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''Stranger in a Strange Land'' is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and eventual transformation of—terrestrial culture. The title is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22.〔Moses flees ancient Egypt, where he has lived all his life, and later marries Zipporah: Exodus 2:22: "And she () bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land". KJV Wikisource 〕 According to Heinlein, the novel's working title was ''The Heretic''. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as "The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written".〔 Cover.〕 Heinlein got the idea for the novel when he and his wife Virginia were brainstorming one evening in 1948. She suggested a new version of Rudyard Kipling's ''The Jungle Book'' (1894), but with a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. He decided to go further with the idea and worked on the story on and off for more than a decade.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Biography: Robert A. Heinlein )〕 His editors at Putnam then required him to cut its 220,000-word length down to 160,067 words before publication. In 1962, it received the Hugo Award for Best Novel.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=1962 Award Winners & Nominees )〕 In 1991, three years after Heinlein's death, Virginia arranged to have the original uncut manuscript published. Critics disagree〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Virginia Heinlein, 86; Wife, Muse and Literary Guardian of Celebrated Science Fiction Writer )〕 about which is superior. Heinlein preferred the original manuscript and described the heavily edited version as telegraphese.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Heinlein`s Original `Stranger` Restored )〕 In 2012, the US Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America".〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/ )〕 ==Plot== The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture. It is set in a post-third world war United States where organized religions are politically powerful. There is a World Federation of Free Nations, including the demilitarized U.S., with a world government supported by Special Service (S. S.) troops. A manned expedition is mounted to visit the planet Mars but all contact is lost after landing. A second expedition twenty five years later finds a single survivor, Valentine Michael Smith. Smith was born on the spacecraft and was raised entirely by the Martians. He is ordered by the Martians to go with the returning expedition, much against his will. Because Smith is unaccustomed to the relatively dense atmosphere and high gravity of Earth, he is confined at Bethesda Hospital, where having never seen a human female, he is attended by male staff only. Seeing this restriction as a challenge, Nurse Gillian Boardman eludes the guards and goes in to see Smith. By sharing a glass of water with him, she inadvertently becomes his first female "water brother", considered a profound relationship by the Martians. When Gillian tells reporter Ben Caxton about her experience with Smith, Ben explains how as heir to the entire exploration party, Smith is extremely wealthy and following a legal precedent set during the colonisation of the Moon, the Larkin Decision, he could be considered to own the planet Mars itself. His arrival on Earth has prompted a political power struggle that puts his life in danger. Ben persuades her to bug his room and then publishes stories to bait the government into releasing Smith. After Ben is seized by the S. S., Gillian persuades Smith to leave the hospital with her, but they are accosted by more S. S. troops. Smith discards the agents irretrievably into a fourth dimension, then is so shocked by Gillian's terrified reaction that he enters a semblance of catatonia. Gillian, remembering Ben's earlier suggestion, conveys Smith to Jubal Harshaw, a famous author who is also a physician and a lawyer. Smith continues to demonstrate psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence coupled with a childlike naïveté. When Harshaw tries to explain religion to him, Smith understands the concept of God only as "one who groks", which includes every extant organism. This leads him to express the Martian concept of life as the phrase "Thou art God", although he knows this is a bad translation. Many other human concepts such as war, clothing, and jealousy are strange to him, while the idea of an afterlife is a fact he takes for granted because the government on Mars is composed of "Old Ones", the spirits of Martians who have died. It is also customary for loved ones and friends to eat the bodies of the dead, in a spirit of Holy Communion. Eventually Harshaw arranges freedom for Smith and recognition that human law, which would have granted ownership of Mars to Smith, has no applicability to a planet already inhabited by intelligent life. Now free to travel, Smith becomes a celebrity and is feted by the elite of Earth. He investigates many religions, including the Fosterite Church of the New Revelation, a populist megachurch wherein sexuality, gambling, alcoholism, and similar are not considered sinful but encouraged, even within the church building. The church is organized in a complexity of initiatory levels: an outer circle, open to the public; a middle circle of ordinary members who support the church financially; and an inner circle of the "eternally saved" — attractive, highly sexed men and women, who serve as clergy and recruit new members. The Church owns many politicians and takes violent action against those who oppose it. Smith also has a brief career as a magician in a carnival, where he and Gillian befriend the show's tattooed lady, an "eternally saved" Fosterite woman named Patricia Paiwonski. Eventually Smith starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds" combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language and acquire psychokinetic abilities. The church is eventually besieged by Fosterites for practicing "blasphemy" and the church building destroyed; but Smith and his followers teleport to safety. Smith is arrested by the police, but escapes and returns to his followers, later explaining to Jubal that his gigantic fortune has been bequeathed to the Church. With it and their new abilities, Church members will be able to re-organize human societies and cultures. Eventually those who cannot or will not learn Smith's methods will die out, leaving ''Homo superior''. Incidentally, this may save Earth from eventual destruction by the Martians, who we are told were responsible for the destruction of Planet V. Smith is killed by a mob raised against him by the Fosterites. From the afterlife, he speaks briefly to grief-stricken Jubal, to dissuade him from suicide. Having consumed Smith's remains in keeping with his wishes, Jubal and some of the Church members return to Jubal's home to re-create their former conditions. Meanwhile, Smith re-appears in the afterlife to replace the Fosterites' eponymous founder, amid hints that Smith was an incarnation of the Archangel Michael. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stranger in a Strange Land」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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