Out of foreign ground

Out of foreign ground (original title: Stranger in has Strange Land ) is a Romance of Science-fiction, written in 1961 by Robert A. Heinlein (the United States).

Argument

At the time of the first human space mission for Mars, the spaceship Envoy carries on its board eight scientists, men and women. It will be able to never return on Earth. A few tens of years later, the Earth sends over Mars the federal ship Champion with a crew of forty and one men. It is the Champion which remene on Earth Valentine Michael Smith, the last survivor of the mission Envoy which was high during several years by the Martians. The arrival of “the Man of Mars” on Earth creates sensation.

Presentation of work

Out of foreign ground is a novel of Science-fiction of Robert A. Heinlein, published with the the United States in 1961, then in France in 1970. The original title of the novel, Stranger in has Strange Land is a quotation of Moïse in the Bible, drawn from the Exode, 2:22. Stranger (the “emigrant” in the French oecumenical translation) is the English transcription of the Hebrew “Guershom” (guer sham = " foreigner là-bas"), name which Moïse and Séphora give to their son.

Work is dedicated to Robert Cornog (a friend of Heinlein during the war, engineer chief of the Projet Manhattan), Fredric Brown and Philip Jose Farmer, two writers of Science-fiction.

Robert A. Heinlein spent ten years to write his novel. He declared thereafter: “ I was by no means in a hurry to finish this novel, because the history could not be published commercially before manners of the public did not change. I live indeed mentalities to evolve/move and it appeared that I had correctly programmed the exit of my book. ”

At its exit in 1961, this novel was a true best-seller, making come to the Science-fiction from the readers who were not sensitive there hitherto. By the topics which it approaches, this work exerted a major influence on the thought of the counter-culture of the years 1970. The novel Out of foreign ground knew 19 successive American editions and 4 audio versions (cassette or CD) between 1961 and 2003.

Two concurrent versions

The editors of Robert A. Heinlein required of the author that it make broad cuts and that it withdraws a scene with the sexual contents of most explicit of his manuscript. Robert A. Heinlein worked with the rehandling of his manuscript during the winter 1960-1961. Of the 220.000 words of the original version only one expurgée version of 160.000 words remained which was published in 1961. It is only into 1988 that his wife, Virginia Heinlein, found an editor for the original version of the novel which left finally to the United States in 1991.

Structure of work

If the novel is formally cut out in five parts and thirty-nine chapters which tell the great chronological stages of the existential advance of the hero Valentine Michael Smith, the narrative context of the account is divided into two shutters.

First as an aim the combat of the protagonists against the fraudulent schemes of the government of the Federation has - sequestration of the hero until the nomination of the general secretary as administrator of his goods - (Left 1 and 2).

The second gives up the legal and political context to approach a religious set of themes and to imagine the possible starter of a utopian revolution of manners - since the first visit of the Man of Mars to the Church fosterist until the creation of the Church of All the Worlds - (Left 3,4 and 5).

Style

The style, always sharp and full with humor, alternate between the description of the many adventures of the protagonists and the long philosophical tirades of the character called Jubal E. Harshaw on the life, the world, the company, philosophy, the religion, the love, the money, art, etc the encyclopedic knowledge of the character makes it possible his author to tackle about all the subjects. Certain American commentators saw there reminiscences of the realistic style of Mark Twain.

Kind

The novel - which tells the initiatory course of a Man come from Mars which discovers human civilization - holds at the same time of the Bildungsroman (or novel of formation) and of the philosophical test.

If the novel develops a futuristic environment suitable for the kind of the Science-fiction (the taxis fly, controlled by a human driver or simply automated, the communications are made by videophone, the doors dilate, etc), it can also call upon a register more fantastic and humorous, for example when, in the second part of the novel, the word is given to the late bishops of the Church fosterist who became angels with the Paradise.

Presence of the author

Some American critics saw in Jubal E. Harshaw, this character of sarcastic misanthropist, but strong graduate, the spokesperson of the ideas of Robert A. Heinlein in the novel.

One can also note that in the novel Jubal E. Harshaw is an author of popular stories to success, written with the chain on the basis of narrative diagram agreed and published in the press or diffused on the radio waves. Perhaps an ironic wink at the proper beginnings of the author in the popular press of the pulp magazines American .

Complete summary

Chronology of the events

At the time of the first human space mission about Mars, the vessel Envoy carries on its board eight scientists, men and women, who will never return on Earth. A few tens of years later, the Earth sends over Mars the federal ship Champion with a crew of forty and one men. It is the Champion which brings back on Earth Valentine Michael Smith , the last survivor of the mission Envoy which was high during years by the Martians. Very weak, suffering physically from terrestrial gravity, it is immediately transferred under good guard in a room from hospital. While the High council of the Federation takes a decision on his case, the press tries the impossible one to come into contact with the “Man of Mars” and to secure the exclusiveness in its interviews.

Ben Caxton , journalist with the Post , contacts the nurse Gillian Boardman . He explains to him why Mike, the Man of Mars, is the heir to an immense fortune, big parts of the Lunar Enterprises of her father and, especially, that he could even be regarded as the single legal owner of the planet Mars. Ben Caxton, persuaded that the government tries to extort the goods of Mike, succeeds in convincing Gillian Boardman to help it. The nurse then places a tape recorder in a room contiguous to that of the Man of Mars and Ben Caxton uses the bands thus recorded to write corrosive articles on the fraudulent schemes and without scruples of the government.

When Gillian Boardman notes that the Man of Mars that the general secretary Joseph Edgerton Douglas presents on television is an impostor, she contacts Ben Caxton. The journalist decides to have the heart Net of it and goes to the hospital accompanied by his lawyer and a “Right Witness” to irreproachable objectivity. Shortly after their visit, the Man of Mars is allegedly transferred in another hospital and Ben Caxton is removed by the special services of police force. Anxious on the prolonged absence of the journalist, Gill Boardman decides to make leave Mike the hospital under a disguise of woman. When the police force finds them in the residence of the journalist where they had taken refuge, Mike reveals her strange capacity: it can make disappear from the people or the objects by the only force of its will. After the dispartion of Gilbet Berquist , the agent of the general secretary, and policemen which accompanied it, the two fugitive ones leave finally to Pennsylvania at Jubal E. Harshaw , a friend of confidence of the journalist Ben Caxton.

Jubal E. Harshaw decides to help the two fugitive ones. The old lawyer and doctor acariâtre deal with the human education of the Man of Mars. Thanks to him, Mike learns how to read and devours soon the Encyclopedia britannica . During this time, Gillian Boardman discusses with Harshaw the means of finding Ben Caxton who disappeared. While Mike approaches the reading of William Shakespeare or Casanova and discovers the human joys of the kiss, the police force lands in the garden of the property of Jubal E. Harshaw to stop Mike and Gillian. Hidden at the bottom of the swimming pool, Mike makes disappear body and heart the police force.

At a meeting at the top with the most important politicians of planet, Jubal E. Harshaw succeeds in introducing Mike like the official ambassador of Mars and protecting the rights of Mike per contract, making of the Douglas general secretary his appointed administrator. In exchange, the general secretary makes release the journalist Ben Caxton. Jubal takes along then the man of Mars to the Church fosterist which invited it to assist with the one their ceremonies with large spectacle.

After a maintenance deprived with the bishop Digby who it finally makes disappear, Mike returns to Jubal E. Harshaw, thinks of the concepts of God and religion and discovers the physical love with Gillian. The two lovers leave then Pennsylvania. They are integrated during a time into a troop the open ones and earn their living with turns of magic thanks to the psychic gifts of Mike. Their telepathic bond is reinforced and their sexual experiment still grows rich with the meeting by Patricia Paiwonski . They leave then the open medium and are based in the mass of the players of Las Vegas where Mike uses her kinesthetic capacities to gain with the play while studying the motivations of the customers of the casinos. After Las Vegas, Jill and Mike move towards Palo Alto, then towards San Francisco. Locked up in a library, Mike devours the books of the great land religions there: Talmud, the Book of dead the Tibetan, etc It is when it accompanies Jill in a zoo, by seeing fighting monkeys, that Mike includes/understands finally the social role of the laughter and her intimate bond with the human suffering. It then decides to remove the pain of the world by creating its own church: the “church of All the Worlds”, explicitly oecumenical and universal.

With the growing success of her Church which authorizes and encourages all the sexual intercourse, Mike is also made many enemies, among whom the bishop Short of the Church fosterist - which publicly treats it of Antichrist - and the Maffia New Yorkean which does not appreciate that it gains with all the blows in his clandestine gambling dens and casinos. Mike is consequently made regularly stop by the police force for incentive with the vice or under the blow of individual complaints. When the large Temple of the Church of All the Worlds burns in a fire in the doubtful beginning, Jubal E. Harshaw which did not have any more a news of the Man of Mars decides to go to New York to join Mike there. After having redécouvert the joys of its youth and the pleasures of the physical love in spite of its great age, Jubal E. Harshaw gives up its posture néo-pessimist to also convert him with the Church of All the Worlds.

When an unchained crowd piles up with the foot of the building where the persons in charge of the Church of All the Worlds reside to protest against the message obsene which according to them the Church of the Man of Mars diffuses, Mike decides to face her destiny and goes down to face crowd and the media which became to him hostile. Mike, insulted and decried by crowd, dies in martyrdom under the blows of baited opponents, but without never ceasing repeating “Oh my brothers, I love you so much. ”

Valentine Michael Smith

Valentine Michael Smith was raised by the Martians. The only force of its will and its psychism enables him to model its body, to use the Télékinésie and to make disappear with its liking the people or the objects which he considers “bad”.

Mike does not support the strong emotions, not having learned how to live them like the human ones. It is withdrawn then in a kind of body paralysis, moving away its spirit from reality in order to protect itself from its emotions.

Mike is not afraid of death, is delighted some on the contrary, because it is for him only the passage at a later stage, that of Old of Mars. Like any Martian, Mike is cannibal and considers the body as food which it is a question of not wasting.

On Mars, water is an invaluable food product which is found in the middle of crowned rites of the Martians. Thus the “division of water” (the fact of drinking a little water in the same container) is for Mike a ritual which binds two people of a indéfectible friendship. Two people who divided water are then “brothers of water”. The first two water brothers of the novel are Mike and Gillian Boardman.

Martians

The Martians are born in nests. After having been an egg, the young Martian transforms himself into nymph. For their period of training, because of their rather turbulent character, much of nymphs die and those which survive are then fertilized by the adult Martians. Once they laid their eggs, the nymphs are transformed into adults. All the Martian nymphs are female, while all the adult Martians are male. The adult males are enormous, physically passive and mentally credits, while the female nymphs are covered fatty spheres of fur, full with energy, but stripped of thought. At the ultimate stage, the adults leave their body envelope to become the Old ones. The body of late is then eaten by his/her water brothers.

If they are not really quarrelsome, the Martians however destroyed a whole civilization, that of old fifth planet of the solar system. The Martians know neither the money, nor the property. The art of the Martians is divided into two categories: that of the adults, vigorous, primitive and often revolutionist and that of Old, conservative and complex.

Main characters

Anne , one of the three private secretaries of Jubal E. Harshaw, certified like “Right Witness”;
Burning Paddle , stripper, member of the Church fosterist, then large priestess of the Church of All the Worlds;
Gillian Boardman , called Jill , nurse, mistress, then large priestess of Valentine Michael Smith;
Gilbert Berquist , henchman of the Douglas general secretary;
C.D. Bloch , major of the Special services sent to stop the Man of Mars and Gillian Boardmann at Jubal E. Harshaw;
Senator Boone , politicking Christian, guide of the Man of Mars at the time of his visit of the Church fosterist;
Captain Michael Brant , ordering Envoy , father of Valentine Michael Smith;
James Oliver Cavendish , “Right Witness” convened by Ben Caxton to uncover the impostor who is made pass for the Man of Mars;
Ben Caxton , journalist of the Post , friend of Gillian Boardman;
Daniel Digby , doctor reverend, supreme bishop of the Church fosterist of the New Revelation;
Dorcas , one of the three private secretaries of Jubal E. Harshaw;
Joseph Edgerton Douglas , general secretary of the world Federation of the free States;
Agnes Douglas , influential woman of the Douglas general secretary, impassioned astrology;
Duke , factotum of Jubal E. Harshaw, large amateur and collector of pornographic photographs;
Mark Frisby , lawyer of Ben Caxton;
Jubal E. Harshaw , scholar misanthropist and sarcastic, paternalist and eccentric, arts doctor, doctor of medicine and doctor in right, gourmet, sybarite, revolutionary amateur, parasitic by vocation, professional clown, popular author of exception and philosopher néo-pessimist, who lives in the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania;
Heinrich , chief of the Special services sent to stop the Man of Mars and Gillian Boardmann at Jubal E. Harshaw;
Reverend “Jug” Jackermann , reverend fosterist, organizer, musician, man of scene, former American football player;
Kung , leader of the Eastern Coalition;
Larry , factotum of Jubal E. Harshaw;
Doctor Mary-Jane Lyle-Smith , atomic scientist, embarked on board the Envoy , mother of Valentine Michael Smith;
Thomas Mackenzie , director of the television network New World ;
Doctor Mahmoud , linguist and semantician Moslem, able to speak Martian, member of the mission of the Champion ;
Myriam , one of the three private secretaries of Jubal E. Harshaw, future woman of Doctor Mahmoud;
Doctor Sven Nelson , first doctor in charge of the medical monitoring of the Man of Mars;
Patricia Paiwonski , completely tattooed Irish catholic, follower of the Church fosterist, phenomenon of fair, owner of a boa;
Wilhelm van Tromp , Netherlander, soldier, captain of the Champion ;
James Sanforth , agent of press of the Douglas general secretary:
Alexandra Vesant , pseudonym of Becky Vesey, astrologer appointed of the general secretary Agnes friendly Douglas and large of Jubal E. Harshaw;
Becky Vesey , civil identity of Alexandra Vesant;

Comments

A new glance on the american company

Valentine Michael Smith, human raised by the Martians, is a character shifted who allows his author, Robert A. Heinlein, to put in prospect the Occidental culture as a whole, as well in his bases Judeo-Christians as in his social operation. All the course of the main character is placed under the sign of a discovery naive and curious about this “New world” in which it is however originating.

Playing of the naivety of his character and frankness of his questionings, Robert A. Heinlein puts in prospect - or calls into question - aspects for the american company or more generally Western as varied as the fear of death, the love, the taboos sexual, the place of the desire, the bad conscience, the religion, the property, the money, the place of legal violence, etc Valentine Michael Smith is thus this foreign body which plays the part of revealing of the dysfunctions shouting of a company which is sclerosed, right before the explosion of the movement hippie.

Peace and Coils

The novel of Robert A. Heinlein develops two sets of themes which will have a great importance for the Cultural revolution of the years 1970:

the love like fundamental value and universal of the human relations, importance of the physical love, the valorization of the desire without taboos - which are almost set up in religious dogma and;
the refusal of any violence.

In this last field, the author forces the feature: the “special services” of the federal government are ironically abréviés S (an evocation undoubtedly possible of the militia Nazis) and the two police officers introduced in the novel bear names to Germanic consonance: Heinrich for the first, and Bloch for the second. In addition, Mike, the hero, will associate violence spontaneously, the weapons and the forces militarized with the absolute evil and will simply make them disappear by the simple force from its psychism.

Thus sees one stinging with the wire of the novel the creed of the hippie generation which opposes these two set of themes-keys: “ Peace and Coils ” and “ Faites the love, not the war ”.

Critical of the State and role of the press

The first two parts of the novel put in scene a vast political machination intended to extort from the Man of Mars the whole of its goods. Robert A. Heinlein utilizes and to interact the executive power (Douglas), the repressive capacity (Berquist and the police force), the judicial power (with lawyer and the “Right Witness” of Ben Caxton) and presses it investigation (with Ben Caxton). Schematically, the fraudulent projects of the government which misuses its repressive capacity are thwarted by the press of investigation which tries to be surrounded by all the possible legal guarantees to conclude its investigation. This political configuration would anticipate almost sadly celebrates business of the Watergate which will défraiera the American chronicle in 1972.

If the operation of the government is denounced by the press, the character of the journalist Ben Caxton is not stopped and sequesters less by it by the police force without the agreement of the chief of the government of the Federation. Robert A. Heinlein less seems to denounce the abuse of power in itself that what makes it possible, namely the interminable chain of the political intermediaries which fits between the population and her top-ranking executives. The long development of the character called Jubal E. Harshaw thus blames the too important weight of the lobbies, of the advisers and of the semi-official political circles, quoting with the envi celebrates it passage of the “climénoles” in the Gulliver's Travels of Jonathan Swift and throwing a bridge between the England of the XVIIIe century and the the United States of XXe. For Jubal E. Harshaw, the democratic system in itself, if it is far from being perfect, is however the least evil and must be maintained.

Critical of the religion

Robert A. Heinlein devotes the three last parts of his novel to the religion. He imagines and presents to the reader a new religion, more modern, adapted to an economic world and new policy: the Church of the New Revelation, rested by the Foster bishop.

The Church fosterist uses of all the means at its disposal to allure the new faithful ones: the streap-tease, the concerts, the show business , of the settings in scene kitsch with cherubs, etc from an economic standpoint, the Church fosterist is an effective example of business enterprise with the search for patrons, the diffusion of advertisements between two sermons, the partnership with a mark of large surface which guarantees the exclusiveness in its sales to him, with the opening of casinos, the sale of memories and the availability of faithful of many machines to under.

From the point of view of the dogma, the principles of the Church fosterist derive from the Christian Bible, but integrate the discoveries of the psychoanalysis freudienne on human sexuality: the body and sexuality are rehabilitated there.

The politicking methods of Égise fosterist are on the other hand the critical sharp target on behalf of Robert A. Heinelin/Jubal E. Harshaw throughout the account. Intolerance with respect to the other confessions, the muscular recruitment of its members, the formatting of the spirits, the methods of lobbying worthy of the worst trade unions of workers, lead Jubal E. Harshaw to compare the religion fosterist with the Nazism with his risks of drift totalitarist. If Hitler sold hatred, the Church fosterist sells joy, but the methods and the stakes are the same ones: to use dogmas to structure in a rigid way a very whole company.

One can wonder whether Heinlein does not have, by the methods which he criticizes, anticipated the development of the current evangelic churches.

The Church of All the Worlds

After having studied the operation and the principles of the Church of the New Revelation, Valentine Michael Smith decides to found his own religion, “the Church of All the Worlds”. The religion of the Man of Mars is demanding, because its followers must learn the language and the wisdom of the Martians, it imposes the many ritual ones and organizes rites of passage which make pass its members of a circle to the other (there exist nine different circles) according to their comprehension and of their faith. Thus described, this religion is connected with a Culte with mysteries.

From point of view of its principles founders, it is syncretic and universal, borrows from the rites and practices of the first Christians, while making a vast synthesis of all the existing religions, as for example in the idea of a “universal Mother” which is at the same time Isis, Cybèle, Eve, Marie, Ishtar, etc His watchword, “You are God”, underline the presence of God in each man and affirm the total individual responsibility, stripped of all bad conscience. According to the Man of Mars, this religion offers not a faith, but the truth which can make useless as well the hunger as violence and the wars. The comprehension of the other and the world passes by the physical love during rites of collective orgies. It thus makes desire of the flesh either an object of contrition, but the engine even of the relation to the other.

The character of the Man of Mars itself plays a Messianic part of figure and dies in martyrdom, victim, like his famous Christian predecessor, of those which he wanted to save. By its step and the contents of its message, the Man of Mars seem to incarnate the figure-ground of Jesus - Dionysos of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

In 1968, a group of néo-pagan inspired by the novel of Robert A. Heinlein founds a religion of the same name, the Church of All the Worlds ( Church off All Worlds ), organized mainly as in the book. This Church is always today an active part of the néo-pagan community and has a Web site.

Heinlein and philosophy

The character of Jubal E. Harshaw spares neither the philosophers, nor philosophy in his long tirades érudites: “ the majority of the philosophers does not have courage; they start by swallowing the essential principles of the current code: monogamy, family structure, continence, taboos body, restrictions concerning the sex act and the continuation, then they haggle over the details… until stupidities such as knowing if the sight of the female chest is obscene or not. ” If Heinlein, or rather its character, fact of the philosophers of the Tartuffe, it is that it reproaches them for reflecting starting from the established bases of the Occidental culture instead of questioning them and to analyze them for themselves. A philosopher who does not reflect that to the methods of the established culture thus condemns itself according to Heinlein to pass beside essence.

The only philosopher that Heinlein quotes abundantly in its book, it is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and not only because it is the name of the dog of Jubal E. Harshaw! With its Généalogie of morals , Nietsche questioned the same bases of the Occidental culture to call them into question, which constitutes for Heinlein the true function of the philosopher. The author also introduces his hero Mike, the Man of Mars, like the example even of the “superman” nietzschéen, a naive being with the positive direction of the term, stripped of all bad conscience and which affirms the world. In addition, Heinlein on several occasions re-uses during its account the disctinction nietzschéenne of Apollinian and dionysiaque (started in Birth of the tragedy ) to characterize the various terrestrial or extraterrestrial cultures.

Neologism

The key word of the philosophy and the religion of the Man of Mars, it is the verb “gnoquer” (“ to grok ” in the English original version), whose significance is not “to include/understand fully” and “not to do any more but one with the object of its reflection”. Gnoquer something, it is to include/understand the thing, its gasoline and the bond which binds me to this thing.

In the anglophone countries, after the success of the novel of Robert A. Heinlein, the word grok was used much in the mediums of the fans of SF, the hippies and the hackers, so much so that it entered the dictionary of the English language, in particular in famous the Oxford English Dictionnary .

Legends around work

The legend wants that Charles Manson, instigator of the assassination of Sharon Tate then pregnant, carried out a certain amalgam between the company which the wife of Roman Polanski attended and the people that Robert A. Heinlein qualified better dead and who were eliminated by the hero in order to allow them to carry out a more successful posthumous existence. However, Charles Manson never acknowledged not to have read the novel of Heinlein.

Posterity of work

The novel Out of foreign ground ( Stranger in has Strange Land ) is evoked in a song of Billy Joel entitled We Didn' T Start The Fire , published in the album Storm Front left in 1989.

Traditional of the science fiction

This novel is regarded as a great classic of the Science-fiction in the following reference books:

Annick Beguin, 100 principal titles of the science fiction , Cosmos 2000,1981;
Investigation of Fanzine Carnage society man near his readers, 1989;
Lorris Murail, the Masters of the science fiction , Bordered, coll “Compact”, 1993;
Stan Barets, science-fictionnaire , Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, 1994;
ideal Library of the webzine cosmic Cockroach.

Criticisms specialized

In its History of the modern science fiction , Jacques Sadoul declares in connection with this novel: Thus, the leader of the ultraclassic school and ultraconservatrice of the S-F had taken the head of his penetration in the American undderground: Stranger in has strange Land was during two years or three the Bible of almost all the communities hippies of the United States. .

French editions

Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, Robert Laffont, coll “Elsewhere and tomorrow”, 1970;
Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, Edito-Service, coll “masterpieces of the science fiction”, 1974;
Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, French General Bookstore, “the book of pocket Science fiction”, n°7041, 1979;
Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, Pocket Presses, coll “Science fiction”, n°5207, 1985;
Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, France Leisures, 2001.

Publication of an extract in:

Robert A. Heinlein, foreign ground , translated from American by Frank Straschitz, in To discover the science fiction , Seghers, coll “Anthology-youth”, 1975;

Quotations

The numbers of page of the following quotations refer to the edition of pocket of 1979 quoted in bibliography.

“ the members of the first human forwarding about Mars was selected according to the theory that the greatest danger to the man, it is the man himself. ”, chap. 1, p. 7;

“ Smith is an intelligent creature, with a human heredity, but he is more Martien than human. ”, chap. 3, pp. 12-13;

“ It arrives one moment in the life of any man and any woman where it, or she, must decide to risk his life, its fortune, its honor in a company at the conclusion dubious. ”, chap. 8, p. 85;

“ All the women has a maternal instinct, it is scientifically proven. ”, chap. 9, p. 113;

“ It said to which wanted to hear it that, to write, it put its gonades in parallel with its thalamus and disconnected its brain. ”, chap. 10, p. 123;

“ In the life of any man comes one day when it must cease be reasonable, one day when it must answer the call of freedom and fight, one day when it must strike the malicious ones. ”, chap. 10, p. 136;

“ It had more than its share of this point of anarchy which any American has in division. The fact of drawing up itself against the planetary government filled up it of an enthusiasm as he had known some more since a generation. ”, chap. 10, p. 137;

“ All the behavior of the men, their motivations, their fears and their hopes was ordered by the tragedy, strange and splendid mode of reproduction of the mankind. The same thing applied to Mars, but contrary. ”, chap. 11, p. 139;

“ the government! Three quarters of parasites and a quarter of idiots and incompetents! ”, chap. 11, p. 145;

“ will make You think me, tells him Jubal, to write an article on the compulsive practice of the reading of newspapers. The central theme will be that the majority of the neuroses have their origin in the unhealthy practice of vautrer in the troubles of five billion from abroad. ”, chap. 11, p. 149;

“ There was however a field in which the man was without equal: it made watch of an unlimited ingenuity to invent increasingly effective methods to kill, imprison, torment and make themselves in thousand ways unbearable to itself. The most sinister joke of the life of the man, it was the man himself. ”, chap. 14, p. 217;

“ the desire not to mix with the businesses of the others accounts for 80% of human wisdom. ”, chap. 17, p. 268;

“ English is the human language vastest: its variety, its subtlety and the irrational complexity of its expressions enable him to express things which one can say in no other language. ”, chap. 21, p. 324;

“ Gnoquer means to include/understand so completely that the observer bottom is become observed - is melted in him, mixes, Marie, loses her identity in a common experiment ”, chap. 21, p. 325;

“ When a word does not appear in the language of a culture, it is that it with what it is reported does not exist. ”, chap. 21, p. 340;

“ the money was a idea , an abstraction comparable with the thoughts of Old; the money was a great structural symbol intended to balance, cure and bring closer. Mike was dazzled by the splendor of the money. ”, chap. 22, p. 360;

“ Of all stupidities which have course in the world, the concept of “altruism” is the worst. ”, chap. 24, p. 391;

“ a church opposed to the sexual relationships does not last a long time. ”, chap. 24, p. 392;

“ From the moral point of view, Fostérisme is simply the ethics freudienne coated with sugar for those which are unable to swallow the psychoanalysis such as it is. ”, chap. 24, p. 397;

“ Throughout its history, the American culture had a divided personality. Its laws were puritan, its secret behavior almost rabelaisien. Its religions were Apollinian, and its revivals, dionysiaques. At the XXe century (terrestrial Christian era), the sex was not also vigorously repressed nowhere elsewhere on Earth, and nowhere elsewhere one was not interested in it also passionately. ”, chap. 26, p. 441;

“ the obscenity is a concept without theological existence. With pure, all things are pure. ”, chap. 28, p. 454;

“ the sex is a useful kindness. But only if it is division and bringing together. ”, chap. 29, p. 457;

“ art consists in evoking pity and terror. The modern artists devote themselves to a pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is a relation in which the artist wakes up the emotions of his public. People do not buy art which does not touch them. ”, chap. 30, p. 494;

“ an artist supported by a government is an incompetent and a whore. ”, chap. 30, p. 494;

“ sexual ethics is a thorny problem. Each one of us must be sought with touch a solution which appears acceptable to him, opposite an alleged moral code which is at the same time absurd, impracticable and immoral, but to which we pay all our share in the form of apparent acceptance and of hidden culpability. ”, chap. 33, p. 554;

“ But kindness alone is never enough. So that it can achieve the good, one needs a cold wisdom and relentless. Kindness without wisdom always has the evil for fruit. ”, chap. 36, p. 627;

“ " You are Dieu" is not not a message of joy and hope. It is a challenge, a bold assertion and inébranlable of our personal liabilities. ”, chap. 36, p. 639;

External bonds

Heinlein Company;
Analysis of some topics of work;
Web site of the Church of All the Worlds;
Comparison of the two versions of the novel (original version and expurgée version).

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