Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and its Influence on the Counterculture
of the 60's and early 70's
Stranger in a Strange Land is known as a “bible” for the Hippies. This paper analyzes the elements in the writing
that gave the book such a status and the possibility of mutual influence.
In starting the research, it very soon became visible that there is something that evokes a similar response from
researchers, critics and reviewers. If the book was read, it resulted in an opinionated response of the reader.
Elisabeth Hull probably sums it up best when she says "Those of us academics who read Heinlein are likely to admit
it with an apology, acknowledging that we realize his literary merit is probably small and our weakness in enjoying
his work a minor character defect. We feel we should not relish his opinionated expressions." Fred Lerner describes
how his deepened reading of Science Fiction and literary criticism caused for him "to lose some of my regard for
Heinlein.”
These are just two examples of the emotional type of opinion that Heinlein elicits. There seems to be a very specific
quality in his writing that causes such responses - critical or not. They are emotional, not rational. This quality is
shown to be the reason that made the book emotionally accessible to the youth movement.
But to gain cult status, to reach beyond just being merely interesting or fun to read, the book needed to do more than
only emotionally attract the reader. It had to offer something that would express Zeitgeist, support the goals and
ideals of the reader or even offer him or her a philosophy that can be used to shape those ideals and goals. Through
extraction of some major viewpoints from book and movement elements will be defined, that can be compared to
each other.
When I saw how there is a specific emotional reaction, I wanted to identify the cause of that reaction. If reading
Heinlein was so annoying, why would somebody continue to read, enjoy the book and then feel like needing to
justify that s/he liked the book as Hull described? In looking for a possible explanation I found some remarks that
Heinlein made in his letters about the use of empathy, which struck me a little different than the common
understanding of empathy in creative writing. Typically it is understood that the writer attempts to direct the reader's
feelings so that s/he shares the feelings that the character in the novel is experiencing.
James Frey describes the process as following:
You can win empathy for a character by detailing the sensuous details in the environment: the
sights, sounds, pains, smells, and so on that the character is feeling – the feelings that trigger his
emotions… (13)
The reader is in sympathy with the hero . . . , identifies with his goal . . . , and empathizes with him
because the reality of the situation is created through emotion – provoking sensuous detail. (15)
Heinlein talks about his understanding of the use of empathy in two letters:
If you do read them and find that I still have left in some gross medical errors which would break
empathy if read by another medical man, please note same on the MS [Heinlein’s abbreviation for
manuscript] if you choose… (Let. Nourse)
I’m not going to take time to analyse the unconvincing improbabilities … except to say that a
writer is entitled to use the rankest of improbabilities—if he has the skill to create empathy
concerning them, kid the reader into going along. (Let. Pohl 08/21)
The story is loaded with items which are not clearly wrong but each unconvincing and thereby
tend to reduce empathy rather than build it. Examples: two vice presidents, same corporation,
offices in the same building, one is alleged to hire for the other—they have never met.
Not even in the executives’ dining room? (Let. Pohl 08/21)
Gloria Goldreich gives an illuminating definition of the use of empathy in creative writing:
The mystery of creative success lies in the writer's ability to capture and preserve the quality of a
given moment in time. The success of a novel or story depends on its intensity, on its ability to recreate an ambience and a sense of emotional contact that make the reader and writer one. Empathy
and identification, these qualities that involve the reader with fictional protagonists, rely on the
chimeric web of words the writer spins, a web that will, strand by strand, engage the mind and the
heart so that pages will be turned and fictional men and women and vanished times will achieve
lives of their own. There is no given technique for the creation of mood and emotional
identification. Each story rises from its own whirlpool of feeling and memory; it's the writer's job
to sort the currents and direct them to the steady stream from which each separate story flows.
Heinlein describes in Stranger in a Strange Land how Mike learned the concept of money. He shows Mike’s sudden
understanding of the meaning of money:
Then suddenly, with a grokking so blinding that he trembled and forced himself not to withdraw,
he understood the abstract symbolic nature of money. … money was a great structured symbol for
balancing and healing and growing closer. … it was the total structure that dazzled him, the idea
that an entire world could be reflected in one dynamic, completely interconnected, symbol
structure. (236)
This is the description of an intense emotional reaction - a sudden insight of such a profound nature that it severely
impacts the calm and peace of the person who has it. The reader is with Mike every step of the way. There is no
turning away or rejecting to understand his understanding. But this connection of the reader is not at all a sharing of
the emotional impact that the sudden realization has. Here is clearly not an empathic relation of the nature that
James Frey described. The reader already knows the meaning of money and what it all is that the concept involves.
But the reader is not at all detached.
Reading, we went into this moment of sudden understanding with some fear in our hearts. We were concerned about
Mike, wondering if he ever would understand the meaning of money and by that become able to participate in
human society without always having to depend on a caregiver, who would guide his dealings with financial issues.
When we understand that Mike understands, we feel relief and joy that our hero learned something that seems to be
of utmost importance in our society. At the same time we are missing one important element in this moment. Money
is subject to intense greed, it is the source of many crimes that humans commit against humans. Mike is innocent.
He doesn’t feel greed. He has no concept of greed. Money has meaning for him in the most idealized possible way.
Here the reader steps away from him for a moment and can’t help but experience the other side of money in our
society and also how money and the meaning it carries call out to us, making us wish to have as much as we
possibly can get. This is the moment in which it becomes clear that “This story is Cabellesque satire on religion and
sex” (Heinlein, Let. Blassinggame 10/21)).
Even though in this particular scene neither sex nor religion are mentioned, it deals with one of the other big
motivators for our actions. The satirical element lies in the understanding of the reader who sees how Mike
interprets the meaning of money in a highly idealized way that, even though applicable in reality, doesn’t encompass
the entirety of the concept. Through creating this understanding, Heinlein points with a straight finger at the missing
component and by that he is “holding up human vices and follies to ridicule” ("Satire", Meriam Webster). This is the
moment in which it becomes clear where, to whom and how the reader is emotionally connected. We are following
Heinlein’s emotional lead; we are sharing his emotional reactions to both Mike’s understanding and the human
follies related to money.
So it becomes apparent that Heinlein’s concern about factual correctness as a matter of empathy is necessary insofar
as it connects the reader to the author. Heinlein uses his own emotional reactions to share with the reader and by that
to create identification with the subject of his writings. If the reader stumbles across an incorrect representation of
facts, he indeed will be pulled out of that connection with the writer he separates his own view from the author’s
view, contemplating the factual incorrectness and not following the emotional connection of the writer regarding the
fact at hand.
Looking at Gloria Goldreich’s definition, we see that we are still within the broader defined parameters. Heinlein is
directing the stream of his reader’s emotions. He is using the emotional connection to create identification. But the
subject of that emotional stream is not the character in the book; it is instead the writer’s emotional connection to
that character.
Academics are typically trained in remaining objective which means unattached to the subject of their inquiry.
Through Heinlein’s way of using empathy, he forces the reader to join in his emotional connection, or the reader
will have to give up some understanding of the text. Especially in Stranger Heinlein uses this emotional connection
for social commentary. This leaves the academic in the precarious situation of either failing to understand the text or
in having to give up a position he considers necessary as part of his scientific approach. This is the source of the
academic’s strong emotional reaction to Heinlein, and it is caused through the particular use of empathy.
Heinlein describes Stranger as “a completely free-wheeling look at contemporary human culture from the
nonhuman viewpoint of the Man from Mars (in the sense of the philosophical cliché)” (Heinlein, Let. Blassinggame
10/21 228). Irwin Edman wrote an essay in which he outlines the way philosophers in general use fictional
characters to introduce a way of looking at a concept that is free of human pre-conceptions. One of those fictional
characters is the “Man from Mars”:
The Man from Mars … could not be expected to take any variety of human good as his ultimate criterion.
He might simply for the satisfaction of curiosity … be interested to observe the way all things with us had a
human slant, from physics to morals, from politics to metaphysics. Himself free from any susceptibility to
human values, he might be nothing but amused by the most serious of our moral systems and ideals.
(Edman 267-268)
Heinlein uses the “Man from Mars” to look at the conditions on earth. It allows him to talk about things that are
intimately known to the reader while assuming a distant position. This gives him the opportunity to describe certain
conditions in a detail that otherwise would be redundant and superfluous. Such detail allows the satirical approach
that he is looking for.
Edman also defines the limits of the concept: “He might recognize that he was the Man from Mars, but that he was a
Man, and that Mars was only one among many stars and Martian philosophy only one among many stellar
perspectives for the Man from Mars is not truly detached” (272).
Heinlein takes the limitations as described by Edman and makes them an element of the story itself. The visitor from
Mars is provincial in his own right. Mike had struggled for a long time in transferring Martian concepts into human
concepts; this was not as much a problem of language as a problem of a different approach to reality.
He learned from his attempts to entertain as a magician at a carnival that he was missing something essential, which
was necessary to attract and entertain people. This becomes apparent when the leader of the carnival fires him with
the words “You don’t have any feeling for what makes a chump a chump. A real magician can make the marks open
their mouths by picking a quarter out of the air. That levitation you do – I’ve never seen it done better but the marks
don’t warm to it. No psychology” (Heinlein, Stranger 274).
In understanding humor, Mike has learned what it is to be human. Humor is a response to something bad happening.
“I grok people. I am people … so now I can say it in people talk. I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh
because it hurts … it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.” (Heinlein, Stranger 312). He understands that he
now has bridged the gap that before prevented him from attracting and entertaining the masses.
The basic understanding that is necessary to empathize has been gained. Heinlein shows how this empathy is
applied. Mike is able to connect with the anonymous audience “I grok them now, I can talk to them Jill, I could set
up our act and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain” (Heinlein, Stranger 315) His relation to his lover
has improved as well. For the first time he is able to use a lover’s language and he explains it: “Oh I knew the
words; I simply didn’t know when or why say them … nor why you wanted me to” (Heinlein, Stranger 312).
Understanding humor taught him to empathize and it taught him the basic suffering of human existence of which the
fear of death is the most intense (“All those religions – they contradict each other on every other point but each one
is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying” (Heinlein,
Stranger 314)). Through this connection Heinlein expresses without ever explicitly stating so, that religion is a big
joke.
Mike realizes his own responsibility when he understands humor and uses it to define a common feature of all
religions. He explains to Jill:
’There’s no need for them to be so unhappy.’
‘Darling, darling! I had better take you home. The city is not good for you.’
'But I would still know it. Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting – there’s no need for any of
it. It’s as foolish as those little monkeys.'
‘Yes, darling. But it’s not your fault—‘
‘Ah, but it is.’
‘Well … that way – yes. But it’s not just this one city; it’s five billion people and more. You can’t
help five billion people.’
‘I wonder.’ (Heinlein, Stranger 315)
This insight prompts him to found a new religion. It is the logical consequence of both knowing and sharing through
empathy the human suffering and knowing how to end it.
In a letter to F. Pohl Heinlein points out where the main religious and sexual motif of the book can be found. “Of the
two major themes the religious one is by far the most important. The basic religious theme is stated on the bottom
line of p.344 and the first 13 lines on p.345.” (Heinlein, Let. Pohl 08/19 4). This is the text of the paragraph, Jubal
explaining Mike’s religion to Ben Caxton:
All names belong in the hat, Ben. Man is so built that he cannot imagine his own death. This leads
to endless invention of religions. While this conviction by no means proves immortality to be a
fact, questions generated by it are overwhelmingly important. The nature of life, how ego hooks
into the body, the problem of ego itself and why each ego seems to be the center of the universe,
the purpose of life, the purpose of the universe – these are paramount questions, Ben; they can
never be trivial. Science hasn’t solved them – and who am I to sneer at religions for trying, no
matter how unconvincingly to me? Old Mumbo Jumbo may eat me yet; I can’t rule out one
godstruck boy leading a sex cult in an upholstered attic; he might be the Messiah. The only
religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping
together! (Heinlein, Stranger 367-368)
Mike’s new religion – in the way he conceived it and as represented through Jubal’s reflection – is a response to
death, an assurance of eternal life in face of the fact that humans begin to die at the moment they come into
existence. In looking at non-fictional religions it can be shown that the coming together in defense against death is
indeed a major theme of religion, even though it is rarely – if at all – expressed within the religions. In a lecture on
09/21/10 Professor Ronald Remsburg worked out as one of the defining differences between the Greek Olympian
state religion and the Greek mystery cult, that the mystery cults offered personal immortality to the worshipper
through union with the God.
Cardinal Ratzinger1 speaks of the immortality of the soul and describes the communion with God and the
congregation:
The one, transcendent God of the Old Testament unveils his innermost life and shows that, in himself, he is a
dialogue of eternal love. Since he himself is relationship – Word and Love – he can speak, feel answer, love. Since
he is relationship, he can open himself and provide his creature with a relationship to him. In the Incarnation of the
eternal Word there comes about that communion between God and the being of man, his creature, which up to now
had seemed irreconcilable with the transcendence of the only God. (86-87).
In Islamic spiritual writing the mystical union is expressed through the power of poetry that expresses the melting of
man and God through ecstatic intoxication with the presence of God. al-Hallaj is condemned to death and while
expecting his execution he is discussing with friends and family his particular relationship to God and how his
upcoming death is meaningless compared to this experience:
He gives us consciousness within our heart
And we become with Him the One Who gives us life. (Mason 38)
In the example of these 3 religions it becomes apparent how the actual union with God is at the center of
the spiritual mystery. It also becomes visible how the God, no matter how much either religion attempts to
make him accessible to the worshipper, is a separate entity, how there is separation of man and God that
needs to be overcome through the spiritual mystery. This God gains qualities of omnipotence in that he has
to be stronger, greater then death – otherwise he could not fulfill his purpose, to overcome death in union
with the believer. Heinlein’s irreverent “Thou art God” presents human beings as the subjects of that
mystical union, there is no omnipotent entity outside the human experience that will grant the defeat of
death, the eternal life. Through this he either eliminates the existence of all godness or declares the human
experience as the only godness – it’s left up to the reader to choose. With this approach to deity he also
eliminates any possibility of attributing responsibility for human action or choice and its consequences to
that superior entity. There are only 2 possible ways the question of responsibility can be deduced:
If there is a God, this God is simply us, the human beings. So if there is responsibility beyond the acting, choosing
human entity, it still is human responsibility, since God is human.
And if there is no God, the question is moot anyhow. It’s always and nothing but human beings who are acting and
choosing, who are responsible for what happens.
Heinlein describes this in a letter: “That pantheistic, mystical ‘Thou art God!’ chorus that runs through the book is
not offered as a creed but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding” (Heinlein,
Let. Blassinggame 10/21 229).
Mike uses sex as the method of achieving union. This allows Heinlein to develop his “somewhat radical (for 1961)
views of human sexuality” (Howey). Howey defines the term queer as “a sort of catch-all which can be used to
describe those [non-heteronormative] sexualities, or individuals who practice those sexualities.” Heinlein attacked
the standard of the time in which the book was published. The radical idea that he pursued throughout the book was
love and as natural consequence of that love sexual union without a monogamous limitation. He explored the
possibility of relationships that function without a possessive demand from the partners, relationships without
jealousy.
In the letter to F. Pohl he named the main sexual theme of the book: “The basic sexual theme is stated on p.340, in
these words: ‘ Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own’” (Heinlein,
Let. Pohl 08/21). In a scene in which Jubal berates Ben Caxton because he became jealous of Jill this becomes
obvious: “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or
1 Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave; his new name is Benedic t XVI.
assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy – in fact, they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly
leaves room for the other” (Heinlein, Stranger 363).
Howey further explores in her article how the understanding of sexuality as described in Stranger reaches even
beyond merely attacking one basic rule of sexual moral. In her article she develops the thought, that sexuality is
defined by “societal indoctrination”. She shows how Heinlein in Stranger is expounding on this understanding in
creating a society through the nests of Mike’s new religion that define a new set of rules for sexual moral behavior.
Thus, the spirituality involved in the characters' sexuality has the effect of normalizing their
behavior. Under the auspices of the Church of All Worlds, sex and sexuality that would usually be
considered deviant and wrong become normal, healthy, and acceptable. Once again, the queerness
of the text lies not merely in all of the "queer" sex that the characters are having, but in the author's
ability to envision a setting in which that sex is not queer. (Howey)
In the case of both topics – sex and religion – Heinlein envisions a future that develops a radically different social
application, different from what was the commonly accepted sociological standard of his time. His satirical approach
in doing so aims at exposing weaknesses and errors of either in his current time. He does not explicate the results
from his analysis; thereby it is left to the reader on which element, which weakness or error to hone in and which
alternative to contemplate. But because of his particular use of empathy that pulls the reader on the author’s side, the
conclusions that the reader gains in this process appear to be Heinlein’s conclusions.
Heinlein was worried that the book couldn’t be sold because of its controversial nature, he wrote to his agent “…
unless I cut loose and ignored the market … and I did want to write at least one story in which I spoke freely,
ignoring the length, taboos, etc. When I finished it and reread it, I did not see how in hell you could ever sell it, and
neither did Ginny” (Heinlein, Let. Blassingame 12/04). Virginia Heinlein describes in an editor’s note in Grumbles
from the Grave how the book then started to sell. “This book turned out to be a ‘sleeper.’ Only word-of-mouth
advertising could have accounted for this” (Heinlein, Grumbles 235).
In the early 60’s a new sociological phenomenon arose, the emergence of the Hippies. Douglas Unger describes the
literary taste of the time: “Mixed in with these were Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land … everything we
considered cool and for sale in the bins, most of it possible to read while very stoned. (I still catch myself thinking of
the so-called 'beat generation' and science fiction as more or less the same thing.)” The new movement is often also
called counterculture because it was a response to some elements of the mainstream culture. When the Beats became
part of the mainstream and had gained such a degree of popularity that “fad seekers flocked to New York and San
Francisco, calling themselves ‘Beatniks’” (Issitt 3) the Hippies emerged. The term "counterculture" is defined as “a
culture that emerged and existed primarily in opposition to mainstream culture” (Issitt 109)
The Hippies grew out of a rejection of “what has been called a culture of ‘consensus’ (Lytle qtd. in Issitt 15). Issitt
also quotes Timothy Miller with the phrase “If it feels good, then do it so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else” (Issitt
15). This resulted in the celebration of “any tradition, philosophy or activity (e.g., drugs, sex, music) that had the
potential to heighten the pleasurable experience of life” (Issitt 15). The “focus on pleasure and hedonism” (Issitt 15)
had grown out of criticism of “the status quo in American culture. The hippies saw materialism, militant politics,
and social repression as the ills of society… One of the primary modes of fighting the system was to emphasize
‘individualism’ and ‘hedonism’ as guiding goals” (Issitt 15-16).
The Diggers were “a political/social outreach group that formed in 1966” (Issitt 7). They “eschewed traditional
models of morality and legality and believed …they could create a society free from consumerism, where food and
other goods were given free or in return for other services” (Issitt 7). Legality was one of the rules of mainstream
society that was discarded. “What the Diggers couldn’t obtain legally they stole from area merchants” (Issitt 7). But
the group could not achieve “their ultimate goals, finding that most hippies were far more interested in having fun
than participating in a social revolution” (Issitt 7). This shows how “it is inaccurate to assume that most hippies saw
themselves as activists or part of a social movement” (Issitt 16).
In their revolution against the generation of consensus the Hippies tried to redefine sex. They wanted to eliminate
the understanding of sex being shameful and dirty; they wanted to promote sex as “something to be celebrated rather
than hidden, encouraged rather than scorned” (Issitt 19). This position is expressed in the hippie ideal of Free Love,
which meant “both the idea that sex should be conducted in an environment and spirit of love and the idea that
people should be free to have sex with whomever they choose, without reference to the rules and morals of
mainstream society” (Issitt 20). Possessiveness, which often is part of conventional partnership rules, became
substituted by “a sexual ethos that mirrored their basic philosophy, in which sex was based on pleasure, free choice,
and most important, love” (Issitt 21).
Another response to the mainstream society was the search for a new spiritual understanding. With its interest in
eastern religions that emerged from “the things that fascinated the Beats,…” (Issitt 2) the hippies wanted to find
enlightenment. Leaders of the movement “advocated drug use as a tool for enlightenment” (Issitt 29). Issitt
summarizes Leary's position regarding LSD: “Acid, Leary believed, could destroy the culturally created façade that
dominated the mind, allowing the user to see the world from a new perspective, one similar to the pure state of sense
and experience that exists before social indoctrination, the state from which a new-born child presumptively views
its environment” (Issitt 30).
The movement had formed as a response to the society of its time. The society was understood as a rigid construct
whose defining elements were consent to political power and to traditional values and alienation of its population
through strict enforcement of the status quo. Because the movement "countered" those definitions, it didn’t form as
an entity that was united through a common ideal or philosophy. Instead it was a shared conviction that mainstream
culture had failed in the tasks it was supposed to surmount. This left the whole movement open to any influence that
was considered different. Thus everything that was not in accordance with conventional society could become a part
of the counterculture. This search for the different combined with the emphasis on hedonism and self-discovery
resulted in a focus on spirituality and sexuality which became the manifestation of this protest against existing
society. The self-centeredness of this approach made defining and forming of a new society that allowed the selfrealization, which the hippies believed to be of pivotal importance, difficult. The strong subjectivity almost
prevented by its inherent focus on the individual the formulation of objective definitions for a society that could
realize these ideals.
Heinlein was working on Stranger over several years; the first mention according to Grumbles is in a letter to Lurton
Blassingame in 1952. The book is mentioned several times in the following years. In 1960 Heinlein finally sat down
and wrote the novel. In a letter to his agent he states “I am utterly exhausted from sixty-three days chained to this
machine, twelve to fourteen hours a day” (Heinlein, Let. Blassingame 03/29 226). The point in time in which the
novel was written and the fact that it was conceived over a period of 8 years, makes it somewhat unlikely that the
Hippie movement influenced Heinlein’s ideas. The Hippies developed out of the Beats, which makes it probable that
book and counterculture were drawing on similar philosophical sources and in such a way came up with similar
answers.
Based on the timing of events it also seems somewhat unlikely that Stranger had a formative impact on the new
movement. The book went into print in 1961; it took almost 2 years for its sales to take off. The movement had
established itself already at this point. But there are several elements that connected both.
The perception of love and sex in the book and in the philosophy of the counterculture are of striking similarity.
Both aimed at elimination of possessiveness and at freedom from limitation; love could be shared many ways and
sex was the expression and realization of that understanding.
The counterculture didn’t have any defined religion, but the movement refused by definition to participate in the
traditional, conventional. Heinlein’s exploration into a possible different religion with its intentional irreverence fit
nicely into the opposition to consensus that the movement represented.
But the remarkable success of the book that originally was based only on mouth to mouth propaganda still remains
unexplained.
The hedonistic attitude of the Hippies, the emphasis on the “good vibe” or the “feel good” found a reflection in the
detachment of Mike, who in his secure knowledge of the eternal afterlife never had intense longing for the physical
life. That particular life was for him just a method that allowed him to interact with reality. Such an attitude created
the freedom from pain, worry and effort that permeates the book. No matter how intense the emotional conflict, how
dangerous the situation, what is in the end important is only the greater scheme, not the existential pain of the hero.
And this is communicated as the writer binds the reader in emotional contact to himself, directing the reader to see
the events through the writer’s eyes. Not only is the reader emotionally involved with the writer, Heinlein is using
this connection to move the reader towards the point that he wishes to make. But this is not the skill of a demagogue
who is using the riled up emotions to undermine rational involvement. It is instead an emotional exclamation point,
a creation of attention to then achieve rational comprehension.
The subject of this interaction is religion. Religion in itself is based on emotion, especially in Heinlein’s definition,
which considers God the answer to the human being’s fear of death. So in this connection with the reader, Heinlein
can use that emotion to respond to the fear of death. He does not evoke that fear in the reader; instead he leaves it a
subject of rational contemplation, but he responds through emotion. That emotional message is that of strength and
confidence based on the human to human “Though art God” - to translate it in the most basic terms, the writer shares
the experience of “I’m so strong I can face death and I don’t need to bind myself in spiritual union to God.” And this
is a message of the Hippie movement. This is what they are after; freedom from authority, freedom from consensus,
the critical independence of the human being. The guideline to that goal, the road to travel to reach the destination, is
hedonism, the pursuit of the “good vibe”. Heinlein almost emanates that good vibe in pounding on the strength of
the human being, the personal ability to face every possible fear, including the greatest fear of all. It is necessary
though to remember in this context that Heinlein wasn’t at all attempting to promote hedonism. But the emotion
portrayed in Stranger suited a hedonist well; the “feel good” of the book accommodated the reader who was looking
for something that felt good.
But the Hippies didn’t only reject God. They rejected the society of the status quo in total. By this they didn’t only
sever their access to the comfort of traditional religion; they also severed access to other aspects of that society. In a
way, they ran out of the house in a fit and slammed the door shut – to then find themselves without a house. Heinlein
was able to conceive a society different from the existent that incorporated many of the goals that the hippies had.
This offered at least for the duration of the reader’s immersion into the book the comfort of a new home.
Even though Stranger in no way was meant to be a manual to such a different society within a society, it offered a
model of such a society. Heinlein did not come from a point of simply trying to oppose the existent society, he was a
constructive critic. The novel shows how certain faults were recognized and it shows one possible method of
correcting those faults. In doing that, it hit a void in the Hippie movement. This was a subtle effect that easily can be
missed. The more obvious elements (free love, irreverence and easy, pleasurable reading) are probably the more
commonly recognized causes for the status of the book.
Overall, it seems that neither book nor movement had an influence on the basic formation of either. Instead they
connected through an almost dialectic exchange. Both were asking questions about a new definition of society, and
both were attempting to work out new approaches. Beyond that Heinlein’s conceptual abilities as presented in
Stranger filled a void in the Hippie movement’s viewpoint. He related to the readers in an emotional positive way
regarding questions that most of all moved them, which made Stranger in a Strange Land the “bible” of the Hippie
movement.
Works Cited
Edman, Irwin. "Adam, the Baby and the Man from Mars". Adam, the Baby and the Man from Mars. Ed. Irwin
Edman. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1929. 249-276. Print.
Frey, James N. How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1994. Print.
Goldreich, Gloria. "A writer directs a stream of emotions." The Writer Apr. 2009: 9. Literature Resource Center.
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