An Interview with Valentine Michael Manson

A newly released prison photograph of notorious murderer and pop culture icon Charles Manson reminds me that that one of his sons, Valentine Michael Manson (“Pooh Bear”), who was born in April 1968 in Topanga Canyon, California, is named after Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians and the main character in Robert A. Heinlein’s Hugo Award-winning SF novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). Allegedly, Stranger in a Strange Land was one of Charles Manson’s favorite books and some even claim that the novel was in Manson’s backpack when he was arrested in October 1969 for grand theft auto and later charged with the Tate-LaBianca murders.

Valentine Michael Manson’s mother was Mary Brunner, a former library assistant at UC Berkeley who quit her job in 1967 and became one of Charles Manson’s earliest followers. Due to his mother’s entanglement in various Manson Family crimes, Valentine Michael Manson was sent to Wisconsin ca. 1970 to be raised by Mary Brunner’s parents. He grew up under the name Michael Brunner.

Check out a scattered video interview with Michael Brunner from a two-part KCBS-TV special (Part 1, Part 2) on the Manson children that was done by Harvey “TMZ” Levin back in the early 1990s (or read a transcript of the interview). There’s no mention of Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land, but it’s a neat interview if you’re a fan of 20th-century pop culture.

Pictured above: Michael Brunner (i.e., Valentine Michael Manson).

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land

Thanks to a tip from Locus Online, we enjoyed reading “Robert Heinlein’s Future May Be Past,” an article by Scott Timberg, which appeared in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

We were humored by the references to Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), a classic work of Martian science fiction which, according to Timberg, Charles Manson had in his backpack when captured by California authorities in 1969 and “now reads like a long-winded relic of the ‘60s, philosophy for junior high kids.”

Timberg’s article mentions that Kurt Vonnegut reviewed the 1990 expanded edition of Heinlein's book for The New York Times. This was news to us, so we took the time to read Vonnegut’s review of December 9, 1990, which refers to Stranger in a Strange Land as “a wonderfully humanizing artifact for those who can enjoy thinking about the place of human beings not at a dinner table but in the universe.”

Tracing the thread back a bit further in The New York Times, we found book critic Orville Prescott’s damning review of August 4, 1961. Prescott’s opening paragraph is hilarious and worth sharing:

Last week with the thermometer outside my window registering 93 and the humidity in my library coating my books with mildew it seemed a good idea to read something light, clever and not too taxing on the brain cells. Like what? Well, not like Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein. My selection of this disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism was a frightful mistake.

We’re looking into the Charles Manson angle, as we’ve read various urban myths about the influence of Stranger in a Strange Land upon Manson.

Heinlein’s softer side: Stranger in a Strange Land

Sam Jordison of The Guardian’s Books Blog has a neat post titled “Robert Heinlein's softer side,” which discusses Stranger in a Strange Land, the winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Among many interesting points, Jordison mentions that the book has sold more than 5 million copies.
No mention of Charles Manson.

Pictured: Paperback published in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.