Writing
Heinlein had begun writing the novel several times during the 1950s,
each time writing into a dead end and having to abort it. The whole text
was actually written in sixty-three hectic days at the beginning of 1960,
and not in two parts, the first half years before the last as suggested
by Moskowitz who pointed out the difference between the early action and
the later philosophy in the book.(3)
Heinlein knew at the start that the novel was going to be controversial
and possibly unpublishable, probably having more sex and profanity than
what was acceptable by the standards of those days, but he went ahead anyway.
As he put it in a letter to his agent, "I want to do my own stuff,
my own way."(4)
This is a close echo of a remark by one of Heinlein's greatest literary
idols, Mark Twain, who wrote in a letter to a friend that he wanted to
write a book "which would say my say, right out of my heart, taking
into account no-one's feelings and no-one's prejudices," and, even
closer to Heinlein's intentions, a book "without reserves."(5)
One cannot but wonder if Heinlein was aware of Twain's thoughts when plotting
his own novel.
 Heinlein was at the time most known
for his "juveniles," a series of successful books mostly for
teenagers, and he found it difficult to persuade his publishers to accept
more adult works. "I first became aware of just how thoroughly I had
boxed myself in when editors of my soi disant adult books started
asking me to trim them down to suit the market."(6)
He also found that any kind of social criticism was not looked upon kindly
by the editors, who worried that prospective literary critics could find
it offensive-science fiction then being seen as light entertainment, interestingly
thought-provoking at the most. One might think they had never heard of
George Orwell's 1984. Yet Heinlein submitted Stranger to
the publishers, wanting to prove that he could "write about adult
matters matters for adults, and get such writing published,"(7)
and intending it as a "Cabellesque satire on religion and sex."(8)
The editor at Putnam, Heinlein's then
publisher, liked the book, plot-wise at least, but felt it was too lengthy
and too offensive in parts. Heinlein agreed to shorten it, only remarking
that in cutting "there is always the chance of literary anemia."(9)
But the second objection he did not know how to meet. "If I cut out
religion and sex, I am very much afraid that I will end with a non-alcoholic
martini."(10) The
whole point was "to criticize and examine disrespectfully the two
untouchables: monotheism and monogamy," not forgetting political systems
and Western civilization in general.(11)
In the end Heinlein cut a bit more
than a fourth out of the novel (which had already suffered a first extensive
cutting even before the agent saw it) and made the sex less overt, even
more off-stage than it already was-Heinlein was never one for explicit
sex scenes, even though he was one of the first to bring human emotion
into science fiction.
to Chapter 2
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