Men, Monsters, Moondust

If you don’t mind making a nuisance of yourself; if you enjoy a fight and don’t mind starting one; and especially if you are of that irritating turn of mind which demands to know of other minds whether they have chewed their beliefs or swallowed them whole, then go around asking conservatives, “Precisely what is it that you are trying to conserve?” (This of course has its antithesis, which runs rather more clumsily, “Precisely what is it that you are trying to liberalize or is it liberate?”) You will naturally get a considerable spectrum of answers, possibly a revelation, and perhaps a punch in the mouth. Ask such a question of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and the chances are that you will collect all of these.

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. Putnam, $4.50

TS

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Theodore Sturgeon

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If you don’t mind making a nuisance of yourself; if you enjoy a fight and don’t mind starting one; and especially if you are of that irritating turn of mind which demands to know of other minds whether they have chewed their beliefs or swallowed them whole, then go around asking conservatives, “Precisely what is it that you are trying to conserve?” (This of course has its antithesis, which runs rather more clumsily, “Precisely what is it that you are trying to liberalize or is it liberate?”) You will naturally get a considerable spectrum of answers, possibly a revelation, and perhaps a punch in the mouth. Ask such a question of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and the chances are that you will collect all of these.

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. Putnam, $4.50