Learning thru Literature, pt. 2
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Cult-like paperback hit from the mid-sixties, originally a science fiction pulp author, one of the greats, and he spoke eloquently, frequently, about the need for personal responsibility, and was mostly a Libertarian, if memory serves, and it might not.
In its incipient stages, “pulp” science fiction was cheap and tawdry stories drawing on the success of the dime western, and that science fiction just swapped out a ray-gun for a six-shooter. Horses became space ships.
Asimov grew prodigious sideburns, Bradbury tripped the lights fantastical, L. Ron Hubbard started a cult, and Robert A. Heinlein wrote science fiction. That group of thinkers, seers, and visionaries, helped give birth to the current crop of adventures in outer space that we enjoy.
This has already been treated in popular media as Golden Age Science Fiction.
Learning thru Literature, pt. 2
I still recall a certain Libra looking at my current bookshelves, and marveling at the linear footage of Heinlein novels I had, mostly paperback, book-ended by three different copies of Stranger in a Strange Land.
I read the original paperback some year ago, as an impetuous youth, and it shaped some of my thinking. Two other novels, part of that author’s milieux, also shaped me, but it was really Stranger in a Strange Land that had the biggest impact.
I reread it several times in the intervening years, tending to find new material in the old words.
Learning thru Literature, pt. 2
The technology is dated, but the ideas and tropes hold up well. The novel is alleged to have influenced a generation, but that would be before my time. Still, intellectual curiosity led me where I am. That was one of the books that taught me about learning through literature.
