

    Except he never struck that balance very well (in my opinion) and always ended up with these muddled but very human stories. So some people walked away nodding their heads and saying, "That was Brave New World 2.0", while others came away cursing the petty jealousies of man that prevent them from going to orgies as less than physically blest specimens. How he handled rape in Friday pisses me off to this day, and I'm no SJW. But some people feel about Robert Jordan's battle of sexes stuff the way I feel about a lot of Heinlein's writing, and so another of Heinlein's great gifts from Stranger in a Strange Land, god damn moral relativism, rears its head.

    I think that concept has done more damage than people realize, because now people go around saying, "What white culture? / What American/Canadian culture?" whereas before culture and mores and morals could be assigned logically to a society and its development, because duh you can observe it in action. Not until communism and the maximally "free" moral relativisits from sci-fi and other intellectual corners did people become willingly blind to what was clearly culture but not particularly interesting or exotic... as per their position within the culture.

    Right now we are in this anti-culture window where observing cultural peccadilloes is considered harmful when its described as culture. Because people have internalized popular mores to the point where their behavior is supposedly a categorical good rather than relatively profitable to their personal continuing success and happiness. Pointing out this bias amongst Christains and Progressives, or Alt-Rightists and Far Leftists, gets you dumped on.

    Understanding why something is done, and considering whether or not its good or likely to last, is one message that writers like Heinlein never really laid out because part of good story telling is showing and not telling.

    The entire process of revelation requires letting people form their own opinions, and unfortunately I think we have too many entertainers today relative to informers, and both groups are trying to have a lasting impact on culture. One group is all hooks and no substance, the other is all substance with no hook.

    That said Douglas Adams had most of the same "sins" but gets a pass from me because his stuff was fun. Fun usually needing much less of a setup and not dragging on past a perfectly good ending point like a Dan Brown novel.
     
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