The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I first read this book in High School (not as an assignment) and really enjoyed it. Heinlein does a wonderful job of creating a plausible Lunar society that began as a penal colony and is gradually evolving into something else. There a fewer women than men, which leads to them becoming more powerful in Lunar society and changes the way marriages and families work. Most women have more than one husband, and there are more complicated arrangements.

There is politics in the story. Some call it a Libertarian novel, and while I would agree with that the dire situation that the Loonies find themselves in is a plausible outcome of their world starting out as a penal colony. It isn't silly like the dystopia in Atlas Shrugged, for example. The Loonies have every right to revolt, and the explanation of how things got that way is satisfying.

While there are parallels between this story and the American Revolution, there are many differences. The heroes aren't all wealthy white slave holders, for example. The main protagonist speaks with a Russian accent, and his partners in revolution are a sentient computer, a blonde woman who has been a surrogate mother to eight children, and a South American dissident professor. You can't imagine any of them watching Fox News.

As you would expect in a story set in the future there are technologies we don't have yet: Lunar catapults, a sentient computer, nuclear fusion. What is interesting reading the book now is how many present day technologies they don't have. There are no personal computers, no cell phones, no Skype, no World Wide Web, no bloggers, no email. A kind of computer animation is described in the book, but it is described in a way that makes it sound incredibly difficult to do with even the most advanced technology available. There is no digital photography. There are still newspapers, including one called the Daily Lunatic.

At one point the heroes type a letter on four different typewriters to make it difficult to trace where it came from. There are still phone booths and switching systems. The heroes spend much effort devising ways to keep their communications secret that seems silly today. All of this would make the story very difficult to film. You'd have to rethink a lot of it.

Of course he gets things wrong the other way, too. This Lunar penal colony was set up in the nineteen nineties.

In spite of these few shortcomings, this may be Heinlein's best novel.



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