As the months passed, Manson granted Smith a special role as “protector” in the abstruse mythology he’d begun to construct around himself. The Haight had introduced him to Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein’s provocative 1961 sci-fi novel. Manson was obsessed with the book. He carried a worn copy with him at all times, and though he was barely literate, he seemed to grasp the nuances of its dense narrative and its invented language. There’s no saying who might have read the book to him or told him about it, but in its hero, Valentine Michael, Manson recognized himself, so much so that
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