If there is one point that Robert Heinlein liked to make in his books, it is that much of what people take to be universal truths are actually determined by culture. Heinlein must have loved to challenge people's beliefs. In the process of telling this story, he explored many of our culture's touchiest subjects (especially religion) and most strongly held taboos, from social nudism to cannibalism.

This is the story of a man who was conceived during an expeditionary spaceflight to Mars and born on that planet. His parents and the rest of the crew subsequently perished and he was raised from infancy by Martians. Twenty-five years later, he was found by the second expedition to Mars and brought back to Earth.

As often happens, science fact has overtaken science fiction. Since this book was written, we have sent exploratory spacecraft to Mars and discovered no evidence of life. One way we can deal with this is to regard the story as occurring in an alternate universe in which life exists on Mars (Heinlein himself uses this conceit in many of his later books to reconcile his "future history" with our actual history.) If you find this to be unsatisfactory, then simply replace Mars with some planet in another solar system where the existence of life and alien civilizations has not yet been determined.

Regardless of the specific circumstances leading up to his arrival on Earth, this story is about a man who is genetically human, but culturally alien. He has none of the experiences that are common to all other humans on the planet. He has never seen a woman, or grass, or blue skies, or rain, or a thousand other things that we take for granted. He was raised and educated in a culture completely foreign to ours, on a planet with a much weaker gravitational pull, much thinner atmosphere, and on which water is extremely scarce.

Heinlein uses this man to examine our concepts of politics, law, religion, and morality. But more importantly, he tells a good story with lots of action, suspense, intrigue, and a marvelous sense of humor (chapters 19 and 20 are a wonderfully hilarious lesson in how to conduct diplomacy.) The concepts presented in this book are very adult, but they are never vulgar. Heinlein's characters tend to treat each other with respect. He believed in politeness as a social lubricant and that lack of common courtesy is the first sign of decline in a civilization. In Heinlein's universe, there is absolutely no excuse for bad manners.

This is one of the five best books that I've ever read. You really shouldn't be wasting your time here when you could actually be reading it. I don't have anything to say that RAH couldn't say ten times better. But I give you fair warning: this book will challenge you to think about what you believe. If you are offended by someone suggesting that your religion may be imperfect, or that other religions might be equally valid, this might not be the book for you.  Likewise, if you are convinced that morality is an absolute concept and not relative to culture, then you may find this book to be shocking or unsettling.

Glossary for SIASL

Robert A. Heinlein

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