A few things I don’t like about Stranger in a Strange Bed.
Reader axiem writes in and says: "Really, though, the movie I’d want to see done right if they could do it is Stranger in a Strange Land (my introduction to Heinlein). Barring that, I would love to see the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. If they could do it right, and keep Heinlein’s political contemplation."
My comment: Of course, since I hate STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND as much as Verhoeven hates STARSHIP TROOPERS, I would rather not see a good (meaning persuasive) movie made from the book. Movies are the most powerful propaganda tool the human race has ever devised. The point of STRANGER was to mock and belittle monogamy and monotheism, and replace it with what we now call cultural relativism (To be against cannibalism in this book is depicted as a sign of intolerable parochial bigotry! Cannibalism fercrhissake!!). That is not a point I would like to have more people persuaded to support. It is a suicidal idea for any culture.
This book takes a perfectly fine libertarian-type idea, "Let us all be independent and live and let live, without trying to run and ruin each other’s lives" and rides it hell-for-leather off the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity "Let us do Evil, and call it good, and we shall become as Gods! Thou art god!"
Mike the Martian makes a piss-poor messiah.
Instead of healing the sick and feeding the poor, he breaks into jail and — get this — because it is wrong to lock people up, he either frees the inmates or KILLS THEM. His mind powers and infallible sense of right and wrong allow him to act as judge, jury and executioner, even though he was raised on Mars and knows nothing of human norms and laws.
So Mrs. Maggs, whose husband is in jail with only one week to go before release, instead of being able to tell Tiny Tim and Little Nell that their father has paid his debt to society and is coming home, while she is sitting among the paper decorations and colored punch cups of the welcome home celebration gets a sorrowful but curtly worded telegram from the Warden of Folsom Prison. "We regret to report that your husband was killed by Michael Valentine Smith, who, in his sole opinion, determined your husband was too unenlightened to live, and murdered him forthwith."
For some reason, Bob Heinlein did not put Mrs. Maggs and her sorrows onstage.
Here is what he has onstage instead:
Mike the Martian: "I am beginning to wonder if full grokking will show that I am on the wrong track entirely — that this race must be split up, hating each other, fighting each other, constantly unhappy and at war even with their own individual selves… simply to have that weeding out that every race must have."
Jubal Harshaw, his teacher and mentor hurries to assure the poor messiah sweating as if blood in his Gethemine of despair: "If one tenth of one percent of the population is capable of getting the news, then all you have to do is show them — and in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth. Whenever that is — a thousand years from now, or ten thousand — will be plenty soon enough to worry about whether some new hurdle is necessary to make them jump higher."
So the stupid people (read: Christians) will die out and make way for the Aryan superman! Hurrah! Hurrah for the doctrine of Darwin!
This is why I like A.E. van Vogt better than I like Heinlein. When Jommy Cross, superhuman Slan comes on stage, or Robert Hedrock, superhuman immortal, they also have a superhuman sense of altruism and forbearance, and they see their relation toward normal men as a parental one.
Heinlein’s superhuman, on the other hand, follows Nietzsche, and sees the role of superhuman as one of competitor and enemy.
I have sometimes wondered if one of the policemen killed by Mike the Martian was not Johnny Rico from STARSHIP TROOPERS. Rico announces the same Darwinian philosophy as Mike the Martian: that it is the duty and pleasure of human beings to kill and exterminate competitors and threats to homo sapiens, until such time as a superior race emerges to kill us instead. You do not think if Rico was a police officer, he would have obeyed orders to arrest Jubal Harshaw, and gone into his house weapon drawn? You don’t think Jubal would have ‘grokked’ John Rico was a pig and a stormtrooper, and killed him with no remorse, pity or regret?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
