"But I am an honest artist. What I write is intended to reach the customer -- and affect him, if possible with pity and terror . . . or at least divert the tedium of his hours."
-- Jubal Harshaw

Stranger in a Strange Land is a pivotal book, an important cusp for both the career of Robert Heinlein and the genre of science fiction. For Heinlein personally, perhaps the most crucial of the book's innovations is his creation of Jubal Harshaw.

These "Old Men" turn up in many of Heinlein's earlier books and almost all of his later ones. Lazarus Long is the most famous, but Bernardo de la Paz (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), Colonel DuBois (Starship Troopers) and Baslim (Citizen of the Galaxy) all fit the role. Sometimes, as in The Puppet Masters and Friday, the character has no name, but is simply referred to as "the Old Man."

Harshaw marks a division in this parade of senior spokesmen. Before Harshaw, the Old Man always took a supporting role, being past the age of active duty. They'd won their scars -- both Dubois and Baslim lost limbs to their heroics -- and so were largely content to sit on the sidelines and teach younger heroes important things about life. When they did go out on the field, it's usually a bad idea, as when the Old Man of Puppet Masters swings into action and promptly gets dominated by the alien invaders.

After Harshaw, the Old Men become much more active, as exemplified by Lazarus Long, who would star in several books, guest-star in more and even travel back in time to father himself, thematically if not in actual fact.

As the dividing line between these roles, Harshaw himself is unique. He's not the star of the book, but he gets just as much attention as youthful protagonist Valentine Michael Smith. He's clearly a spokesman for Heinlein, but he's not yet a mouthpiece.

Unlike Lazarus and other later Old Men, Harshaw doesn't have all the answers. He never quite believes in the literal existence of Mike Smith's discorporate Old Ones, and, in addition, he's incompetent with machines, a bit of a blowhard, and obsessed with his own mortality.

These flaws make him a character, a fully-realized fictive person, instead of simply a microphone for Heinlein's ideas.

"Once upon a time there was a Martian"
And it's as a fully-realized character that this particular Old Man takes over Stranger in a Strange Land, prefiguring the conquest of Heinlein's career by the cynical, supremely capable stand-ins for the author who would follow in his footsteps.

Heinlein plays a subtle trick as the book winds on to its bittersweet climax. The first three sections are a free-falling romp through time, space, and the minds of various characters, with the camera pulling in and out to show us the solar system from the outside or the tight focus of a peripheral player's point of view.

Naturally, he spends a lot of time with Mike, because he wrote the book to explore life on Earth through an alien perspective. But then, after Mike understands humanity after his epiphany in the zoo, the narration takes an abrupt turn.

In the fourth section of the book, the reader is privy to the thoughts of only two Earthly characters: Ben Caxton and Jubal Harshaw. Mike and his disciples become enigmas to us, known only through their actions. Eventually, Ben joins with Mike, leaving one human viewpoint character in the fifth and final section: Jubal.

When Mike dies, it's ceased to be important to Stranger in a Strange Land as anything but the catalyst for Jubal's near-suicide and spiritual renewal. The Old Man has become the center of everything.

"The capacity for such innocence is no longer in me."
Heinlein found writing Stranger difficult, especially in contrast to his other books, which took only a few months or even weeks to complete. Stranger, on the other hand, took more than ten years from initial idea to publication.

At first, what excited Heinlein about the project was the idea of the Man from Mars, the alien lens through which he would examine the foibles of humanity. However, the idea refused to come together, leaving Heinlein increasingly frustrated to the point of nearly abandoning the book in 1955 (it was finally finished in 1960).

Heinlein reached a cusp when he was writing Stranger in a Strange Land. He now had more in common with the Old Men of his books than the young heroes -- and starting with Stranger, the Old Men became the heroes.

Of course, he still populated his books with younger characters, but the older ones would increasingly drive the action and carry the weight of Heinlein's opinions. Thirtysomething Manuel O'Kelly narrates Moon is A Harsh Mistress, but Professor de la Paz is an integral part of the action, and even Manny is himself an old man by the time he finally tells the story years later.

As Stranger in a Strange Land ends, Jubal Harshaw has begun writing the story of Mike's life. Its working title is "A Martian Named Smith" -- Stranger's first working title -- blurring the lines between character and the author who clearly identified very strongly with him. The blurred (or doubled) vision would continue for the rest of Robert Heinlein's career.