"Stranger In A Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein
This was an excellent book that I had never read but was always told that I had to read. Since the local library had it on CD, I couldn't pass up listening to it this weekend as I worked on turning The Picture Of Everything into a 3D lenticular. A beautiful story that can be as applicable today as it was back in the early 60's. I can definitely see how this perpetuated some of the free love hippie philosophy, and shudder to think about how many wannabe Valentine Michael Smiths this book has spawned since then. Not that I don't think the message presented here was profound, but just thinking about how many orgies were spawned by people wanting to be someone's "water brother" is not easy to grok.
Grok... I FINALLY Grok where this cultural reference comes from. I Smurf it as well.
As a messiah parable, it's one of the best I've read. Very thoughtful and forward thinking. Not much seemed dated in the nearly 50 years since its publication. Maybe the mention of a typewriter, but something tells me that even in 2010, Jubal Harshaw would probably insist that one of his secretaries writes on one. I liked Harshaw as a character and can now see he was the inspiration for Hagbard Celine.
This would be a great movie. Why hasn't anyone made it yet?
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