Stranger in a Strange Land

Noté que muchas de mis ideas respecto de las relaciones humanas, el sexo, la política y la religión, están plasmadas en la novela, al punto que ahora pienso que tal vez las aprendí allí, cuando la leí por primera vez en la escuela secundaria.

La novela cuenta la historia de Valentine Michael Smith, un humano criado por marcianos, una especie de niño-lobo extraterrestre. Pero el verdadero protagonista es Jubal Harshaw, que vierte capítulo tras capítulo sus opiniones siempre inteligentes sobre la vida y el universo.

El personaje de Jubal Harshaw en "Forastero en tierra extraña" es también el de Lazarus Long en "Tiempo para amar", y no es otra cosa que el propio Heinlein que se incluye como voz de sus historias dentro de las mismas.

Expone una ideología fundamentalmente libertaria.

De hecho, hay una referencia a "la serpiente" en alguna parte de la novela, la serpiente representa el movimento libertario estadounidense del sXIX.

Sin embargo, es un libertarianismo que tiene poco que ver con la ideología de diseño que infecta las mentes débiles en las redes corporativas, y que hoy ha robado ese nombre.

Leímos "Forastero en tierra extraña en la edición número 80 de nuestro Club de #LecturaMastodóntica

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II bought this book and had read about two-thirds of this original uncut version when I left it on a bus. I thought of buying another copy to see what happened in the end, but I didn't think it was all that good, so I left it. Then when I saw a copy in the library I thought it was my chance to find out what happened, so I took it out and re-read it from the beginning because after 27 years I'd forgotten too much to just pick it up where I left off. And having reached the end, my verdict is unchanged. It's not really worth paying good money for.The first half is OK, and I'd give it 3 stars on the GoodReads Scale. The second half is excruciatingly boring and preachy, and would get 1 star from me, so 2 stars for the whole thing.

The story concerns the first manned expedition to Mars, which disappears without trace. The second expedition find there was a survivor -- a child of two of the crew members who was born on Mars and named Michael Alexander Smith, and was brought up by Martians after his parents died. The second expedition brought him, now a young adult, back to earth, where he suffers from culture shock, and is perceived as a threat by vest interests on earth, and so is kept incommunicado by the government.

The book was at least partly responsible for starting a New Religious Movement (NRM), the Church of All Worlds, and perhaps the best comment on that comes from [b:Drawing Down the Moon|25577082|Drawing Down The Moon|Joe Clifford Faust|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432235239l/25577082.SY75.jpg|44802660] by [a:Diane Adler|15856|David A. Adler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1258422434p2/15856.jpg]:

The Church of All Worlds has been called everything from 'a sub-culture science-fiction Grok-flock' to 'a bunch of crazy hippie freaks.' But the real origins of CAW lead back to a small group of friends who, along with untold numbers of middle-class high school and college students in the late 1950s and early 1960s, became infatuated with the romantic, heroic, compelling right-wing ideas of [a:Ayn Rand|432|Ayn Rand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1168729178p2/432.jpg]. It is a sign of the peculiarity of North American consciousness that thousands of young students, at one time or another, have become possessed by her novels - [b:Atlas shrugged|662|Atlas Shrugged|Ayn Rand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405868167l/662.SY75.jpg|817219], [b:The Fountainhead|2122|The Fountainhead|Ayn Rand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1491163636l/2122.SY75.jpg|3331807], and [b:Anthem|667|Anthem|Ayn Rand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388190459l/667.SY75.jpg|287946]. [a:Jerome Tucille|1573434|Jerome Tucille|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], in his witty, tongue-in-cheek tour of the libertarian right, [b:It usually begins with Ayn Rand|2453336|It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand|Jerome Tuccille|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563921059l/2453336.SX50.jpg|610669], could not have been more precise in his choice of title. He noted that Rand's works were particularly appealing 'to those in the process of escaping a regimented religious background.' Despite the author's rigid philosophy of Objectivism, she stirred a libertarian impulse, and Atlas shrugged became a 'New Marxism of the Right'.