Stranger in a Strange Land

To explore Mars, humanity gathered a diverse and accomplished group of people - half men and half women - and sent them off.  Earth lost contact with the explorers before anything was learned of Mars.  25 years later, another ship was sent.  This one discovered a survivor of the first mission.  It was a young man named Michael Valentine Smith, who was born the first crew and raised by Martians.  Yes, there are Martians.   Michael then returned to Earth with the second mission and finds he is bewildered by the actions of humanity.  He is soon adopted by Jubal Harshaw, an all-knowing sage who rambles about how the world is and how it should be.  However, it turns out that Martians are vastly more advanced than humans, such that Michael can perform real magic.  When attacked, a pair of men simply vanished.  Nothing can truly threaten Mike unless he allows it.  As he matures, he discovers women.  You see, there are no sexes on Mars.  He is quite delighted by women.  When he explored religion, he decided it was all wrong and established a religion of his own, the Church of All Worlds.  This did not go over well with existing religions and Mike was soon the target of law enforcement and mobs.  Where will it all lead?

The book is long and mostly plodding.  Jubal will talk your ear off.  He is a lawyer and medical doctor, but earns a living by writing stories.  By the end, it felt like Heinlein had inserted himself into the book in the person of Jubal Harshaw.  For a sci-fi book, there isn't much sci-fi.  Sure, Mike can do telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, astral projection, and various other things, but that's nothing new.  There are flying cars, bounce tubes (new-fangled elevators that seem dangerous), space travel (not that it plays any part in the story after getting Mike to Earth), and what sounds like a 3D television.  Ugh.  You think commercials are bad now, the commercials interrupt the action in the future.  "And now back to the mob violence, sponsored by Space Soap."

Though Mike is the main character, he is mostly off screen.  His actions are described by others to the latest recruit or - most often - Jubal.  His new religion is communal living in a 'nest' where orgies and naked swim parties occur.  Yeah, there is a lot of sex, discussion of sex, sexual mores, and so on.  Learning Martian is key to gaining Mike's powers and he works at breakneck speed to generate a Martian dictionary and train his followers in Martian.

Overall, it was mediocre.  Maybe I didn't grok it.  I have liked most Heinlein books I have read, but stopped reading him after Friday.  The heroine was named Friday and she was an artificial person who, unbeknownst to her, was pregnant.  I don't recall much beyond that.  It was no Starship Troopers, Space Cadet, or Have Spacesuit Will Travel.  But there was a similar vibe between that book and Stranger.

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