Stranger in a Strange Land: Review of....

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Heinlein is a master of the literary craft.  Here in Stranger in a Strange Land he interweaves human relations, large ideas (theology), and the art of the story. The story a Stranger in a Strange Land takes place in a New America, that is one world ordered hegemony.  The world has made missions to mars and has set up a space colony there.  The space colony had been deserted on the planes of Mars.  The man from mars is found after many years of exposure to an alien race. The climax resolves whether Michael Valentine Smith will be excepted by the people of Earth.  At times this book gets bogged down in Heinlein's philosophy, so it can be a difficult read. 

What I liked about the book is its deep analysis of Faith. Heinlein first looks at the cult of the Fosterites. A cult where everyone is happy, and everyone thinks as a one happy unit.  (I would like to go deeper into describing the Fosterites, but I am afraid that this would lead you down a rabbit hole and would maybe bore you deeply.) 
Then he looks at how Michael Valentine Smith twists the Abrahamic religions to make a cult that combines elements of Confucius, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism.  
The religion is based on the wisdom of the old ones (Confucius).  (I am only all that I Grok.(Buddhism)) The perfect wisdom of the elders is not to be disputed at all.   The cult members become entwined by a sharing of water together.  They see each other as all Gods.(Brahman Hindu)  Thou art god and so are my Guinea pigs and Lovebird.  The religion replaces God and put man in God’s place, this allows man to worship created things.
When God’s proper place, to be above all, is replaced all is left in Chaos.  A chaos I imagine to be like the ending of the Demolished Man by Alfred Bester.  This chaos is a place of no form at all, the lizard eats his own tail and poof he is no longer. 
Because man is now God like, the divine things are the things that connect man in deeper communication.  Sex is seen as sharing deeper with many people.  The communal orgasm is sacred, a great religious experience.(Athenian Greek Goddess Cults)  Cannibalism is the holiest way to die for it is taking the spirit of the other deeply into the body of the collective (Native American Ritual).
Stranger in a Strange Land  raised the questions: 

What does it mean to be both God and man? 

Why could not Joseph and Mary give birth to the messiah? 

Why did it need to be a virginal birth?    

What becomes lost when the Messiah is merely a superman?

(Loved this book and Clucked it Loud)



View all my reviews

Discord and Harmony: On Postmodern and Hegelian Thought

Yesterday's junk is today's cool.

"Uncool" become the "New Cool" because the Nerd/Geek/Fool/Punk studies the culture, juggles the culture into their unique lives, tosses it into their behavior and re-arranges what is hip into the artful Modern New Cool.  Hegel sees this as his triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  We have a truth (what a culture considers cool) balanced by the opposite of that truth (what the rebels and reformers consider cool and the majority would consider uncool), synthesized into the new meaning of NEW COOL.  A good example of this would be Japanese Fashion.  Time progresses out of a synthesis between two extremes continually synthesizing into something fresher/newer.  Yesterday's junk is today's cool.
-Gregorio Roth

Reprint:

Toy Publix truck on mantle,
Van Gogh Flowers Poster
Flogging Molly Banner
Mountain Riders Maui Poster 242-9739
White (the hero's color) Cowboy hat from Ocala
Cologne: Burburry London for Men
Obsession Silken Body Lotion C.K.
Compass pointing out Due North
Date Jar full of Dimes
Wind in the Willows Poster from London's National Theater
My bedroom lies cramped with so much character.   

Mayfair by the Lake: Haikus

Dad and I hike up

through dewy laid state park, 

gray slug crawls on moss.

                        - Gregorio Roth

Up way too early, 

have to put up the Artwork,

I need coffee now!

                 - Jessica Baylor Rothbard 

These Haiku were written by my wife and I, the morning of Mayfair by the Lake. The influence for Gregorio Roth's poem is a recollection of a hike my dad and I took at Ecola State Park, Oregon.   It was a rainy day and we witnessed a Slug slurping up a leaf; it was amazing to see something so slow, yet progressing steadily consuming a whole leaf.    I hope you enjoyed them.
Mayfair by the Lake

50 States of Reading Revisited: Mississippi - Eudora Welty

Podcast Highlighted: 


I was listening to PRI's selected short stories of Eudora Welty. There is beauty, vexations, truth, and imaginations in the reading of these beautiful pieces. I enjoyed them seriously: PRI Selected Shorts.

Book Clubs: No Guts, No Glory!?

I confess I love doing book clubs. But I am the only guy in the library book club called Books Sandwiched In (BSI). Every first Tuesday we have a book offered to us that we have the option to read and discuss the next First Tuesday of the month.

Men join a book club in your area if you've got the guts. 

Do I feel light in the loafers by taking part in a book discussion group? No Way! I feel that my masculinity is not challenged in any way by being a participant in BSI. Often being the sole male in the group is valuable to the whole group. I can offer insight into the stories that woman cannot offer. But the women also help me understand the books better from their shared POV. It feels good to have fellow travelers in our explorations.

There are a number of books that we all have hated. Brenda our book group leader finds books that will make for good conversation. I have had my point of view stretched by a number of the books. A novel should give you new insight that you may never have known, or even wanted to know. The art of the novel is to live the experiences of others different from ourselves.

Men may fear that they will not be accepted by the women in the group. I have never felt the death glare that tells me I am not wanted here. Not once have I felt rejected.

All right, now it's your turn to join a group in your area and be the sole guy that drives the ladies crazy.

Remember: No Guts, No Glory!

Outline of the Republic Leads us to Rediscover Heart of Darkness

"The offing was barred by a bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immune darkness." (Conrad 158) So ends Conrad's heart of Darkness.   Sidhartha Deb ends his book with an allusion, an implicit reference, to the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  "I turned left , knowing that if I kept going I would come to the river." (Deb 318)  Deb points us again to the place that holds the heart of darkness, once described by Conrad, and that this place still remains in the twenty first century.  We have failed to become a modernized utopia.  A utopia where  the river now flows to the heart of heal-able light.

Harlan Ellison Dreams of Sharp Teeth Eating Antisemitic Flesh

Check out the movie:  Harlan Ellison:  Dreams with Sharp Teeth

I loved watching this movie for its honest portrait of a writers life.  The movie shows the hard work of being a synthesizer of words, and how one's muse directs this synthesis.    A number of greats share with us the life of Mr. Ellison; including Robin Williams, Dan Simmons, Neil Gaimon, and Harlan Himself.   The movie deals with diverse subjects:  bullies, army, Judaism, antisemitism, atheism, anger,  and creativity.   

Unfathomably I have not read any of Harlan's books but I plan to.   I have made a month in my reading plan just to read him.   

I am thankful for incredible documentaries, on incredible people, with incredible hearts.   

A Far Country There is Hunger

"When they spoke of those hours, they said, We passed hunger.  As if it were a place, an outpost, on a lonely road.  Other times they said, Hunger passed through here.  As if something alive, pale hoofed creature, who tore though on bristling haunches or ambled out of the white forest with a worn suit, and a broken face, a monster or a devil."  (Mason page 5)

Cluck it Or Chuck It: Obstacles Welcome by Ralph de la Vega

Cuban Refugee to President & CEO of AT&T Mobility, what were the steps that got him there? How did a man who faced many obstacles not get mired down in the muck? How do you stop living your life trapped in a lazy chair jell cell; so that you can live a life you dreamed of?

This book will help those looking to improve their success journey in the following ways: (a) how to manage calculated risks (b) finding opportunities in your life being blended at high speed (c) and how to enable others to help you through effective communication.

De la Vega did not show how Christ empowered his success journey enough. He would have improved the book had he found scriptural truth to back up his opinions. The book tended to be very humanistic and treads on the mythic axiom, of lacing up your bootstraps and make it happen (very Horatio Alger of him). There was a lack of notes and research, or even works that had influenced De la Vega's point of view mentioned in the Appendix.

Summary: Not the book I was looking for and it took me a long time to finish it.

Counter view point: Embarking
Buy Obstacles Welcome at Powell's Books

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Tuesday-Moonpies and Good Reads

Angel Time: Anne Rice
Where most Christian Writers stumble in their writing, Ann Rice moves them gracefully and deals expertly with: church, church history, Jews, Mission Art, Consumer Culture, Catholicism,
prayer, alienation, alcoholism, and broken homes. She shows how God redeems all who come to him with repentant hearts; even an assassin with many kills can be Redeemed and saved from sinful living.


Can a "Christian Book" be written well? Can new light be shined from a 2,009 year old gospel? Rice answers, YES!.
"In keeping with my commitment to do Christian fiction in a variety of forms, I am developing a new series called Songs of the Seraphim. I'm hoping for a long life for the series..
I continue to work on Christ the Lord, the Kingdom of Heaven, the third book in the Christ the Lord series."

Can a pulp vampire chronicler tell the gospel accurately? Some Catholic ideas bleed into her fiction but for the most part as a Reformed Christian I did not see a stained gospel.

She makes us look again at division between the Jews and Christians, and the scripture cited in Matthew 28:11-15. She asks us to not tell tales but live in the light of truth.

This book begins in Riverside California.