Sex, Space, and Salvation
For ECD.
Jubal Harshaw is a grumpy old man who surrounds himself with beautiful
women and an electric fence in an Edenic retreat in the Poconos in
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. This is a good thing,
since he has an uncanny talent for irritating almost anybody, redeemed
by a keen wit and a nose for the sweet spot in a bargain. When there
is blood in the water, Harshaw smells it. The key clue, among quite a
few, that this balding contrarian is a stand in for author Heinlein
himself is that he largely makes his living by spontaneously dictating
short stories. Although his periodic pontifications on the nature and
history of almost anything gives the game away almost as easily.
Harshaw, among other roles, serves as the chorus expounding upon the
themes of sex, freedom, stories, and salvation that comprise the major
themes of the book. The book is technologically uninspired but
conceptually bold; the space motif liberates the author by allowing
him to imagine a radically asexual Apollonian immortal consciousness
from Mars with which to contrast short-lived, sex-crazed humanity.
The criticism of a classic, even in such a typically underrated genre
as science fiction, is not to be undertaken without trepidation. In
this case, Heinlein's magnum opus wears rather better than perhaps his
second best-known book, Starship Troopers, in which hyperactive
soldiers in futuristic body armor combat giant "bugs" for mastery of
the universe after taking control of the earth. Much science fiction,
and Heinlein's work is no exception, is rather glandular, driven by
the kind of testosterone soaked combination of lust and aggression
most typical of young men in late adolescence. The question is
whether there is anything more.
For all his vaunted conservatism in other matters, Heinlein's Stranger
in a Strange land is an unqualified endorsement of free love, at
least, ahem, so long as it takes place between men and women, in fact,
the more women the better. Big busted, round hipped, conventionally
sexy women, mind you, although there is the occasional deviation, such
as the carnival woman who is tattooed with religious imagery from head
to toe. She becomes one of the central female figures in the book, a
kind of sideshow earth mother who heads up the cult of Mars.
And why not, after all, since the carnival is also one of the central
themes of the book? Not the Mardi Gras, but the fairground sideshow.
The book is clear that it regards all organized religion as variations
on the sideshow, scams run for suckers. The twist is that the book's
hero, Michael Valentine Smith, may be expropriating religion's carny
methods to lead mankind to a higher truth. Smith, abandoned on Mars
as a baby and reared by Martians, possesses uncanny telekinetic
powers, bodily self control, and mental discipline beyond the wildest
aspirations of an Eastern mystic. In addition, the Martian culture he
comes from is one in which communitarianism is so advanced, indeed so
intrinsic, that notions of money and property do not exist and radical
self-sacrifice is as normal as self-preservation in our society. On
the parched surface of Mars, interdependence and intimacy is
symbolized through the sharing of water; offering a stranger a drink
makes him (or her) a lifelong blood-brother, or rather, water brother.
But the root of the power of the Man from Mars lies in a total
comprehension and mental assimilation of ideas and matter under the
rubric of "grokking". "Grok," which at least among the readers of
science fiction has passed into the common vocabulary, signifies
variously completely understanding an idea, experiencing a feeling,
assimilating an object. When the Man from Mars reads an
encyclopedia as part of his early education, he "groks" it by
simultaneously memorizing, understanding, and expounding upon it
within days. He "groks" objects so thoroughly that he can either move
or disintegrate them at will, thus making him an unusually difficult
target for those who wish him ill, to no avail since he is also able
to "grok" their intentions while they are well out of range.
In the end, it is no wonder that Stranger in a Strange Land became a
kind of "Hippie Bible" (See Wikipedia) when it came out in the
sixties: organized religion is revealed as a con game; free love is
the order of the day; property is a primitive evil; self-discipline
and self-sacrifice are the paramount values. For all its tang of
adolescent sexuality, Stranger in a Strange Land leaves one with the
sense that humans need to be more loving, giving, and tolerant toward
one another, because no one else is going to do it for us. In the
end, there are worse words to live by than Jubal Harshaw's favorite
toast, "To our noble selves, damned few of us left."
