L'uomo che vendette la luna

by Cory Doctorow

Sarà affidato alle stampanti 3d e al crowdfunding il futuro della Luna? - Premio Theodore Sturgeon 2015

Nel 1950 Robert A. Heinlein scrisse un romanzo breve intitolato "L'uomo che vendette la luna", nel quale ipotizzava che il futuro della conquista dello spazio fosse nelle mani dell'impresa privata. Oggi, con i voli della Virgin Galactic e della SpaceX la predizione di Heinlein sta cominciando ad avverarsi, ma Cory Doctorow fa un ulteriore passo avanti: perché il futuro non è fatto solo di profitti ma anche di sogni, e il sogno della conquista della luna forse deve essere portato avanti dai sognatori, dai nerd che vivono di tecnologia, di fantascienza e di ideali.

Cory Doctorow è nato a Toronto, in Canada, nel 1971. Ha vissuto a Londra da diversi anni e nel 2011 ha ottenuto la cittadinanza britannica; attualmente vive in California. Cresciuto in una famiglia di attivisti dell'antinucleare e di Greenpeace, è stato coordinatore per l'Europa dell'Electronic Frontier Foundation, l'organizzazione senza scopo di lucro che si batte a favore del software libero. È ed è stato collaboratore del "Guardian", del "New York Times", di "Publishers Weekly", di "Wired", ma la maggiore notorietà l'ha ottenuta come fondatore e curatore di "Boing Boing" (boingboing.net), forse il più famoso blog del pianeta. Ha scritto vari romanzi, tradotti in una dozzina di lingue e rilasciati tutti, dopo la pubblicazione, con licenza Creative Commons e download gratuito. Il suo romanzo "Little Brother", una distopia per ragazzi, è stato candidato a tutti i maggiori premi del settore. Nel 2008 ha vinto il premio Locus col romanzo "Infoguerra", pubblicato in questa collana, e nel 2015 il premio Theodore Sturgeon col presente "The Man Who Sold the Moon". È sposato e ha una figlia di otto anni. 

Genres: Science Fiction, Novella, Fiction, Short Stories

195 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 9, 2014

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This long story is full of passion and sincerity. It's written to be convincing, but while it's well-crafted, I remain unconvinced.
Our narrator is a tech-y nerd. While recovering from a cancer scare, he meets a kindred spirit who introduces him to the culture and philosophies of Burning Man - which are described here with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that I just do not share - I found it rather naïve-seeming. Up to this point, the piece reads almost like a personal essay by Doctorow. (I would've believed that everything has happened IRL, as depicted.) However, then it takes a jump into the sci-fi realm. We fast-forward a few years into the future. A medical crisis spurs a jumping-off point from the two men's original Burning Man tech project into a bigger concept - one involving the Moon.
Unfortunately (?) I am one of those people mentioned within the piece who would think that this project not only fails to be inspiring or important, it's really quite a terrible idea.
I also felt that, while the piece in many places felt almost like an 'argumentative essay,' throwing in the medical stuff (dying wishes and such) felt like shoehorning in an appeal to base emotions in the service of the argument - which is a very poor debating technique.
However, as a whole, the novella is still well-crafted, keeps the reader's interest, and contains quite a few interesting and thought-provoking concepts & ideas - even if I don't agree with all of them.

[V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried - and yeah, you may say it was a cheap trick to invoke cancer, but no, it was not. Instead it was real. And this is what this whole story does: it feels real. The characters are real, the technology is real (and there is quite a bit of it), the world feels real, the narrator's voice feels real. Add to this real life references - burning man, Theo Jansen, JPL, you name it - and what you get is one of the best science fiction stories I've read in the recent years and one of the reason why I keep reading the Year's Best Science Fiction series (this one I read as part of The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection - but it's also available online for free): because there are gems like this one that turn "I will only read two pages before falling asleep" into two hours of intense reading and intense feeling.

[And no, I haven't been to burning man - but I know people who have. And I know what really good conferences feel like.]

[Michelle E · Rating 5 out of 5]

We listened to the audiobook version of this novella and it was the perfect story for our long road trip. This story managed to keep my engineer boyfriend satisfied with its well-researched technology, while keeping me interested with the vivid descriptions of the Burning Man, and made us both cry at different points. It's amazing how well this story weaves personal relationships with science fiction and makes it seem like something that could be happening today. Excellent read.

[Dorian Hawkmoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quando pensate a un eroe, pensate a Gagarin allacciato in quella capsula, al ruggito dei motori a razzo sotto di lui, al borbottio della torre di controllo nel suo auricolare, alla mano pesante dell’accelerazione che gli opprimeva il petto, spingendo con forza sempre più irresistibile fino a schiacciargli le ossa. Pensate a lui che filava diritto verso la sua morte con il sorriso sulla faccia, e pensate a lui che infrange la barriera atmosferica, all’improvvisa assenza di peso, alla consapevolezza di essere sopravvissuto. Di essere la prima creatura umana nello spazio.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really enjoyable novella. Cory always has this nice, breezy, conversational style that makes me feel like the character is sitting there, telling me the story. It flows very well.

It follows a near future Burning Man project, that ends up as a very interesting idea for space exploration. Interspersed in there are Doctorow's ideas on internet anarchism, collective farming, corporate and governmental greed, and lots of drugs.

I will say that one little 4chan reference feels almost ... adorably innocent nowadays in the rise of 4 and 8 chan fascism. I wish that things now could be as easily fixed as they are in the book.

[Pedro L. Fragoso · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's much that's outstanding in this Project Hieroglyph contribution, starting with the obvious Heinlein inspiration: the title, the hard-SF theme around the moon and writing such as:

“Bullshit,” she said. “They’re our last months with him. He’s going to turn into ashes and vanish. We’re going to be left on this ball of dirt for however many years we’ve got left. He’s got a duty to try and make something of it with whatever time he’s got left. Something for us to carry on. Come on, Greg, think about it. What do you do here, anyway? Try to live as lightly as possible, right? Just keep your head down, try not to outspend that little precious lump of dead money you lucked into so that you can truck on into the grave. You and Mom and Pug, you all ‘know’ that humans aren’t really needed on Earth anymore, that robots can do all the work and that artificial life forms called corporations can harvest all the profit, so you’re just hiding under the floorboards and hoping that it doesn’t all cave in before you croak.”

　“Maya—”

　“And don’t you dare give me any bullshit about generational politics and demographics and youthful rage and all that crap. Things are true or they aren’t, no matter how old the person saying them happens to be.” She drained her drink. “And you know it.”

　I set down my glass and held my hands over my head. “I surrender. You’re right. I got nothing better to do, and certainly Pug doesn’t. So, tell me, wise one, what should we be doing?”

Heinlein aside, the story has some of the themes dear to Doctorow, forcefully presented: "The problem with world hunger is that rich, powerful governments are more than happy to send guns and money to dictators and despots who’ll use food to control their populations and line their pockets. There is no ‘world hunger’ problem. There’s a corruption problem. There’s a greed problem. There’s a gullibility problem." Or: "It was incredibly labor-intensive, which was why I liked it. It was nice to think that the key to feeding nine billion people was to measure return on investment by maximizing calories and minimizing misery, instead of minimizing capital investment and maximizing retained earnings to shareholders." Or: "Blight had been a small child during the dot-com crash of the 1990s, but she’d done an AP history presentation on it once, about how it had been the last useful bubble, because it took a bunch of capital that was just being used to generate more capital and turned it into cheap dark fiber bundles and hordes of skilled nerds to fill it with stuff. All the bubbles since had just moved money from the world of the useful into the pockets of the hyperrich, to be flushed back into the financial casino where it would do nothing except go around and around again, being reengineered by high-speed-trading ex-physicists who should know better." Some may say this is all posturing, but I read to much Heinlein in my formative years not to like it when the arguments in play are so cogent as is the case.

I'm not going with 5 stars because I just didn't find it compelling enough, but I'll finish with a last quote that's just brilliant: "When you think of a hero, think of Gagarin, strapped into that capsule, the rumble of the jets below him, the mutter of the control tower in his headset, the heavy hand of acceleration hard upon his chest, pushing with increasing, bone-crushing force, the roar of the engines blotting out all sound. Think of him going straight to his death with a smile on his face, and think of him breaking through the atmosphere, the sudden weightlessness, the realization that he had survived. That he was the first human being to go to space."

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find the author’s books to be a mixed bag. Some of his stories I really like and appreciate (like Makers) and others are just too shrill and leftist-utopian. This is one of the former. This is also one of the author’s novellas, which is a good format for him. This story should not be confused with the Robert A. Heinlein story with the same name.

Prose was good. The story is also humorous in places. Although, I did not laughed-out-loud like I have with some of his other books. The techno-future, evangelical, haranguing (a Doctorow trademark) in the story was comparatively minimal. The naughty-bits were tasteful, but too racy for this to be a YA read.

Plot is a riff on the Power of Friendship trope. The end is a tad melodramatic, but it strummed at my heartstrings.

World building is minimal. It’s a near-near-future future story. It takes place in very hip places (SoCal) and visits very hip venues like Burning Man .

Characters are well wrought. Greg, the 40-year old techie is the nominal protagonist. Pug and Blight complete their Family of Choice . A problem I have with Doctorow’s characters is that the great majority of them are Cyber or maybe Techno-hipsters. There are several of these in the story as spear carriers as well. They’re all brilliant technologists that can bend the science and engineering to their will. They also never seem concerned with needing money or jobs. In my own experience, about a third of hipster, late 20 and early 30-year olds can’t solve the problem of a running toilet, much less build the precursor to a self-replicating spacecraft .

You'd have to be a fan of Doctorow, and a tech nerd to 'get' this story. It’s moderately, technically meaty. The parts on the politics of technology are a bit strident. However, its not going to make your head asplode like Walkaway. (According to the author, this is a precursor to that book.) The story did hold my attention and I kept on reading. It was an education.

A good story by this author that I recommend is Makers. It is more involved with the 3D printer technology that is a part of this story.

[Al Lock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little Novella. And if you don't recognize the homage to Robert A. Heinlein, you might want to read "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress".

[Steve LaForest · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone were a self-avowed NON Heinlein fan, as Cory Doctorow is, why on earth would he choose to appropriate his title??? No - I don't know the answer, I'm just one of those SF fans Who Seek to Know. As Randy Bachman has said "you can't copyright a title".

In any case, this is an excellent story, and bears no resemblance to the original story of that title.

I rated the novella "A" which translates to a Goodreads score of 5 stars.

My rating system:
Since Goodreads only allows 1 to 5 stars (no half-stars), you have no option but to be ruthless. I reserve one star for a book that is a BOMB - or poor (equivalent to a letter grade of F, E, or at most D). Progressing upwards, 2 stars is equivalent to C (C -, C or C+), 3 stars (equals to B - or B), 4 stars (equals B+ or A -), and 5 stars (equals A or A+). As a result, I maximize my rating space for good books, and don't waste half or more of that rating space on books that are of marginal quality.

[Baldurian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Questo romanzo breve, con il suo gruppo di hippy nerd fissati con l'idea di gettare le basi per una pre-colonizzazione della Luna, parte molto bene: un cast simpatico, buon ritmo, il giusto tempo per illustrare lo spirito positivista e anti-capitalistico che anima la vicenda... tutto si incastra alla perfezione ed è funzionale alla narrazione. Il prosieguo non è però all'altezza della prima metà, soffocato dalla mancanza di pagine e dalla necessità di chiudere una storia che — mi capita raramente di dirlo — avrebbe giovato di un finale più aperto. L'uomo che vendette la Luna merita comunque una sufficienza piena ma, da un autore come Doctorow, che ho sempre apprezzato sia per la produzione letteraria sia per l’impegno sociale e tecnologico, mi sarei aspettato di più.

[Tomas Sedovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful little story. A practise run for the novel Walkaway, it's about Burning Man, tinkering, neat tech, arguing on the internet and first days of the better nation.

I really liked the characters and their interactions, I loved the Big Idea and the ending. The novella does present a tragedy, but of entirely different sorts than what most Cory's stories do. If "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" put you off for good, you may want to give this one a go.

It also presents death and dying in a way that's much more humane and mature than I've seen in most books.

Definitely thumbs up.

[Bluehat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching and opinionated, this book talks a lot about the way the world ruins things and the way happiness and self-expression survive.

I first read this about five years ago, and re-reading it even such a short time later I have a very different experience. I suspect that I will read this book many times, and that it will continue to change as I get older.

On a personal level, the setting and characters speak to me. We had our own Pug at our hackerspace once: a burner with a filthy van, a million half-finished projects and no interest in the name on his driver's license. He was generous with his time and talent. RIP Stig Hackvan. You are missed.

[D.B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing good to say about this. The characters are unbelievably annoying, the premise is silly, the author constantly preaches his morality, it’s filled with pop culture references, and it has totally unnecessary (and incorrect) tirades about society, shareholder capitalism, and more.

The novella is short but not short enough. It drags on and on without having anything to say.

I know I won’t be reading anything else by Doctorow and neither should you. Don’t waste your time.

[Bradford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the novela as a serialized podcast from Mr. Doctorow. It was nice to hear him read it. It also seems to flow better and have less intentional tangents than some of his other titles, Walkaway and Rapture of the Nerds pop to mind. This story had good narrative and moved along well.

[Cmoore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love the serialized format of the podcast, and it's read by Cory Doctorow himself...

[Howard Brazee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting little novel with some people who create machines that create panels out of sand in the desert where Burning Man is—and then on the moon.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best story in Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future.

[Sarinys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novella di Cory Doctorow ambientata in una Los Angeles un po’ cyberpunk e un po’ dickiana, aggiornata alle ultime tendenze: le stampanti 3D, gli hacker parkouristi, il Burning Man Festival – che nasce nel 1991, ma diventa glamouroso negli ultimi anni, con le apparizioni dei miliardari della Silicon Valley; e quindi mischia perfettamente le due istanze estetiche del libro: caratterizzarsi attraverso le tendenze di oggi e avere un sapore anni ’90.

C’è un altro tema ricorrente, ovvero la malattia. Si collega al resto del romanzo attraverso la polvere: quella lunare, quella del deserto del Nevada dove si svolge il festival, ma anche la polvere a cui torneremo. L’idea della morte si intreccia dolorosamente a quella di avanguardia e progresso tecnologico, traducendosi nell'immortalità attraverso le proprie creazioni, ciò che possiamo regalare al futuro stesso.

Altro concetto forte di Doctorow, quello di community: il progetto di cui parla il libro non è soltanto del protagonista. Appartiene a tutti, anche ai troll dei forum, alle fazioni avverse, ad Anonymous che cerca di distruggerlo. Qui troviamo il nesso con il racconto di Heinlein a cui Doctorow ruba il titolo: negli anni ’40, il viaggio sulla Luna era appannaggio di un singolo capitalista col coltello in mezzo ai denti; nel futuro (che è l’oggi) di Doctorow, l’american dream è diventato quello del creative commons e del crowdsourcing, dove l’individuo è parte di una moltitudine. L’obiettivo del protagonista è fare un dono alle persone che un giorno colonizzeranno i sassi del nostro satellite.

Romanzo piacevole, simpatico per le idee che promuove, un po’ fanfarone per l’estetica hipster da stronzi della Silicon Valley che lo permea.

In inglese si può leggere direttamente nel sito dell'autore a questa pagina:
http://boingboing.net/2015/05/22/the-...
La traduzione italiana non è sempre in bolla (per esempio, la parola "gentrificazione" si può usare).

Pubblicato anche sulla 32° antologia The Year's Best Science Fiction di Gardner Dozois del 2015.

[Lance Schonberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

For readers of classic science fiction, don’t go in expecting a retelling of the Heinlein tale of the same title. Although, you can easily argue that it’s an homage in many ways. And the phrase “Free Lunch” happens in an important way during the course of the story to reinforce that.

Near future SF, this is a story about death and life and dealing with death, all while trying to make the world a better place in fits and starts. But it’s a little drawn out with what seems like half the novella being setup for the real story. There’s lots of almost throwaway world building, some of which adds to the POV character’s personality and our understanding of it (the digression on permaculture and thinking about where our food comes from springs to mind), but doesn’t necessarily do anything to advance the story itself. This starts to be forgivable in a small way at novella length, but for me there’s a bit too much here.

But it was a fun read, and I enjoyed how the eventual resolution. The blending of art, science, and culture works well overall. Three stars, leaning towards 3.5 if I can clear my mind of the spots the narrator addresses the reader directly.

[Jon Cronshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can listen to my review on episode 011 of the Short Science Fiction Review podcast.

[David Blaylock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, and an extra star because I am a sucker for anything from Cory Doctorow.