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Originally Posted by yvanleterrible
That is what I'm actually reading. Love his sense of humo(u)r. You can feel the guy did not like the social conventions of his time.
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No, he didn't. He was born and raised in the Midwestern US "Bible Belt", and a lot of his fiction can be seen as Heinlein systematically examining the beliefs he was raised in and asking "Does this make sense?" The answer was frequently "No!"
He continued to do so till the end of his life. His last books were not widely considered successful, but it was obvious he was still reaching for new things and trying to grow as a writer.
Stranger was in part Heinlein's version of Voltaire's Candide. He used a literal man from Mars to examine human customs and find them largely wanting. It was written in at least three stages over a period of several years, as Heinlein groped for the proper form to tell the story he had in mind.
(The protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, is the only survivor of an ill-fated attempt to found a colony on Mars. He is adopted as an infant by the Martians, and trained in the Martian language and Martian thought. The Martian's view of reality gives them an assortment of abilities we might find supernatural. For instance, the asteroid belt was once a planet, with an intelligent species inhabiting it. The Martians became aware of them, decided they were incompatible, and destroyed the planet, apparently by exercise of mental force.
Another major difference in Martians is that they don't die. A Martian simply discorporates, and his body is dead but his spirit remains present. The body in consumed in a ritual ceremony by the friends and family, and the discorporate spirit is present at the feast. Understanding that the spirits of the human departed
don't stick around is a major stumbling block for Smith.)
Incidentally, Stranger appears to be set in the same universe as his juvenile _Red Planet_.
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Dennis