Was there a novel that helped shape your political views?
Bookworm on Jan 07 2010 at 10:19 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
A lot of people, if asked, will say that Ayn Rand’s novels were tremendously important in shaping their political viewpoints. Indeed, someone told me that Alan Greenspan cited Rand as one of his inspirations.
My question for you: Have you read any novels that have played an important role in molding your p0litical beliefs? I’m not asking about political tracts, or non-fiction books, or great speeches. I’m curious only about the impact “novels of ideas” have had on people.
Off the top of my head, one of the novels that most shaped my views was George Orwell’s 1984. His vision of a Leftist dystopia has always provided a “repression yardstick” for me. I think that 1984 works so well because it’s not just a boring polemic with some plot thrown in for decoration. Instead, it’s a dynamic story based upon a strong ideological foundation.
Interestingly, I find it impossible to think of any Leftist novel that affected me — I’ve always found them just as boring as Das Kapital itself is.
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Great question, Book.
Like you, I am a 1984 slut. I re-read it once every three or four years, mostly because I like the way Orwell exposes all totalitarians’ real motive—absolute power—as well as their contempt for language and desire to debase it until it is emptied of content—Newspeak.
But truth be told I think the most chillingly prescient dystopian novel of the 20th century was Huxley’s Brave New World. He wrote it in the late 1920s and published it in 1932, and he somehow managed to predict every component of the modern left’s vision of paradise: a world of endlessly irresponsible orgasms and manufactured joys brought about by smirking benign, holier-than-thou, know-it-all dictators. The abortion culture, the GLBT culture, the hookup culture, the ho culture, the mindless “he knows better than us, he’s an Alpha!” culture are all with us now.
Instead of Orwell’s power-obssessed apparatchik endlessly smashing his boot into a human face, imagine instead a botoxed moral cretin like Nancy Pelosi telling us our fate is to squeeze out as many climaxes as we can before our local death squad serves us notice.
Animal Farm for me. Ever since then I have hated Commies with a vengeance.
Tom Clancy’s novels have had a bad effect on me also…
The Gulag Archipeligo. Read this and you are forever changed.
Rand,Orwell, Aldus Huxley, Heinlein, Asimov, in my youth (58 now). Harry Browne, Charles Adams (Taxes for Good or Evil),were some authors who have influenced me lter in life. And the KJV Bible.
That should be later in life.
The book that had the greatest effect on me was C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra, which I read in 1967 at the age of 24, as I was beginning to question my red diaper baby indoctrination. It’s the second book in his Space Trilogy, and it’s about the birth of a new world on the planet Venus, and the opportunity to re-do the fall, this time with the hero successfully fighting the wiles of the devil and saving the world from sin. You’d think it would have had an effect on my religious beliefs, but I had been brought up to be a firm atheist and all my thinking was political, so that is how I interpreted the book at the time. The religious influence was there, but took longer to develop.
I grasped very suddenly that there was real evil in the world and that it was our duty to resist and fight it. That led to my being strongly anti-communist and supportive of America’s side in the Cold War. And then it led to my accepting that my parents’ political beliefs were dead wrong, and I began looking into all kinds of ideas. I read a lot of William Buckley (but he didn’t write fiction at the time). And you’ve recently reminded me of another author I started reading then, Helen MacInnes. I didn’t know anyone personally who was conservative, and I was very lonely trying to find my way. Her novels who gave me the sense that there was a real fight going on against evil, waged by brave people, and I felt greatly supported in my new beliefs.
For starters..
*Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
*Koestler again, The Age of Longing
*Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
*C S Lewis, That Hideous Strength
*Robert Heinlein, multiple
*Antoine de St-Exupery, Citadelle (published in English under the unfortunate title Wisdom of the Sands)
I can’t think of works of fiction that formed a specific view, but there have been times when they helped provide focus.
What comes to mind is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
In the future everyone is finally equal in every way. How is this possible? Well, the government has their hand in it for sure, and they use handicapping equipment (such as birdshot weights on strong people, and ear piercing bursts of sound on people who concentrate too much) to pull talented people back down to “normal.”
http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/2009/06/14/harrison-bergeron-by-kurt-vonnegut/
On further thought, a story that influenced me in my teen years:
The Marching Morons by CM Kornbluth
A ruthless 20th century real-estate hustler named Honest John Barlow is put into hibernation and wakes in the far future. Over-breeding by low-IQ types has dragged America down to a point at which the small cadre of intellectually capable technicians and administrators can hardly keep things going. Honest John’s Solution is to set up an advertising campaign to convince all the stupid people to go to Venus.
While I don’t agree with the solution the protagonist offers – eugenics – the story illustrates what happens when society caters to the lowest common denominators.
I’m a huge Orwell fan (if you’ve only read his novels, try his essays, too) but in fairness we should not that he *was* always a leftist, indeed a socialist.
<B>Alan Greenspan cited Rand as one of his inspirations.</b>
Why would that be surprising. He was part of her inner circle and met with her in a club like setting regularly with the others.
Hmmmm…. Two books I keep going back to? 1984 and Starship Troopers. They’re kind of like ficto-political bookends for the ‘rational anarchist’ (Oops! That’s three – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress…)
The Fountainhead, definitely — I didn’t get to Atlas Shrugged until later in life — and the Jack Ryan novels by Tom Clancy. I credit Clancy for single-handedly instilling me with a view of brave, honorable soldiers, as opposed to mouthbreathing childish soulless killers.
All of these come to mind:
Dystopias : “The Iron Heel”; “We”; “Brave New World” (most prescient as noted earlier); “Animal Farm” (barnyard dystopia); and, of course, “1984″
Pragmatic Libertarian: Heinlein (his short story “Coventry” especially) in the many
Solzhenitsyn
Rand’s “The Fountainhead”
Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Dos Passos’ “USA” trilogy
Di Donato’s “Christ in Concrete” (variously viewed as social criticism or religious or both)
Leaving me with a near knee-jerk revulsion of anything that smacks of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, statism, or groupism. As well as leading me to view the phrase “there oughta be a law” as the most vile in the English language, and “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” the one with the greatest acuity.
Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. Should be required reading for every American high schooler.
My 20-something daughter finally read it and was blown away.
I would say that people have shaped my political views the most.
<a href=”http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2010/01/go-directly-to-jail-women-are-worst.html”>Link</a>
Books gave me ideas, but what I did with them came from the image I saw, the ideal of what could be.
You all are a very well-read crowd. I realize how averse I’ve been to reading so many of those books. Growing up, as I did, in liberal land (San Francisco schools, UC Berkeley), I was taught to hate the classics by the heavy-handed Marxist approach to teaching. I was also taught to fear books reviling totalitarianism, because I was warned they were “bad” and “boring.” Small wonder, then, that my reading is often confined to non-fiction and easy junk. My liberal arts education managed to erase all real liberality from my brain.
You can find a lot of useful and true things in the non-classics. But often they aren’t American in origin. The ones that are, are fictional accounts, like David Weber or Brandon Sanderson.
The foreign works are Japanese or otherwise. You might like Louis L’Armor’s work.
He wrote about frontier conditions, with men exemplifying protectors as well as scholars.
Is Road to Serfdom a novel?
Heinlein, especially Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Beyond This Horizon, Starship Troopers.
Rand, especially The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, although I increasingly see Atlas Shrugged as a Bildungsroman rather than primarily political.
L Neil Smith, eg, The Probability Broach, although more as a what-if than serious political philosophy.
Steinbeck, East of Eden.
Four plus decades ago, in a Politics class my freshman year in high school, I read Solzhinytsin’s (whatever) A Day In the Life of Ivan Denosivitch. That convinced me that the Soviet system was evil. When later in the year I did a “term paper” – in quotes because much was plagiarized from various sources (in spite of having spent 6 weeks in English class that year on how to do a term paper)- on Soviet agriculture, I was convinced that Soviet agriculture was incompetent.
The following year I read 1984. I haven’t read it since, but will follow Charles and try to reread it this year.
I will go off-thread and mention a non-fiction book. Many moons ago,within several days of arriving in Venezuela to work, I purchased Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario by the Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel. ( Published in English as The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship With the United States). I have reread the book 4-5 times over the years. It put into words my gut observations about Latin America: contrary to the “progressive” catechism recited in US universities, Latin America’s problems are for the most part a consequence of its culture and history, and not what the Yanquis have allegedly done. The book cured me of anti-anti-Communism.
Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Robert Heinlein, many novels
I suppose Heinlein had the greatest impact, as I discovered him at an early age. Reading One Day in grade school also made a great impression.
“Heinlein, especially Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Beyond This Horizon, Starship Troopers.”
Yes, but his juveniles were also very influential, and years before I encountered the ones you cite–not only for his libertarian philosophy, his faith in individuals and distrust of bureaucracy, but his non-elitist viewpoint in which people (and aliens) in all walks of life were portrayed with respect and sympathy.
I didn’t cite 1984 and The Road to Serfdom because I didn’t encounter the former until high school and the latter until years after college. (Libertarian philosophies were ignored by my professors and it wasn’t until later that I discovered that those eeevil libertarians were saying very different things than the lefties claimed they said.)
1984, Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead and Animal Farm were the books.
The real impact on shaping my views was my father. He was a political junkie, who took key news stories and personal events in his own life to explain to a 15 year old how governmental decisions effect our lives. As far back as 1960 he advised me not to concern myself with Russia, they would not be the real threat to America.
His rhetorical question, Did you know that the government pays farmers not to grow wheat, still rings in my ears.
Like many above, I was most influenced by “1984″ and “Brave New World”. No points for originality but hard to improve on perfection. (A relative just gave my middle son a futuristic, political novel by Huxley that I had previously not heard of: “Island”. Since he hasn’t read it, it’s going on my stack of unread books.)
A close third for me was Robert Bolt’s “Man for All Seasons”. I have always admired St. Thomas More. Recently re-read it; I just picked up Hilary Mantel’s highly acclaimed novel, “Wolf Hall”, about More’s Reformation bete noire, Thomas Cromwell. (I tend to bracket subjects with diametrically opposing viewpoints.) There are respectable historians who loathe More and take delight in debunking his persona — there is a bit of sneering adolescent in all of us, I suppose.
Leftist novels that influenced me? Hmmm…never really thought of it in those terms. Plenty of novels that critic the bourgeoisie, though — perhaps oblique politically speaking, but it might qualify. Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”. Sinclair Lewis’ novels “Babbitt”, “Main Street”, “Arrowsmith”, and the rest had a big influence on me as a teenager. I am as midwestern as they come and it reading them made me simultaneously laugh and wince at the self-recognition of life in a small town. It amazed me then as it does now that folkways and foibles could persist unchanged for a century.
The biggest non-fiction influence was Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”, which reads like a novel and which I read on my own time in college. (It was NEVER assigned to me as a history major, but if it had been, I can safely say that I would have found a way to ignore it via procrastination.) The inexorable rhythm of Gibbon’s prose and his supremely urbane irony could not help but make me feel that Catholicism was not only pernicious but ridiculous. Years later I did well to recall Bacon’s aphorism about atheism and learning.
Thank you above for mentioning Robert Heinlein. I’ve never read him but clearly need to start. Which reminds me of the “Humiliation” game played in the wickedly funny academic novels by David Lodge (“Changing Places”, etc. — he delights in skewering political correctness, along with literary theory), in which a bunch of academics sit around naming great books that they haven’t read. The winner (loser) is a schmuck of an English professor who confesses to never having read “Hamlet”. Not a mortal sin, unless you have to teach it!
Book @ #17:
I read a wonderful lead sentence by Peter Berkowitz: ”The traditional aim of a liberal arts education is the formation of individuals fit for freedom.”
Perhaps the thought is overly obvious but it struck me with the force of revelation in its clarity and simplicity.
Berkowitz is a political philosopher at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He has his own website. This sentence was taken from a review of “The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University” by Louis Menand.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/72828147.html
Animal Farm, for helping to form – and Witness by Whittaker Chambers for corroberating, I guess.
Before I was a Christian, in the early sixties I owned a business — and could see the creeping Socialism beginning to subvert my Capitalist ideas and liberal laws that could eventually destroy my business and family.
On recommendation from a friend, I read The Law by Frederic Bastiat. What a wonderful Capitalist essay! I recommended it to all my friends. It is a short “must read” for all Americans and especially Conservatives.
Now, as a Christian, I read and study the KJV Bible but find The Law is still relevant and not at all contradictory to The Bible or my beliefs.
Note: I say The KJV Bible because it is the easiest to research and other versions seem to subvert the words and meanings of the oldest original documents.
“A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. The all-powerful state that infantilizes it’s citizens, then leaves them as prey for the violent members of society.
ExPreacherMan, do you think the Bible is a novel? Or has the subject of this thread changed?
Whoops! “Novel” Right! My bad…I second the vote for Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange”. Not sure if it’s a novel or a travelogue through Britain today, though.
A couple of Heinlein stories which are politically thought-provoking… “Logic of Empire” is about a colony on Venus where the labor is provided by indentured servants. A well-to-do lawyer (who is a shareholder in the company that operates the colony) is arguing with a friend about whether the laborers are de facto slaves. To prove they are not, he signs *himself* up as a contract worker (after a few drinks), confident that he can easily save enough money to repay his enlistment bonus and transportation and return to earth. It turns out to be a lot harder than he thought… Although Heinlein is generally thought of as a libertarian writer, this story could be read as a cautionary tale about the limits of freely-chosen contractual relationships. “Tunnel in the Sky” is about a group of high school students sent to a distant planet for their final exam in a survival class. Technical problems strand them there–as far as they know, forever–and they are faced with the problem of creating a society/government from scratch. This book came out about the same time as Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” but embodies a very different view of human nature.
Judy,
Sorry ’bout the messing with the thread — but you are right, the Bible is not a novel.. but interesting reading for anyone. The Law probably would not qualify either… but both books changed my way of thinking.. and that was part of the thread. I pray no one was offended.
ExPreacherman - Thanks! I’ve added The Law to my wish list at Amazon just in time for my birthday next week.
Not offended in the least. I’m just picky. Of course, the Bible is full of great stories, so maybe it should count anyway.
Judy,
The Bible is not a novel nor is it fiction stories but History and Truth. It will change a person who pays attention.
Marguerite,
It is a small, easy to read book.. you will like it.
ExPreacherMan, I think Marguerite asked her question, not because she hasn’t read the Bible (I bet she has), but because my post was seeking information about novels. Including the Bible in this list made it appear as if you were treating the Bible as fiction — which is ironic, because you are the last person to do so. My best guess, therefore, is that she was just clarifying things, not challenging them.
Book,
No problem, maybe I stuck my nose — ‘er keyboard into a thread where it was inappropriate.. Not intentional.
Maybe you can add it/them to a thread “Books that Made a Difference.”
No worries, ExPreacherMan. When the threads really start wandering, it’s a little hard to keep track of the original point. And yours is a very good idea for a new post thread about books.
It seems there is a common theme running through this thread with 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm and Rand.
Add in a dose of Heinlein and you have the makings of a libertarian at least.
I would add several Vonnegut stories to the list (“The Handicapper General”) and “Lord of the Flies” as influential.
I wonder what liberals grew up with?
And of course, The Hardy Boys, The Sugarcreek Gang and the Danny Orlis series.
What’s interesting about Vonnegut is that, as artist, he was a libertarian (and “Harrison Bergeron” was brilliant), but politically he died an arch liberal. This reminds me of a long ago article I did for American Thinker, in which I posited (correctly as it turned out) that J. K. Rowling was a knee jerk political liberal, but that her massively popular novels were highly conservative in ideology. Sometimes artists don’t even understand their own work.
Book,
I would disagree with you about Rowling’s work being Conservative. I know of no Conservative who endorses or dabbles in witchcraft.. But I don’t live in SF.
I did read and like 1984 – A friend made a comment upon the election and re-election of Reagan “Well 1984 is not the end of civilization as we thought it would be as inferred in the book, 1984.” I say now, the book could be titled “Obama World 2009/2010/2011/2012.” Uggggg.
ExPreacherMan, Rowling didn’t write her books for the purpose of advocating witchcraft. It’s part of the setting of the stories, the way Oz books are set in the magic land of Oz. Only there’s a lot more depth to her vision than L. Frank Baum’s.
Also, Bookworm, I asked the question about the Bible, not Marguerite. I know I’m new here but I’d still prefer not to be mixed up with someone else.
Sorry about that, Judy. When I suggested that ExPreacherMan might have gotten lost in a long thread, I was clearly describing my own confusion!
In any event, I’m always delighted when new people join the discussion here so: WELCOME!
Thanks, Bookworm. Someone sent me your Apres le Deluge post a few days ago and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Thank you so much, Judy. I think you’ll discover that, even when I’m off my game, the community here is invariably scintillating, interesting and informed.
The novel that really helped to form my political views is one that is obscure outside of libertarian circles L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach. I loved it at 16 when I first read it, and continue to love it today. And while I do not buy into the extreme libertarianism of its author, it did help shape my views towards a more libertarian approach to politics and government.
Rand and Heinlein, of course. Rand’s fiction is Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. No one has mentioned Anthem – it’s very short and now that I’ve thought for a few minutes while reading all the comments, it seems to have elements in common with Harrison Bergeron although there’s nothing obviously similar.
Heinlein: I’d go with the obvious ones, I guess. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and my all-time favorite is Citizen of the Galaxy which is about duty, honor, and slavery.
I read all the Allen Drury novels when I was a kid – they were all around the house, starting with Advise and Consent.
Niven & Pournelle: Inferno and Lucifer’s Hammer.
F Paul Wilson: The Select is very pertinent to health care, IIRC.
J Neil Schulman: The Rainbow Cadenza is about self-0wnership and slavery and uses gender imbalance – too many boys and not enough girls – as a starting point.
Tom Sharpe, particularly The Throwback which is all about property rights and screamingly funny. His South African novels are funny too: Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure. Wilt, which takes on modern British education is another funny one.
It’s wonderful to see how the books of ideas excited so many of Book’s readers here.
For me, the books were more influential the earlier in my youth I read them.
The earliest were Alexander Key’s “alien children lost on earth” books, “The Forgotten Door” and “Escape To Witch Mountain”. Thrillingly written adventures for young teenagers. As novels of ideas, they were mostly liberal, though. So my earliest influences, for “ideas”, was negative! (Except for a hatred of government bureaucrats, who always did harm – one positive effect
Later in high school I ran across Robert Heinleins novels for juveniles. My personal favorite was ‘The Rolling Stones’, an uproarous adventure of an eccentric family in space. I absorbed every life lesson Heinlein put in that book for his great teenage twin protagonists, Castor and Pollux. Along with several others of his books, that book redirected me towards libertarianism and personal responsibility and individual freedom and liberty. You could say Heinlein “saved me” by breaking me out of the liberal mold. There’s no better author for molding the mindset of young teenagers. Do these books work as well for teenage girls as teenage boys? I’d like to know.
Later in college, Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ turned me into a raging libertarian for a short while. I was captivated by the mystery that she constructed, and by the plot, though I admit she’s not at all a writer of elegant, flowing prose. (You don’t read her for “prose appreciation”!) But I’ve always loved apocalyptic stories, and I’ve always loved a great mystery, and Atlas Shrugged is definitely a great mystery set in the middle of an apocalyptic collapse. That’s why it hooked me into its ideas more than the Fountainhead ever did – I didn’t find the Fountainhead’s plot dramatic enough, though I think the writing is better.
Finally, Ken Follett’s “The Pillars Of The Earth” can only be described as Middle Ages entrepreneurs desperately fighting against the corrupt and evil entrenched powers-that-be, winning fight after fight after fight, and along the way improving the lives of all the people around them. And most of these fights are philosophical in nature, and expose the benefits of markets, competition, profit, quality, etc. Along with the life lesson of persevering through obstacles no matter what, I think its ideas are stunningly great. Strange, coming from a man, Ken Follett, who describes himself as a socialist. There’s not a hint of positive socialism in that book!
Aside from those early Alexander Keys books, I can’t recall any “liberal ideas” books influencing me, so I’m unsure why I stayed a liberal through most of my life until 9-11. I’m a voracious reader, so I can only suppose that the thousands of books I read contained a constant, drip-drip-drip of soft, liberal mindset that kept me well-programmed until the shock of 9-11 shattered the cocoon. I’d been well-prepared along the way by a few great conservative/traditional ideas books, however, so I think I had “fertile soil” prepared but lying dormant in my head, just waiting for the rebirth.
Mike Devx, I’m just listening to The Pillars of the Earth on audio, after listening to its sequel, World Without End. Like you I’ve been struck by how clearly both books show the lessons of the free market and the obstacles entrepreneurs face from entrenched interests. I don’t remember who pointed out that many people are liberal in principle, but almost everyone is conservative when it comes to their own field, or one they know intimately, because reality is conservative.
It may not fit well with this thread, but I have to express my gratitude for a book that really caught my fancy as a young girl and in many ways set the tone for my reading interests (and political philosophy) ever since. It was a book written for pre-teen girls called “A Touch of Magic”. I probably was about 11 when I read it. It took place during the Revolutionary War and the main character was a teenage girl named Hannah, who of course fell in love with a soldier in the Continental Army. The book also featured the “frivolous” Shipman sisters and their relation to Benedict Arnold. Hannah was a daring young woman who got involved in the fight for independence. The story captured the bravery of the colonists and the true suffering they endured to earn our liberty. All written for a pre-teen girls but that book lead to many others - as I wanted to learn more about that time period which lead me to other books (a domino effect up to the present day!). I love history books, biographies of those who have contributed to our liberty, and any philosopher/writer who discusses the attributes and preservation of a free society. My arguments with liberal teachers, professors . . . all started with that book I innocently picked up while in grade school.
I think Starship Troopers was important to me. This was before Robert Heinlein slid into the ‘Free Love’ years and got weird. His early fiction was full of personal responsibility, standing up to tyranny, and a love of Liberty. It’s Science Fiction, but his main characters eschew conformity, seek personal freedom.
If nothing else, he, like Louis L’Amour, writes enjoyable yarns.
I recommend L’Amour’s Sackett series. Excellent tale spinning.
Uh Oh,
Benning — you mention Heinlein’s slip into “Free Love.” An hour ago I sent an email to my daughter recommending his novel, ‘The Rolling Stones’ to my liberal-leaning 15 year old grandson.. “Free Love” is not something I wish to recommend to him..I think he gets enough of that in his United Nations sponsored High School.
Can someone ease my mind about The Rolling Stones?
In Christ, ExP(Jack)
[...] He told me to ask people I respect what novels helped form their political beliefs. So, I asked you all that question yesterday. Your answers stunned me. First off, they reminded me again of what I already knew: you are [...]
PreacherMan…IIRC, “Rolling Stones” doesn’t have any sex in it, it features a couple of the least-horny male teenagers in the history of the universe.
Thanks David, that info helps…
ExPreacherMan,
“The Rolling Stones” is an early 50′s book, when Heinlein was writing “juvenovels” for teenage boys. Every single one of those books, I think, can be recommended. I recommended “The Rolling Stones” because I fell in love with the Stone family and their adventure. I still reread that book these days for enjoyment. I recommend EVERYTHING by Heinlein up into the mid-50′s as great for teenagers. After the mid-50′s, caution is recommended.
Heinlein began to get a little more serious in the mid 50′s with books such as ‘Citizen of the Galaxy’. They’re still very, very good, but they are darker and more serious reads.
With ‘Starship Troopers’, ‘Glory Road’, and ‘Podkayne’ Heinlein is moving into adult fare in 1959 and the early 1960′s. Those three remain acceptable for teenagers, I think. ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ is a great book, but it’s his first purely adult book, and while written relatively early (1961), it is the precursor to all of the adult free-love books that he began to focus on in the late 60′s.
Starting with ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, and everything thereafter, Heinlein is writing for adults. Aside from Farnham’s Freehold, Podkayne, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, he is giving his ‘Free Love’ philosophy, well, free rein. So for the young-uns, stick with the Heinlein books from 1959 and back, and 1955-back is best.
Thanks Mike…
I’ll take your and David’s advice.