◆ SpookStack

sign has gone through five priet ' “Stranger in a Strange Land” ings since early 1968 is an imaginative anti-esfablish- ; ment commentary on a deca- Re that young wut aha fen America of the not-so-dis- Haight district often say influ- a eee ie seen as a cynical _ tie te me sham. Government freely abro- ’ ; : ....' gates civil liberties with its WMt. Zion Hospital psychiatrist. heavy-handed “SS Bureau.” Po- “The book is often taken as @ Jice are sometimes referred to model for communal living,” as “long pigs,” as distinguished, Dr. Pitel noted. from the shorter edible variety. But few young readers ap- In the book, Valentine Mi-! Rear to have taken it as se-chael Smith is a young man riously as Charles Manson did. born of human parents on the The drug researcher who planet Mars, jut trained and ed- knew Manson well says Manson ucated by native Martians. read the book “over and over,” He is brought to Earth by re- and seemingly integrated his turning colonists and advised to, life with that of the book’s mainkeep his superior intelligenee: character, a young man namedand telepathic powers under, Valentine Michael Smith. wraps. Earthlings who claim) Smith’s description is strik- such powers are called psychot-! ingly Mansonesque, Ic. Small, notable for his sexual It is easy cnough to sce how. prowess, a gleam in his eye, the novel might have caught, and a hypnotic collection of Manson’s attention, if not his, ae : a ichael Smith ie held at Manson identified with the’ ¥- ach omuth js held ¢ book closely enough to pluck at:fifst as a prisoner of the Fedér- least one character from the plot to nickname an acquaint-; ance. . And when it came to naming a child born to him in mid-1967 by a Peninsula girl, Charlie Manson turned to the book again and, called the infant “Valentine Michael Smith.” ~