Stranger In A Strange Land

A post about how Lost In Space made someone a liberal got me to thinking and I'm convinced that reading Stranger In A Strange Land was the turning point for me. It had an amazing effect upon me at the time (right out of high school, 1972). I never looked at the world the same after reading it.

Anybody else a Valentine Michael Smith fan? Who/what was most responsible for for shaping your liberal views?

Born in 1972. My mom and the Muppets. My mom... she was so cool.

Lost in Space, Pigs in Space... Who knows... but it was that show. Later, Salinger and Thompson and Rolling Stone and U2. And being human helped.

Later, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick, much on existentialism, or, those whose writing was deemed "existential." Herbert Marcuse. Noam Chomsky. Bill Hicks.

I think we all need to revisit our roots right now.

Hershaw was a good part of RAH's real personality personified, IMO.

However, I can think of lots of people I would "disappear", if I had Micheal's martian
telekinetic powers.}(

Oh how I would clean house in this world if I could do what he did to Foster
and the other "bad-guys" in the storyline. O8)

Good point about him and RAH. RAH was an enigma. Navy officer turned science history writer. It's amazing how much of his Future History has come true.

A man ahead of his time..and very "politically incorrect" for his times, as well ;-)

I don't remember the name of the book but it had to do with unseen "radio waves" and EMF having unforeseen deadly effects. Last weekend Bobby Kennedy had a guest on who was talking about how the use of cellphones and other wireless devices was causing cancer. My first thought was "well Bob got another one right".

Or maybe he had to "disappear" so that we didn't find out that Lazarus Long was indeed
his real alias :-)

;-)

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, followed by Orwell's Animal Farm and then Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. My poor Republican father never stood a chance of his children following his political footsteps with such reading material around!

He had a great job with a major seed company who was bought out by WR Grace. Dad read Silent Spring right before that and refused to sell the pesticides and poisons his new boss was pushing.

He could have just buckled under, did as they asked and made a small fortune but that wasn't my Dad.

I remember reading Animal Farm in high school. It seemed to me at the time that that could never happen in America. Then I read 1984 (also in high school, we had required reading lists back then) and started to realize that it was happening in America. I also had the spectre of the draft looming when I graduated. It was all part of my liberal conversion.

Good for you dad.

but was unable to keep it going (mostly because he wouldn't store or sell chemicals in bulk). Then he moved us back to the ranch to take care of his mother and bought the local liquor store and became a gentleman rancher. All his life though he was an opponent of pesticides and in later years his fears were vindicated. I tell you what, we had the best pasture land thanks to his knowledge of agronomy and his gentle care. He was quite a guy.

so he could look over the pasture on one side and the house on the other. Without any public announcement 3 days after he died 300 people showed up for his funeral. It would have embarrassed the heck out of him but was a fitting tribute to a great man.

yeah, I am rereading 1984 right now and the parallels to what is happening now are uncanny.

I share some of your views -- but I'm not a liberal.

I am an Independent. Liberalism is just as stupid to me as Conservatism.

We should all see our society from a view that is independent of contrived structures.

the home of many liberals and progressives.... I don't think that liberalism is stupid. Now, anything taken to the extreme can be obtuse, but all in all, the main things that liberals believe in are positive.

I hate that term. I'm a progressive or a leftist, or even, among close friends, a socialist.

shape my views on politics and society.
I highly reccommend his body of works.

It is hard for me to pinpoint which of his books had the most influence.I would have to say it was an accumaltive effect of what he says in all of his work.

My views were shaped by the events of the 1960's, during which time I was in elementary school. After JFK and RFK were assassinated, we wound up with Nixon. Then I knew which side was the correct one. Actually I knew that I identified with JFK long before Nixon was elected.

One of the best books ever.

Interestingly, I went to Butler, MO a few weeks ago and there are signs all over that town announcing it is Heinlein's birthplace. That prompted me to read up on Heinlein. He had an interesting political history, to say the least. He was a socialist but later leaned libertarian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein

That helped me out of the Mormon church. As soon as I was no longer Mormon, I found that I had been a progressive underneath all that brainwashing all along.

Ya know, cause he's such a well read, deep thinker.

I mean, look at Starship Troopers.

Actually I think _I Will Fear No Evil_ effected me more than SIASL..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil

And then _Time Enough For Love_ was another powerful book with powerful ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love

Time Enough For Love is an incredible book. RAH made Lazarus Long into an incredible character and actually made the concept of time travel and interstellar travel seem like child's play.

I hated what Hollywood did to Starship Troopers. Even with all of the violence and war in the book, there was a humanist undertone.

But ST was worse than most Hollyweird adaptations.

Truly awful, and then they left out the coolest piece of technology in the whole damn book, the powered suit and the launch capsules for them.

How can you have a cap trooper with no cap?

*shudder* I hate to think how they'd butcher that.

Can you imagine the reaction of the fundies if SIASL were to be honestly portrayed in a successful movie?

:evilgrin:

You are going to force me to go pull out my treasured hard copy (given to me by my original and much missed Water Brother) and read it again. :)

:D

I think that's the right name...maybe I should read it again too, been 15 years or more. :scared:

Was when Foster and Digby are talking about taking a split millennium in the Muslim Paradise for a little relaxation. :evilgrin:

probably Oral Roberts considering the time frame. Right now I think more Jerry Falwell. :) You've got a great memory.

But I too shudder at what hollywierd would do to "Stranger In A Stranger in a Strange Land", after the S-T movie adaptation abomination.

Definitely influenced my leanings. I read it at 14 and I haven't discorporated yet!
Frank Herbert's "Dune" series along with the Isaac Asimov 'Foundation" series, Then add in Roger Zelazny's "LOrd of light" And Douglas Adams "Restaurant at the end of the universe' series And my mind set was fixed.I'm 48 now and haven't wavered from the left.... expanded but not wavered. :hi:

My best friend in high school got pregnant. She was fifteen. When I went with her and her mom to the abortion clinic, we were spit on and cursed at by mouth-breathing protesters. Mind you, we were fifteen year old girls.

I decided then and there that whatever side THOSE nutcases were on was the opposite of the side that *I* wanted to be on. I pursued my political education with a vengeance from there.

made me the extremest (liberal or conservative depends on the issue) I am today.

I now know why I like and mostly agree with your posts. :)

Share Water!

For instance, his Tweenie stories really showed how ignorant and stupid racism is. I learned a lot from many of his stories and they shaped many if not most of my attitudes and beliefs.

Michael, Jubal, Anne (the Fair Witness) etc. were absolutely role models for me as a teenager. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was also quite formative.

It was properly iconoclastic in most ways and embraced sexuality in a mostly healthy way but he just had to call gay people misguided and perverse. It was a very sour note in an otherwise magnificent story.

I dismissed it as a product of the times and his rather rigid military background. SIASL pushed pretty hard at the norms of the time as it was.

but as time passed and all the gross injustices we've put up with have remained so much in place, it began to grate on me. Perhaps he mellowed some later, I confess I just don't know.

Might sound odd, but that was it.

When I was fifteen. I have to admit the free love aspect attracted me, but there were several other things that have stayed with me:

- Michael Valentine Smith's ability to give his complete and undivided attention to whomever he was speaking to. It drove the girls wild.

- The phrase "See how far your gratitude extends?"

- The idea of a fair witness who would only report what was sensible rather than what was inferred.

...and HATED this reaction to his book.

While it's true he started out as a hard right-winger, at the time when he was considered at his most conservative point in his private life he was writing books that were espousing themes that were not only liberal but down right satanic for the time. It's said that after he became ill and infirm his viewpoint became more libertarian.

I'm still just amazed at his vision and his complex life.

Kurt Vonnegut was the one who did it for me. I still haven't read all his books either.

Reading Heinlein helped make me the feminist I am, due to his shallow, unreal female characters.

Friday, which is pretty much about a female character?

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, where one of the key revolutionaries is female?

Etc., etc., etc.

For my money, I'd rather a writer just avoid females when they can't write them, like Zelazny.

Yes, I've read Friday. I was not impressed. Tell me, why is it that every single one of his females are cut from the same bolt of cloth? The same note, sweet as it may be, gets tiresome when it's all you hear.

I ask because a similar criticism is often leveled at Asimov -- but at all his characters, who are sometimes described as "cardboard". It may be that character development is simply not a salient feature in early SF.

was pretty influential to me. Outside of the typical books most here have probably read.

I never understood the Depression until I read that book. I'd heard about it from parents and grandparents, but I didn't get it.

It's just a really superb term. Sometimes it's the only one that fits.