[Athens. Theseus' palace.]

Theseus:

What masque, what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time if not with some delight?

Egeus:

There is a brief how many sports are ripe.
Make choice of which your highness will see first.

Lysander [reads]:

'The battle with the centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'

Theseus:

We'll none of that. That have I told my love
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

Lysander [reads]:

'The riot of the tipsy bacchanals
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'

Theseus:

That is an old device, and it was played
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

Lysander [reads]:

'The thrice-three muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary.'

Theseus:

That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5.1.40-55
  

[Earlier] assessments are quite mistaken. Stranger in a Strange Land is not a malformed example of a novel; rather, it is a perfectly formed example of a satire. Mis-identification of genre renders formal analysis unnecesarily complicated — and in this case renders it impossible.

William H. Patterson, Jr.
& Andrew Thornton

"Satire as a Literary Form"
The Martian Named Smith
Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein's
Stranger in a Strange Land