Readers Still Grokking ‘Stranger’ 30 Years Later

If you grok grokking, then you may already know that the original, uncut version of Robert A. Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” one of the most famous and controversial science-fiction novels published in this galaxy, has reappeared on the shelves of the third planet’s bookstores in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

If you don’t grok, then you probably haven’t read the novel, in which Heinlein created Valentine Michael Smith, an orphaned human raised from birth by Martians, a race far wiser than any earthling (excepting Heinlein) might imagine.

( Grokking is a word Heinlein made up. Found even in Webster’s now, it is a verb that means “to understand thoroughly because of having empathy.”)

More than 5 million copies of “Stranger in a Strange Land” have been sold since it was published in 1961. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, it achieved cult status on college campuses. It has never been out of print, and Ace/Putnam has printed a respectable 40,000 hardcover copies of the new edition. Local booksellers say the $24.95 book has sold well since it arrived in December, but they anticipate much bigger sales when it comes out in paperback in October.

“It’s as though Heinlein was some kind of Ouija board for the culture that was developing in the ‘60s,” said H. Bruce Franklin, a professor of English at Rutgers University and author of “Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction.”

In the novel, Smith is brought to Earth as a young adult and, like a newborn, learns to be human from scratch. His extraordinary concentration and unworldly wisdom allow him to slow time, levitate objects and people, and obliterate anything he perceives as wrong or bad: guns, bureaucrats, spilled plates of spaghetti. He achieves closeness by “sharing water” with those who become his “water brothers.” He encourages free sex. He ventures into the world working undercover at a variety of jobs until he slaps the face of the power structure in the ultimate way: He creates his own church.

Heinlein, who died in 1988 at 80, was a prolific writer who turned out his first short story for a contest in 1939. He made his mark in the pulps, then in slick magazines before launching a series of successful juvenile books. In 1961, with the publication of “Stranger in a Strange Land,” he boldly went where no other science-fiction writer had gone before: to the New York Times bestseller list.

His widow, Virginia, recently moved to Northern Florida from their longtime home outside Santa Cruz--partly to escape memories, partly to escape overzealous fans. She said she decided to try to republish the original version after the copyright lapsed because she was struck in rereading her husband’s letters by “his very strong disappointment at having to cut the book” for space and to tone down some of the more overt sexual passages.

Some of those passages have been restored, as has some dialogue, but the flavor is the same.

Virginia Heinlein said she gave her husband the idea for the book but is modest about the contribution: “Robert always said--and I have heard other writers say the same thing--ideas are a dime a dozen.”

The premise that she conceived allowed Heinlein free critical reign: He mocked the capitalistic drive of organized religion, picked on monotheism and monogamy, and included scenes of communal living and group sex. The book became, to Heinlein’s eternal bedevilment, a bible of sorts for certain members of the “love generation.”

“When it came out, we were all being very cosmic,” said Lydia Marano, owner of the Sherman Oaks bookstore Dangerous Illusions. “I remember really enjoying it and feeling it was very enlightened at the time and I immediately starting using grok and stepping on grass because grass enjoys being walked upon (a revelation of Valentine Michael Smith’s), and I wrote a paper on it in college likening it to the Gospel according to St. Mark or Matthew. They must have been amused. I got an A.”

Her husband, Arthur, who manages the store, said the book has never stopped selling.

George Slusser, a professor of comparative literature at UC Riverside, was a student at UC Berkeley when he first read the book more than two decades ago.

A longtime fan of science fiction, Slusser was familiar with Heinlein’s earlier works and the author’s militaristic leanings. (Heinlein was a 1929 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a defender of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.) Slusser, who wrote the critical analysis “Robert A. Heinlein: A Stranger in His Own Land,” was surprised at the way “Stranger” was misinterpreted by his fellow students.

“I remember people reading the novel who had never read science fiction and they would get the idea for this pseudo-collectivizing and phony meditating,” Slusser said. “I think that they missed the point about the power fantasies and the satire and everything else.”

They were “converted” to what they’d read into the book.

Charles Manson was said to have modeled some of his cult family’s rituals on the book and the first baby born to one of his followers was reportedly named for Valentine Michael Smith. This greatly distressed Heinlein.

“There are unfortunately, even today, groups that are still promulgating a lack of responsibility in personal relationships and relationships to law and order and saying they are basing it on ‘Stranger in a Strange Land,’ ” said Alice Massoglia, co-owner with her husband, Marty, of A & M Booksellers, a Canoga Park used bookstore.

“It became a real cult thing, and he (Heinlein) hated that. . . . I met him in 1981 or ’82 and he said it disturbed him tremendously that who he was and what he was as a writer was distorted tremendously. He wasn’t saying, ‘Everybody go out and have free sex.’ He was saying we have to accept other people’s differences no matter how they seem to us.”

Heinlein was a prolific writer, penning 45 books and dozens of short stories. Ray Bradbury once called him “a popcorn machine.” He won an unprecedented four Hugo awards and was awarded the first Grand Master Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for his lifetime contributions.

He was also prescient: On paper, he invented an electronic defense shield above the Earth (and later wrote the introduction for “High Frontier,” the book that inspired Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative), the water bed, the “slidewalk,” and assembly-line robotics.

“Stranger” became such a popular and enduring book, experts say, because the book’s themes of brotherly love, non-competitiveness and intellectual generosity foreshadowed to a T the Zeitgeist of its decade.

Although professors Slusser and Franklin accord Heinlein an important spot in the pantheon of 20th-Century literary greats, both concede that “Stranger” is not a particularly well-written book.

“I don’t really care for the novel,” said Slusser. “It is too windy, not controlled enough.” And yet, he said, “I think he is one of the four of five most important writers of this century. You can’t teach John Updike and not teach Heinlein.”