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Stranger in a Strange Land

I finished Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land today, as part of my “Jason Needs to Read More Classic Sci-Fi if He’s Going to Have Nerd Friends” initiative.

I’ve never read Dune, or Neuromancer, or Snow Crash, or any Asimov, or almost any Philip K. Dick, and I read Ender’s Game for the first time about a year ago. If you’d like to recommend me sci-fi books to read, please do.

Let me diverge for a moment. I never cease to be amazed at the breadth of things I haven’t read. I read very slowly, and have almost never in my life read just for the fun of it. The latter may be caused by the former. That’s not to say that I don’t find reading to be fun, just that in most cases I find more readily fun things to do than read.

But since I’ve recently moved to a place that, for the first time since moving to New York, comes with a subway commute to work, I now find myself with plenty of time in which there’s nothing better to do than read.

So I read Stranger in a Strange Land, and I liked it, for the most part. There were things I didn’t like.

Like when I read something, I like to know where it’s heading. As in, within the first third of a book, I like to know what the point of the book is, what the conflict is and what I’m reading to find out.

If it’s a murder mystery, am I trying to figure out who killed the butler?

If it’s a war novel, am I reading to see if the courageous Yanks will defeat those nefarious Krauts?

If it’s a novel about high society, am I supposed to learn how to tie a cravat?

Stranger in a Strange Land didn’t get to the point of the book until the last third or so. The book cover made it look like it was going to be about a Martian named Smith. Then it looked like it was going to be a mystery about the kidnapping of Ben Caxton.

Then Jill got to Jubal’s house and nobody really cared what happened to Ben. Then it looked like it was going to be about making sure the Martian didn’t get screwed over by the evil nasty government. Then the government was pretty okay after all, and everyone was happy with it.

Then it became a Martian-out-of-water tale about religion and questioning social norms.

Which I’m fine with — I liked the final point of the story. I just didn’t get why we had to go into so much detail about Ben when he didn’t play a big part at all for the rest of the story. Or why we were led to care about General Secretary Douglas at all when he wasn’t mentioned but once after he was disposed of.

The book was long, and I’m a slow reader, with precious little time to read. Please, let’s just get to the point already. (I’m sure you’re saying the same thing about this post…)

It also got pretty preachy sometimes, which might be true of a lot of science fiction. I understand that the goal of science fiction is to magnify our current culture’s shortcomings and either explain how things will reform and get better, or decay even more. I agreed with most of what the book was saying. But that doesn’t make it any less preachy.

Preachiness is more about how it’s framed within the novel, how the point is explained and stated. When a character’s dialogue goes on uninterrupted for three or more pages, it’s preachy. The author might as well just remove all the quotation marks and print it as a pamphlet.

Make it a conversation, break it up with some action, be a novelist. I really hate when I feel like I’m reading someone’s prepared speech, even more than I hate listening to someone’s prepared speech.

Those were pretty much my only qualms with it though, just Heinlein’s writing style I guess. Otherwise it was really good.

I promise I liked it.