Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
I tried a couple of books by Heinlein and despised them, despite the fact that I'm fairly tolerant of bad writing. The only reason I finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was because I was still in the phase where I felt obliged to finish books and read the whole think before judging them. But many years on I can still remember how much it made me want to vomit in disgust at its infantile attempts to shock.
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Context is critical, as usual.
SIASL was neither infantile nor an attempt to shock. It
was very much a product of its time.
Heinlein was born and raised in a fundamentalist Bible Belt area and culture. A good bit of his writing can be described as RAH systematically examining the assumptions he was raised in and asking "Does this make sense?" His answer was often "No, it doesn't."
I consider that sort of examination one of the jobs of literature, and was pleased to see RAH doing it, though I agree the results weren't always successful.
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Dennis