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Seth is joined by Jonathan Watkins from Cinema Sins, to discuss the 1962 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Stranger in A Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hugospodcast
Time Codes:
| Start – 10:08 | Intro/getting to know my guest |
| 10:09 – 30:50 | Non-Spoiler discussion |
| 30:51 – end | Spoiler discussion |
Links:
Cinema Sins: https://cinemasins.com/
Jonathan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/samloomis13
Behind the Sins Twitter: https://twitter.com/CinemaSinsBTS
TV Sins Twitter: https://twitter.com/tvsins1
Notes & Mentions:
Brother from Another Planet
Being There
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan
Starman
Arrival
This was a fun episode, thanks for doing it. The book isn’t one of my personal favorite but it’s definitely and interesting cultural artifact. I’m surprised that when you were naming similar works nobody brought up A Case of Conscience.
A few things I wanted to point out:
I looks like both versions are still in print. If you have the uncut version it probably says so on the cover, but if you’re not sure which version you have just look at the second sentence. The version that was originally published reads:
“The first human expedition to Mars was selected on the theory that the greatest danger to man was man himself.”
The uncut version reads:
“The first human expedition to Mars was selected on the theory that the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.”
Heinlein said that if somebody picked Stranger, Starship Troopers, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as their three favorite of his books then they had “groked what I wrote.”
This was by far the longest Hugo winner, or even nominee, up to this point, wasn’t it? Actually I think it’s easily the longest book to come out of the science fiction market up to this point (by “the market” I mean the field spawned by the SF magazines and ’50s paperbacks). Am I forgetting anything?
I definitely have the cut version. And it’s definitely a much linger book than most of the preceding winners. Cantlicle wasn’t short, but it wasn’t close to 500 pages.
Glad you enjoyed it! Nice to hear from you again. I’d meant to check back on your new podcast adventures. Is that all going well?
Sorry, I totally got you mixed up with Joe Lewis, who was my guest for Startide Rising. Please disregard the question about podcasting. Unless, of course, you’re a podcaster and you want to tell me about it. 🙂
Folks ask why Heinlein depicted women in such a regressive way? For the time he was pushing the boundary toward where we are today. Remember his work was published in a time heavily influenced by WWII and the resulting make shortage. I think this led to specific gender roles being reinforced. It is more profitable to examine where historic differences came from than to complain about the folks of the past.
I agree it’s easy to only view authors of the past through the lens of today. It really is better to judge them in their historical context.