Heinlein; was Captain Bob really a fascist (Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Date:	08/03/01 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; audacious, but at right angles to reality; C

Disadvantages: Characterisation; character psychology is vapid make- believe, no serious message can be grounded in this; D+

Supposedly his magnum opus- I'm sorry, every time I think of that I think of Berke Breathed's Bloom County cartoon strip- offers an interesting light on everyone's key question about Heinlein; was Captain Bob really a fascist?

Maybe not, but if this is anything to go on at all, Norman Mailer's Long-Lost Brother was one good act of spin control away. Opinion is divided about Heinlein; the older science fiction writers and their fans, who hail him as a near deity, and many of the more raw, fresh, close-to-the-bone crowd who view him as a dangerous lunatic.

From Higher grade history, you should recall the eight point checklist originally devised by I think Hugh Trevor-Roper, the instant guide on how to spot a fascist; satisfyingly Moorcockian, also. If you can, you're doing better than I. Make no mistake, Roper was a great historian, and not as formulaic as I have inadvertently made him sound. Actually, I can only remember six of them; lack of faith in the judgement of the people, great use of propaganda, compromises with the existing establishment, belief in a "firm hand', search for an external enemy, search for an internal scapegoat, to which I can personally add lack of all artistic taste and extreme intellectual banality in person. While Heinlein was not guilty on the last, probably, and to a large extent actually was the science- fiction establishment or at least a pillar of it, the rest either in person or by character in proxy...

Stranger In A Strange Land is supposed to be biting satire about modern- at any rate near future- America. An aside on definition; the near future is whatever period the characters retain approximately present- day attitudes and motivations and are trying to come to terms with the future, the future is once they have done so and are faced with a merely operational problem, the far future is once they have very little if anything left in common with us. Valentine Michael Smith,
the hero- earth boy brought up on Mars- is from the psychological far future. (So what does this have to do with us?) He actually has a very, probably excessively, complicated parenthood.

It simply doesn't feel as sharp as I suspect it was intended to. There are elements of total utopianism in the society he is supposed to be satirising- the Witnesses, observing officers of the court, who are incorruptible; maybe you'd need a hard core of virtue around which to build a working autocratic civilisation- but authority corrupts, invariably, and I don't think he noticed. Smith's surrogate father figure, the wise man Jubal Harshaw, has entirely too much of David Khoresh about him. He's too knowledgeable, too saturnine, and knows his way around the system far too well; he seems- like Heinlein- a sanctimonious old fraud.

That aside, there are many real- world commentators who do a better job. It's hard to do satire in science fiction, which is at least part escapism; you can of course attempt to point out how we will always take our problems with us- C.S. Lewis does this, which is commenting on the futility of progress, not of the status quo, or you can allegorise, or run in parallel; but then how are you supposed to give the work an internal dynamic of it's own? Something has to go. Here it's the satire. The whole god bit- and Heinlein is no theologian- reads like the worst excesses and idiocies of modern America, part of the problem rather than the solution.

Here's the problem with satire in general; once you've comprehensively insulted the way we do things now, you may be faced with people asking you if you have a viable alternative? This has been a problem for satirists ever since Aristophanes. He had an answer, but damned few people since have. And it wouldn't have worked anyway. Stranger In A Strange Land offers no meaningful alternatives, because like virtually everyone since the dawn of time,
Heinlein misunderstands the human character. (And non- human- Smith is basically a messiah. Another one? What's wrong with the one we already have?) Then again, we all do. There is no complete, experimentally established, thoroughly tested Official Version; we'll have to wait for psychology to mature for that. Give it until 3000CE. The most you can really do, now, is be right as far as you choose to go. He vastly overestimates the choice spirit's ability to hold themselves above the herd without being driven a little mad by isolation, and to avoid being at least partially tarnished anyway.

Anyway, who the hell are these people, and what use do we ordinaries have for them? The vast majority of the herd he's rubbishing are people like you and me. There is good natured satire- like some of Tom Sharpe's backhanded compliments to the English aristocracy- and there is not, the alternatives running the gamut of degrees of understanding of the inner ways of the target and bad temper directed thereto; I do not think Heinlein comes off particularly well, as this is smallminded, mean- spirited stuff. Granted, much of the America he is trying to savage is small minded and mean spirited, but as confirmed an elitist as he should put far more effort into being one of the elite. He makes a lot of good points, but they are aphorisms, and no aphorism carries more weight than it's author. Also none of it is unique. It's a grab- bag of definitely if not definitively conservative reactionary complaints about modern society, all of which has been said by better and more serious people.

It is, in any case, far too long. I have the unabridged edition, and wish I didn't. Satire should be sharper than this. It's so long that I can't help wondering if he was writing a book or a doorstop. An aside; American books often mushroom like this, and writers who actually have that much to say are few and far between. Is this some kind of cons
piracy to give those who no longer read an excuse to keep on not doing so? If this is the alternative, they may not need much encouragement.

Actually, to be absolutely honest, I keep confusing this with Frederick Pohl's The Day The Martians Came in my subconscious mind. Pohl is shooting himself in the foot- how would the civilisation that keeps him and his readers fed, clothed and employed, and supplied with books and writing paper (electricity by now, but not at time of writing), hold itself together if everyone were to behave as his Martians indicate we should?- but they are rather similar in theme and intent. Except Pohl is better, less overblown, much more to the point and compressedly distinctive. There are other, better modern messiahs- this actually reads like the vomit of a literary stomach unable to digest Philip K Dick's Valis- to say nothing of the deadly serious and infinitely more skilled Gore Vidal. In two words; don't bother.

Imagination; audacious, but at right angles to reality; C
Science; I don't think there is any; D
Scene- setting; at least it follows, but follows what?; C
Characterisation; character psychology is vapid make- believe, no serious message can be grounded in this; D+

Overall; vastly overrated, fascist drivel; D

Summary: