Stranger in a Strange Land

[pasithea]

I'm currently reading Stranger in a Strange Land at lunchtime. So far, it has out-lived in of Heinlein's books in that I've made it over 5 chapters without throwing it against the wall in contempt. Naturally, the book is self-destructing as I read it. the binding is coming apart and it's a race against entropy for me to finish reading it before it disintegrates entirely.

During today's reading, I got close to the 'throw it against a wall' point. While it isn't grating on me as bad as 'The Cat Who Walked Through Walls', every time he writes about women, I do still feel the strange urge to dig him up and punch his corpse a few times. Something about the way he writes them just irritates the heck out of me.

Perhaps I'm just more mellow or in better spirits right now because rather than hurling the book to what would surely be it's explosive demise (given the binding) I'm instead tempted to write parody of the most crapulent and common plot device in all sci-fi and fantasy movies. Or as I started calling it after it's so amazingly demonstrated in the movie Krull, "Heterosexuality Conquers All"

So far in Siasl, we have the alien Smith. Smith has never seen a female before. He therefor has to be terribly curious about them. the moment he sees her, he knows she's different from the other humans. For the first time ever, Smith discovers his penis. He has strange stirrings. He apparently never masturbated back on Mars. Without those wicked females around, his millions of years of hormonal ancestry never would have given him wood. Raised without the concept of sex, he is of course pure and virginal. She likes him, he thinks. She finds him quirky and funny. He'd never dream of sticking his love-rod in anything.

I'm sure that later in the story, they will of course fall DEEPLY in love and he'll be completely controlled by his hormonal urges and it will be MAN PROTECT WOMAN. MAN SMART. MAN POWERFUL. MAN WANT WOMAN.

Can I tell you guys just how sick to death I am of this particular story component? I mean seriously. We get it. Sci-fi wasn't cool in the 1950s and writers were destined to spend their lives masturbating and burying it in fields, all the while scorning fantasy writers because they never got a nymph out of the deal. Boohoo. Okay. Can we now please write about something interesting? I mean seriously. If you've never had sex, don't try to write about it. Better yet, if you haven't ever interacted with the opposite gender, don't try to write about them. You'll invariably make me throw your book against the wall. You know your own body pretty well. Why don't you write some gay. Or heck. Write some actual sci-fi and just skip the romantic trysts all-together. There's nothing worse than reading a book or watching a film and wanting to scream at the main character because they've just done something incredibly moronic and out of character based entirely on their sudden INTENSE LOVE for this person they only met in the previous chapter.

'kay? Thanks.

Comments

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Please tell me you've read Bill The Galactic Hero?
Harry Harrison basically doing Heterosexuality Makes You Stupid Enough To Join The Military Where Red Tape Keeps You From Conquering All.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I don't usually annotate my own books, but there is a single line--an off the cuff remark made by Heinlein's self-insertion character that forced me to grab a pen, underline the sentence and write "Misogyny" in the margin. I mean I was so pissed to read it I really did want to dig Heinline up and punch him in the teeth. Tell me if you can guess which line it is! I'll tell you if you don't guess correctly by the time you're done with the book.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that later in the story, they will of course fall DEEPLY in love and he'll be completely controlled by his hormonal urges and it will be MAN PROTECT WOMAN. MAN SMART. MAN POWERFUL. MAN WANT WOMAN.

Actually, one of my favourite parts of SIASL is one of the characters (I'm not going to tell you who) getting bitched out for having that attitude.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I always feel like there are two different Hinline's, and I got the crappy one, whereas there is a mysterious population of other commenter on his work who got someone who doesn't have the sexuality of an adolescent compulsive masturbater. Not that that makes him a bad person, but his voice in his books is that of the self proclaimed expert on everything, and it just grates me to see his obvious deficiencies presented as shooting-from-the-hip calling-it-like-it-is maverickness.

[centauress.livejournal.com]

There are.

He had two wives. One was loving, outgoing, forceful and liberal. She got her hands dirty, participated in causes, wasn't rich or connected. She worked. She also died of cancer.

His later love was a libertarian conservative of the Ann Rand K-lo variety. Well to do, and liked it that way.

His writing changed as well. Which wife do you think he was with when he wrote The Cat Who Walked Through Walls?

[frith]

Oh, God no, not Heinlein! I recently read both the Cat Who Walks through Walls and the unabridged version of Stranger in a Strange Land. I'd read the standard abridged Stranger decades ago, and reading it again a few months ago I found it no where near as good as I'd remembered it. As with the fugu in the Simpsons, it was a chore picking the Tasty Fish out from the Poison. The horror! Women depicted as children with skills over and over again. The possibility that women could have skills beyond raising kids might have been revolutionary when this was conceived (40's) and written (1960) but now the sexist foundation just pulls the whole thing under. Now I know of at least one dogmatic glacial melt denier on LJ who promotes Heinlein and Heinlein's version of gun culture as strokes of genius so there are people out there who must consider Heinlein's assessment of women to be bang on. I suspect Heinlein's widow to be one such person.