EDITOR'S NOTE: At this date, no one recalls just who came up with the Stranger in a Strange Land title.
CHAPTER XV
*'
ECHOES FROM STRANGER
EDITOR 's NOTE: Putnam 's sales on Stranger were not very Hood during the first year after publication. It went immediately into the book club edition, a two-year contract, and there was a second two-year book club contract. In the second year following publication, it was out in a paperback edition from Avon. Sales went from humdrum to medium to spectacular. This book turned out to be a "sleeper. " Only word-of-mouth advertising could have accounted for this. At this time, it has been in trade edition for many years, still selling enough copies to make it worthwhile for the publisher to keep it in print. And it still \flls merrily in the paperback edition, which is now with 4<r. // is currently in the sixty-fifth paperback printing. fhf Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club recently sent a request for another reprinting under their auspices.
October 9, 1966: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Herewith is -- 's letter to you re dramatizing Stranger. I have no idea what is proper and reasonable in this matter and will continue to leave it entirely up to your judgment. But I'm beginning to think that additional rights to Stranger, such as stage, TV, and movies, might someday be worth something-possibly through Ned Brown, possibly through other channels. The fan mail on this book has been steadily increasing instead of decreasing and it clearly is enjoying quite a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. I recently learned that it was considered the "New Testament" -- and compulsory reading-of a far-out cult called "Kerista." (Kee-mf!) I don't know exactly what "Kerista" is, but its L.A. chapter offered me a $100 fee to speak. (I turned them down.) And just this past week I was amazed to discover a full-page and very laudatory review of Stranger in (swelp me!) a slick nudist magazine-with the review featured on the cover...And there is an organization in the mountain states called "Serendipity, Inc.," which has as its serious purpose the granting of scholarships-but which has taken over "water sharing" and other phrases from the book as lodge slogans, sorta. Or something. And there is this new magazine of criticism, GROK-l have not seen it yet but it is advertised in the Village Voice. And almost daily I am getting letters from people who insist on looking at me as some sort of a spiritual adviser. (I fight shy of them!) All in all, the ripples are spreading amazingly-and Cady may be right in thinking that the book could be exploited in other media. (I'll settle for cash at the bedside; I want no part of the cults.)
November 6, 1966: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I think I mentioned to you that the Esalen Institute wants me to lead a seminar late in June on "Religion in the Space Age," along with Alan Watts, the Zen Buddhist writer, and an Episcopalian priest. It takes just one weekend, and the place (Big Sur) is near here, and the fee ($500) is satisfactory. Nevertheless I probably will not accept, as I do not see how I could take part without mortally offending both the priest and the Zen Buddhist. I'll negotiate it directly by telephone to the director, as I am reluctant to state my real misgivings bluntly in a letter.
December 22, 1966: Lurton Blassingame to Virginia Heinlein
...and to receive the Grok buttons. Might be news release to give additional stimulus to book.
April 15, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
More about Stranger --
My brother Rex queried the shopkeeper from whom he had purchased several sorts of Stranger buttons, was told: "There are about a dozen different suppliers." He went on to say that one of them was a girl who was working her way through college making these buttons (no doubt other sorts than Stranger buttons).
This afternoon (now Sunday evening) a sculptor, -- of Los Gatos, called on us-to. show us a figure he had just completed in bronze of the death of the Martian named Smith. He asked permission to bring it over at once as he was taking it to his agent in San Francisco in negotiating a commission for an heroic-size crucifixion job for a church. ( -- is a successful sculptor, not a starving artist.) But [he] wanted me to see it first.
A young woman who came with him asked me where I had gotten the word grok -- no, she had not read the book, had not been able to lay hands on a copy [my emphasis added]...but that she knew what it meant as "everybody uses it now."
January 26, 1967: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein Checking on Grok magazine.
February 28, 1967: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein
In the 2/19 issue of the New York Times Book Review, there is an article you may want to see -- "Where the Action Is." It mention(s) Stranger and Grok. Reference seems responsible for stirring Hollywood interest. Another call asking if Stranger rights available.
March 14, 1967: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein Have two issues of Grok.
April 28, 1968: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I enclose a clipping sent to me from Toronto-please return for my Stranger file. "Fair Use" of course-but that book must have made a wide impression if a telephone company in Canada makes this use of a neologism from it. (And when I think how Putnam continues to refuse to reissue a hardcover of it, I get so annoyed I need a Miltown. Damn it, they should at least arrange a Grosset and Dunlap reprint; I get regular inquiries about where to buy it in hardcover. He's missing a lot of library sales, too.)
May 23, 1968: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Since I sent you that Canadian telephone ad I have run into three more uses of grok-one in a short story in Playboy, simply as a part of dialog with no explanation, same for a poem, and a report of a shop in Florida: "We Grok Bookshop." Oh, well, while it doesn't pay royalties, it does interest me to see this neologism spread. But the darnedest thing so far is an announcement in the UCLA Daily Bruin concerning "Experimental College Classes-Spring 1968" with one course billed as "J. D. Salinger, Robt. Heinlein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Other Personal Gurus -- "!!! And I'm such a square I don't even know who the third guru is. Nor does Ginny. However, I'm new to the guru business.
January 23, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Did I tell you that [Dr.] Jack Williamson is using Stranger as a study text in his class in SF at U of E. New Mexico? Quote: "I'm launching new courses in linguistics and modern grammar and another in the factual literature of science...(in my SF class) and we are now reading Stranger in a Strange Land. I was a little afraid lhat some of my students might not be sufficiently sophisticated for it, but the response so far is good-some class members feel that it is more successful than Huxley's Brave New World, which we have just finished."
Did I mention in some other letter that Stanford now offers a course in SF? Apparently SF is beginning to be accepted as a respectable genre of serious literature. It is u pleasant feeling-but I have to keep reminding myself that seeing my name in print is nothing; it is seeing it on a check that counts. It is still the clown business; the object is to entertain the cash customer-I shall simply have to try harder than ever.
February 3, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Did I give you the impression that the principal interest in Stranger was from teenagers? It may be, but I hope not and do not think so. I might be forced to drink hemlock for "teaching that the worse is the better part and corrupting the youth of the land." Stranger is definitely an adult book, and the comments in it on both sex and religion are such that I think it would be imprudent to attempt any sort of publicity which attempts to tie this book with teenagers.