Desde que empecé a leer a Heinlein con Starship Troopers no he podido parar. Me encanta leerlo. Me atrapa su estilo para contar las historias y su sentido del humor. Esta novela, "La luna es una cruel amante", ganó el premio Hugo en 1967.

En el año 2075, la Luna es una colonia penal en donde los convictos y sus descendientes viven bajo el brazo injusto y opresivo de la Autoridad. Manuel García "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis es un técnico informático que trabaja como contratista privado para la Autoridad y que, junto con un peculiar amigo (una computadora con sentido del humor), se verá inmiscuido en una Revolución Lunar. ¡Neeag!

Written at the pinnacle of his powers, with memorable characters, rigorous scientific extrapolation (based on knowledge at the time, at least) and an undeniably stirring plot, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is widely regarded as Robert A. Heinlein's best work—and I can't argue with that, although I must confess that my own favorite Heinlein is still his earlier "juvenile" novel, Have Space Suit, Will Travel.

This time through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress marks my fourth or maybe even fifth reading. Although I'm afraid I can't offer firm dates for the previous ones, my first time must have been in the 1970s, during that "Golden Age" of science fiction which tends to be one's teenage years, and my most recent prior reading was to my son, aloud, sometime during his Golden Age. I do remember finding out in high school that this novel unleashed the term "TANSTAAFL" on the world—no, 16-year-old me, it's not a Dutch word (sheesh).

Before I go any further, though, here's your obligatory spoiler warning: although I am not going to just hide away my whole review of a book this old—and most of this review will consist of my reactions to the book anyway—please be warned that I will let slip specific plot points from the book, here, there and everywhere. If you have not already read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at least once (and still plan to read it anyway), please don't feel that you must read any further...

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress begins with a conversation between Mannie and Mike. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis is the one-armed freelance technician who gets called in whenever the Lunar Authority's HOLMES IV computer system exhibits any undesirable behavior. And Mike's name is short for Mycroft. As in Holmes. As in HOLMES IV... because while Mike is most certainly sentient, and playful enough to choose a name for himself from Earth's literature, and even to behave undesirably now and then, he isn't technically human at all.

Mannie is the only one who knows that Mike exists, to start with—he is "Man, my only friend" to a being who emerged accidentally, as the HOLMES IV system kept being given more and more memory, more processing power, more input and output devices... and more responsibilities, always demanding more flexibility and resources to keep up. Environmental systems, public transportation, phone switching, spacecraft launch and landing control, payroll... all coordinated by one distributed system buried deep under the Lunar Authority's headquarters.

It's almost as if Mike became self-aware in self-defense.

This, by the way, seems to me to be an entirely plausible route to AI... and it's one we haven't really explored in real life, even today. Mike's own complexity grew over time, but so did the complexity of his environment, and—crucially—his control over that environment increased in parallel. Mike doesn't just receive digital input and emit pixels; he also interacts extensively with the physical, analog world in real time, managing everything from the Lunar Warden's thermostats to the waldoes (another Heinleinian coinage, by the way!) Mike uses to handle and read actual books.

These rich sources of real-time feedback seem to me to be the kind of enrichment that any intelligence needs to grow, and it may well be one reason why our attempts to create software-only AI have always seemed so stunted.

For me, Mike is the star of Heinlein's show—he's the Luna Free State's ace in the hole, the one key figure without whom the Lunar revolution could not happen. Mycroft HOLMES is, in fact, a better-realized character than most of the humans in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

In retrospect, this strikes me as a telling similarity with The Number of the Beast's Gay Deceiver, a flying car who (no real spoiler there) turns out to be one of that later novel's most realistic and sympathetic sentiences.

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If you go by its cover, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a political novel, about a revolution on—rather, in—the Moon, against an oppressive regime imposed by a distant colonial power. And that's true enough—Free Luna's rebellion against the Lunar Authority is the engine that drives the novel's plot. However... to me, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is more about its relationships—between Mannie and Mike, Mannie and Wyoh, Mike and the Moon... For me, at least, the Lunar revolution is background.

Mike isn't the only interesting individual in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, of course. His friend Mannie is also a fascinating viewpoint character. A third-generation Loonie who lost an arm and thereby gained a variety of task-specific prosthetics, Mannie's not just a self-educated computer technician (well, mostly, apart from a grueling stint on Earth that gave him a lasting dislike for gravity six times his own), he's also the lens through whom we're able to focus on Lunar society as a native.

This is, I think, one of the key strengths of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—from Mannie's perspective, subject to but not bound by the colonial Lunar Authority, speaking as one husband of many in a line marriage that has lasted for a hundred years, he is utterly normal—it's those throwbacks from Earth who are weird. And what we see of Lunarian society through his eyes soon starts to seem normal too. Not necessarily desirable in every particular—remember, there's a rebellion about to happen—but still altogether convincing.

Mannie is also—and this is all too rare in science fiction, even today—a dark-skinned protagonist of South American descent. Robert A. Heinlein doesn't make a big deal about this—one of the many ways in which he wasn't quite the wingnut many (even his supporters, sometimes) portray him as!—but Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis does make it clear at least a couple of times that he is by no means a WASP.

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I think that many readers will find The Moon is a Harsh Mistress outrageously talky, though... characters share opinions with each other but they often seem to be keeping one eye on the reader, to make sure he's getting what they're saying. And yes, I mean "he's" getting it... while I myself am definitely within the target audience for Heinlein's fiction, I can easily see that he's not going to have the same impact on people who aren't in that same demographic. If you're looking for representation, in general you will not find it in this novel, unless you are after all the stereotypical white, male, cisgendered engineer type so common in science fiction of the 20th Century.

Mannie's polyglot slang, for example, owes more to Australian and tourist Russian (Caucasian—as in, from the Caucasus) origins than to any South American dialect. Heinlein's trip with his wife Ginny to the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, as described in essays like "'Pravda' Means 'Truth'" and "Inside Intourist," both from 1960 (and both published in Expanded Universe, where I read them), was probably a major influence on his Lunar lingo.

And... as one of the biggest elephants in the room, there is here, as always, Heinlein's portrayal of women.

The women in Heinlein's fiction are, consistently, objects of admiration and desire. But... Heinlein's women are always objects, inscrutable creatures viewed from an external perspective that—according to actual women who've read his work, and I believe them—just isn't very objective.

This failing isn't unique to Heinlein, of course, but—again—if you're looking for representation, and you're not a guy... The Moon is a Harsh Mistress isn't where you'll find it.

Nowhere is this particular problem more apparent than in the early scenes (pp.40-50, more or less) where Mannie and Wyoh (Wyoming Knott, a beautiful blonde from Hong Kong Luna who, we are told, looks stunning in a skimpy red dress) are getting to know each other. Their intimate conversation reads like a series of set pieces, rather than any real back-and-forth, especially since it's supposed to be between people who've just met each other. The way Wyoh unburdens herself on such short acquaintance, in particular, strains credulity, and Wyoh's playfully accusing Mannie of being a "rapist" several times during those scenes seems inconsistent with Heinlein's own depiction of Lunar society—later on, a rich tourist from Earth comes close to being tossed out an airlock without his pressure suit for what seems like a much smaller transgression. Maybe I'm just too Terran to understand the difference.

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On the other hand, many of Heinlein's careful extrapolations about geopolitics in 2076—like a "Great China" (p.30) that has engulfed much of the Pacific, including more than half of Australia—still seem relatively plausible. In general, Heinlein's complex political map feels real, even at its most outrageous. And another example—Mannie points out that any map of the inhabited Moon is primarily a network of disjoint nodes, connected only by underground transport. It's most decidedly not a landscape that can be easily apprehended all at once. This fact becomes significant later in the novel.

One thing I found not nearly as plausible, though: how did so many political exiles and troublemakers from all over Earth turn into such complacent, apolitical Loonies in so few years? Perhaps it was selection pressure (heh)—see, for example, real-world Australian politics. And while I'm not sure it'd really be cheaper to send convicts to the Moon, again... see Australian history.

At least there were no natives already in the Moon for us to exploit.

Remember, Heinlein isn't building or portraying any sort of utopian ideal, here—the Lunar situation is untenable, and inevitably bound to get worse unless the Loonies do something. It is important to keep in mind that, however happy Mannie may have been with his own life, it's not necessarily normative.

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a very "libertarian" novel—the edition I read most recently even says so right on the cover. But eventually Robert A. Heinlein subverts even that characterization—Mannie and Mike are decidedly apolitical revolutionaries, and Mannie's memories from the book's final pages make it clear that the Lunar government, freed from Terran tyranny, simply ignored Professor Bernardo de la Paz' libertarian recommendations, recreating taxes, bureaucracy and all those other menaces from Earth despite his wishes, and nevertheless... turned out just fine!

Although at the very end Mannie is contemplating emigrating to the Asteroid Belt, which we can assume is humanity's newest lawless, winner-take-all frontier.

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It's tempting to try to rewrite The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—after all, much of it is objectionable, in ways that have only become more obvious over time. I thought so, and I'm certain that you'd find something to object to too, without even looking very hard—but that would be like trying to rewrite history. And you don't have to agree with any of it to enjoy it.

I enjoyed The Moon is a Harsh Mistress again myself, despite seeing more of its seams this time around as it—and I—have aged. Most of all, I still miss Mike, and wish he'd come back... although I strongly suspect that his disappearance was intentional—that Mike had run the numbers, as he always did, and knew that he had to disappear in order for a free Luna to flourish. I suppose Heinlein might have had other ideas about why Mike vanished, but I think it's also significant that he never really revisited this particular timeline.

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The phrase "the Moon is a harsh mistress" does not even appear inside The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—the closest we get is when Professor de la Paz tells the Earthbound committee investigating the Lunar rebellion that "Luna herself is a stern schoolmistress" (p.236). But some of the lessons implied by Heinlein's title are—still and all—ones we might actually want to learn.

I feel I should clarify this rating, which I maintain.

It's been over 20 years since I've read it, so I don't know what I'd think of it now upon a re-read or if I was stumbling upon it for the first time.

It's true that when I read it, it blew my mind. It was the first proper SF book I'd ever read, and I wasn't yet old or experienced enough to see its many, many flaws. What I loved was the idea that science and politics were inseparable, the idea that different environments would lead to different societies, a glimpse at a pidgin language (I've always been a language nerd), and the well thought out (within his own framework) decisions and strategies of Myk and friends. Rational anarchy is, to this day, something I think about when reading about political structures. I haven't gone full Ayn Rand or anything, friends, but something that you remember when you start forgetting the names of teachers you had during the same era is clearly something that's made an impact on me.

Again, I'm not saying it's a brilliant or even a practicable idea, I'm not saying you should read this to understand my view of the world, just that when I'm reading the arguments of other politicos for their ideal government, I wonder what someone like Heinlein would say, and what his views meant for him as a person and might mean to humans.

As for the problems, they are many. It's super misogynist. It doesn't even hide it in coded language that was acceptable for the time. It then confuses things because Heinlein was writing women he found strong in a time when a strong woman was only defined by her proclivity to motherhood. So I have complicated feelings on the feminist value of this work. There's also a lot of navel-gazing, self congratulations and ideas that, taken without further framework are dangerous to the sense of social responsibility we need if we're to survive as a species.

So...it's complicated. I love this book in part for how it made me think so differently than I had before I read it, that I still was riveted by the story while I was basically reading a primer on libertarianism, and have a soft spot for it as the first book of its kind I'd ever read. I also appreciate it now as a sort of scholarly source for reading many books that are responses to or reimaginings of his idea. Biased as these views were, there's just no escaping that they impacted a generation or more of writers, and for a sense of completion if nothing else, this book is historically important as a novel spin on off-world colonies, politics, and society that is the bedrock of so many subsequent works.

Also, as it has been so long, I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting. I can't defend most of this, but this review is my opinion. As such, here's my defense of my rating.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is considered by many to be Heinlein's best novel, an opinion which I don't altogether share, though it may well be Heinlein's best Heinlein novel... if you follow the thread. (I've read it two or three times, and just found out that the audio version is the perfect length for a drive from Tampa to Cincinnati.) In it he explains how to stage a revolution, win a war, communicate with alien species like artificial intelligences and women, organize and run a government and a society and a culture and an economy in a hostile environment, and quite a bit more. His take on socialism and Libertarianism is quite convincing, and despite -long- stretches of philosophizing and theorizing he keeps the story to the forefront, crackling along throughout. I grew a bit impatient with the faux-Russian accent the performer employed in this audio rendition, but that didn't detract too much from the story. Some of his assertions seem to contradict each other at times, some of his speculations are perhaps a bit dated, and some of his beliefs are no longer entirely politically correct, but I still believe him to be the best science fiction writer the field ever produced, and this just may well be his best novel.

2.5⭐️ Jak dla mnie raczej średniaczek. Wizja świata całkiem ciekawa, ale zbyt wiele rzeczy wydawało mi się naciąganych. Nie cała koncepcja mi się podobała i raczej nie zmuszała mnie do myślenia, za to fabuła (czyli w zasadzie konflikt geopolityczny) trochę mnie wynudziła. Z kolei jeden z głównych bohaterów był postacią zupełnie zbędną, nic nie wnosił, a wątek z nim związany tylko działał mi na nerwy.

Revisiting this 1966 classic, which despite a few issues is Heinlein’s best novel, showed that it holds up surprisingly well. Amongst the big names of science fiction's ‘golden age’, Asimov may have had the edge on ideas, but Heinlein was a far better writer and this shows from the very beginning when the narrator comments of a self-aware computer ‘I had nicknamed him for Mycroft Holmes, in a story written by Dr Watson before he founded IBM.’

It might come as quite a surprise to those familiar with Heinlein’s politics, but in this study of colonial revolution, the author doesn’t shrink from including some communist ideas and terminology, while coming relatively soon after the McCarthy era, arguably Heinlein was brave in scattering speech with Russian terms and a tendency to drop the definite article. He was also critical of the US for institutional racism.

The story itself plays out the transformation of a prison colony on the Moon into a self-determining republic. The reluctant central character (as is often the case, pretty much Heinlein himself in thin disguise) Mannie is aided by the newly conscious central computer, Mike, whose abilities enable the conspirators to take on the might of Earth. Heinlein has clearly thought through the difficulties of life in the Moon tunnels and adds in impressive detail on the mechanism of rebellion and political machinations without ever losing the momentum of the plot.

To get the negative issues out of the way, three things conspire to limit the way the book now comes across. While the writing is still extremely lively and readable, modern readers coming to the book for the first time are liable to be held back by the computer technology, the politics and particularly the approach to women.

Most trivial, though the conscious computer is incredibly capable, Heinlein's prediction of future IT is fairly weak. (Incidentally, the story is sent in 2076, but the Moon has been colonised since before 2000). Mike seems to have very limited use of video, relying mostly on audio. His speech work is handled by the antiquated concept of a voder/vocoder, with separate physical circuits for each conversation. And, in a throwaway remark, Heinlein shows how computer memory has far exceeded expectations: at one point, Mike sets apart a large amount of memory. It’s 100 megabits.

The politics of the Moon reflects a viewpoint that became stronger in Heinlein’s later novels: it’s not far from that of Ayn Rand, which many will find uncomfortable. Having said that, the importance of self-sufficiency is arguably justified by the harsh lunar environment. Sadly, the treatment of women reflects that Heinlein was an author of the Mad Men era. While women are treated with respect on the Moon as there are twice as many men, women are literally referred to as a scarce commodity, and it's quite clear from the allocation of roles that a woman’s place is considered the home and the kitchen. At one point, Adam Selene, the fake public persona adopted by Mike, is asked if he can cook. He replies ‘Certainly. But I don’t; I’m married.’ Because of the shortage of women, the Moon has complex marriage forms, mostly featuring polyandry, and marriage is often at around age 14, which feels more than a little creepy.

If, however, you can see past this (bearing in mind both that the book was written in a different era and that Heinlein was setting up the culture of a frontier colony under extreme conditions), this is still a great book that deserves its place as a classic of the genre and should still be read.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is like a comfortable old shoe. I've read the thing multiple times - the first when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. I know every nook and cranny of the book; however, like an old shoe, it's no longer shiny and new - it even stinks a little bit. Fortunately, like an old shoe, it feels good reading it and that is enough.

The story is about a handful of souls, well, really two - Manuel (a.k.a., Man) and Mike (a.k.a., Mycroft Holmes) - who are drawn into a rebellion against Earth. What's neat about the whole thing is that Mike is, in fact, not a person at all. He is a H.O.L.M.E.S. ("High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor") Mark 4, a super computer that has unexpectedly become conscious and self-aware. The relationship between Mike and Man is well worth the price of admission. And as far as characters go, the real star of the show. He moves from playful, almost childlike to a mature well-adjusted adult in just a few hundred pages.

Where the story suffers, I think, is in the fairly linear plot. There are no questions where things are headed from almost the get-go. Moreover, the book shamelessly co-opts from the American Revolution - even going so far as to steal from the Declaration of Independence. (Even the dates line up against 1776.) The book is, at its heart, a light-hearted romp but that's OK. Sometimes you want to slip on that old shoe.

Three and a half stars rounded down to three. Even the big nostalgia boost couldn't get me to bump it up higher.

I have read and given this book away at least a few times, but found a copy and reread it again. That stated, I did and still have rather mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, this is Heinlein's masterpiece, where he deeply explores his libertarian philosophy in the context of a revolution on Earth's moon. I am not really a fan of Randian philosophy at all, but here he at least outlines it in some detail, playing it off the politics and economics of Earth's nations. If you love this stuff, this is a must read classic. I rarely let an author's politics get in the way of a good read, but Heinlein and I? Lets say the relationship has always been strained. This is probably why I keep giving this book away.

On the other hand, this is also a classic of hard science fiction, but one that does not sacrifice characters to big ideas and science. Earth's moon Luna started off as a penal colony, but given that those shipped there can never return (gravity and all that), and some were fertile, a few generations dumping prisoners, families and such as swelled the population to around 3 million, most of whom are technically free. Nonetheless, the old penal institutions still rule, the head of the colony is the warden, and the colony exports lots of grain to Earth, which now has a population over 10 billion. Yet, as the penal 'Federation' is the only buyer of grain, and the only seller of goods to Luna from Earth, Luna is in a classic colonial bind-- facing a monopsony for its exports, and a monopoly for its imports. And yes, the Federation is putting the squeeze on the population from both directions.

So, we have a largely captive population with no real government on Luna, where people have been left to sort themselves and their troubles out. Various informal, but powerful, social institutions have emerged to maintain order, however, and troublemakers and assholes tend to get spaced rather quickly. Here is Heinlein's anarcho-libertarian ethos at work for sure.

Our main protagonist Mannie, a computer tech, has a secret-- the mainframe computer that basically runs the colony has come aware and Mannie is his only friend. This starts off with Mannie heading to a political rally that the computer (Mike) has no way to eavesdrop on, and there Mannie meets some people that become central to the story-- a few libertarian radicals. Long story short, they banter about the future of a 'free Luna' and Mike tells them that in only about 8 years, the colony is going to bust, for they are exporting their limited, finite resources to a point of no return. So, they decide on a plan to really free Luna, and that is the bulk of the story...

Sometimes charming and captivating, sometime annoying (I never want to hear John Galt's name again!), but in the end, a classic. 3.5 starts, rounding down for excess libertarian mumbo-jumbo and sexism.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a classic science fiction novel by Heinlein, published in the 60’s. My first experience with Heinlein was about a year ago when I read Stranger in a Strange Land and that was quite a mixed bag. I had enjoyed the first half but hated the second half which I remember as being primarily monologues and mysticism.

I liked this book much better. I kept waiting for the monologues, but happily they didn’t appear. There’s still plenty of social and political commentary, some of it interesting and some of it bizarre, and a good dose of sexism and such. However, with books from this era, I’m usually able to just acknowledge some of the problematic attitudes and then move on and focus on other aspects of the story, as long as there are other aspects that I can enjoy.

The book is set on Earth’s moon, in a future where the moon is inhabited. Earth exiles criminals there, and those criminals and their descendants have made lives for themselves. The people of Earth consider themselves rulers of the moon and its resources, exploiting them without proper consideration for their future. The Luna residents want to overthrow Earth and become independent. Some of the leaders of this rebellion include a computer technician named Manuel, a professor, and a sentient computer named Mike.

I thought the story was very interesting, and I especially enjoyed Mike, the AI that thinks he has a sense of humor. The story itself had a bit of humor and I laughed out loud a few times while reading. I also liked Manuel pretty well. My interest did start to taper off a little toward the end, and I had a few complaints here and there, but overall this was a solid four-star read for me.

I have a couple spoilerish comments that I’ll have to put in spoiler tags…
One thing that did get on my nerves was all the lying and manipulation. I recognize that it was completely realistic as far as real-world politics go, and that maybe there was no other realistic way for our “good guys” to win their independence, but I like it best when the heroes in a book take the high road. Because of this, I wasn’t too crazy for Prof who was the main perpetrator of the lying and manipulation, and I liked Man better for being a little bewildered and annoyed by it all.

I enjoyed reading about an AI who was likeable and didn’t get out of control and have to be shut down. I was sorry that he was dead/silent by the end, but I preferred that to the “Evil AI” route I was half expecting. I did get a little uncomfortable with how freely he used Man’s voice to get things done when he was unavailable, but that was offset by his affection for his first and best friend. Also, as we were told, he seemed to be developing a bit of a conscience.

It's amazing to me that this book seems so well regarded. Despite the supposed intellectual and political nature of the book, Heinlein at no time offers any credible and countervailing arguments against the naive, solipstic libertarian drivel that he places in the mouth of the Prof and most of the main characters.

When those arguments do arise ever so briefly, Heinlein places them in the vacant-headedly portrayed Wyoming Knot who of course is easily dismissed as a mere woman whose place is in the kitchen, making babies, or in the beauty parlor. She is never portrayed as a true believer in socialism or syndicalism and her thoughts and her opinions are easily swayed.

Heinlein is so notorious in regard to his portrayals of women that feminist science fiction critics have created the notion of the Heinlein heroine as:

"a strong female character: smart (often smarter than the men around her), competent, strong of will, and super-attractive, but is ultimately driven by her biological need to bear children and (in the non-YA novels) to have sex with the Heinlein heroes"

http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?tit...

Heinlein's conception of the feminine is ultimately that of the fulfillment of adolescent fantasy.

Heinlein sets up one dimensional, ridiculous, cartoonish villains in the form of world government representatives that are of course corrupt, self-interested and cruel as embodiments of not only Heinlein's conception of the very nature of socialism and government in general but also of authority (The Authority, how transparent) itself.

Yet, yet, yet, the figurehead of the Prof is the completely unchallenged, unquestioned, and unexamined authoritarian of Heinlein's libertarian dystopia. He is the unerring embodiment of a sardonic and sociopathic libertarian ethic that says you are only as free as the jackboot on your neck of unbridled "individual responsibility" allows you to be.

Pathetic.

That the ultimate denouement here is an interplanetary war of a sorts smacks of a kind of revenge fantasy as adolescent as Heinlein's ideas about sex and women.

What a treat.

When I was growing up, Robert Heinlein’s name loomed large over the science fiction genre. Not only did it seem as though his novels were everywhere, but practically ever writer in the field worshiped him as the GOAT or at least paid him a respectful due. Yet his appeal always eluded me. As I explored his works, I grew annoyed quickly with the thinness of his characters and the formulaic nature of his plots, and after reading a few of his novels I decided to pass on the remainder. Because of this, it wasn’t until I saw a gushing review on TikTok of this book a few weeks ago from a self-admitted Heinlein skeptic that I decided to give it a try. Perhaps with the benefit provided by age of being a more experienced reader, I thought, I might see in this oft-mentioned novel the greatness of Heinlein that eluded me as a youth.

Instead, not only did reading it confirm my judgment of the author, it gave me new levels of appreciation for the awfulness of his work. It began with the introduction to Manuel “Manny” Garcia O’Kelly, who Heinlein quickly establishes as the Gary Stu narrator of his tale. From the jump Manny is presented as special: a “born free” resident of the penal colony of Luna who is not a cog of the Authority who runs it but a contractor who can drop his tools whenever he wants. Any doubts that the reader may have about possible unreliability of our narrator’s self-assessment are dispelled quickly by “Mike,” the secretly-sentient AI who runs the colony and who pronounces Manny the one “not-stupid” person with whom he interacts. Sure, plenty of people believe that they are great, but how many have it confirmed for them by a near-omniscient entity?

The colony Mike runs is meant to represent Heinlein’s ideal society – and what a society it is! Generations of settlement by prisoners and their descendants has created a diverse and blended society in which people still express cringeworthy racial views. That men made up a large majority of the exiles sent to the Moon means that women enjoy a special status and participate in polyamorous relationships, yet for all their supposed power they are treated usually as little more than objects of sexual interest by the male characters. Though ostensibly under the rule of the Authority, the absence of any laws results in the development of a society which to Heinlein is governed using common sense but which might be termed mob rule by his readers, with people accused of breaking the unstated customs ejected arbitrarily out of the nearest airlock. And all of this is supported by an economy based around providing hydroponically-grown crops for the Earth, because that’s more efficient that growing them on the Earth itself. It all makes sense, so long as you do not spend a moment thinking about it.

That Manny is generally content with this locally-managed status quo leads him to treat Luna’s politics with contempt. Yet he soon finds himself entangled with a protest movement that leads him to embarks upon revolution alongside the curvaceous Wyoming “Wyoh” Knott and the elderly Professor Bernardo de la Paz. The expository-heavy dialogue between the latter two gives Heinlein the opportunity to offer his two bits about politics, but the larger point is that neither would be have a chance of success without the aid of Manny and his all-powerful friend. Wyoh and the Prof are soon relegated to secondary roles, as it is only thanks to Mike’s pervasive control, supplemented by Manny’s common sense, that they can construct a movement that can overthrow the colony’s Warden and gives the “Loonies” the time they need to prepare to take on their real enemy: the Federated Nations of Earth.

The Loonies’ confrontation with the Federated Nations takes up the remainder of the book. As an overly-centralized, excessively bureaucratic and rules-bound organization, the FN represents everything Heinlein despises about government, making them the ideal foil for his heroes. Though the odds are supposedly heavily in Earth’s favor, Heinlein’s biases ensure that the outcome is never really in doubt, to the point of excusing the hundreds of thousands of people on Earth killed by the Loonies in the war as the product of their own stupidity or their misfortune in being governed by such an unaccommodating regime.

Not that the Loonies prove much better in that respect, as things run well in Heinlein’s estimation only when trivialities like candidate selection, voting, and the popular will are manipulated and subverted by a machine in order to ensure that his ideas succeed. Once that control is gone, the Loonies prove no less susceptible to “yammerheads” than their counterparts on Earth. It’s a cynical note that says more about Heinlein’s contempt for the very people he claims are capable of running things for themselves than it does anything else. It suggests a frustration that many of his fans share over living in a world run by people they believe are not as smart as they are, which may explain the novel’s enduring popularity. Because the answer certainly does not lie in the shallow characterization or suspense-free plotting of this book. It may indeed deserve to be ranked among Heinlein’s best work and the one most representative of his ideas, but that is very different from saying that it is a good book.

Ah, Heinlein: SF's great paradox artist. I am fairly certain that I have personally held every possible wrong viewpoint on the man. Namely, that he was:

1) A radically forward-thinking visionary of libertarianism
2) A raging fascist, homophobe, and misogynist
3) Any point on the sociopolitical spectrum in between.

It's not my fault. Over the course of his career, Heinlein seemed to espouse every possible viewpoint on religion, government, and gender relations (obviously, he liked to stick to small themes), showing little tolerance for moderate opinions. Without a blink of irony, he also placed a premium on pragmatism.

And the balance of pragmatism and idealism -- or, rather, the illusion that the two can coexist effortlessly -- is what The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is all about. It is the story of a lunar colony's revolt, in the same way that The Fountainhead is a book about architects (an insulting comparison; Heinlein's prose is significantly more readable than Ayn Rand's). You see, it's really about libertarianism -- or, as one of the book's heroes characterizes it, "rational anarchism."

So, a small group of revolutionaries attempts to liberate the moon from her Earthbound oppressors, and institute a perfect anarcho-syndicalist commune in their stead. They set about doing this, of course, with the help of a sentient supercomputer. They organize the people of Luna, and succeed in overthrowing the existing government, but in so doing upset the nations of Earth. After all, the moon has been shipping grain down to help feed Earth's starving masses, so they're a little cranky when the "Lunies" threaten to cut off the supply (you'd be cranky living on 1,800 calories a day too).

Coincidentally, the ruling philosophy on Luna is the maxim "TANSTAAFL" -- There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. I mentioned that Heinlein was subtle, right?

So they go to war, and then, in the novel's single biggest twist, the computer doesn't turn evil. I could hardly believe it.

Although the book is riddled with bizarre moments that nag one's attempts to suspend disbelief (the most persistent being Mike the Computer's regular updates as to the revolutionaries' "probability of success," which starts out at 1/7, and then -- as everything proceeds to go perfectly to plan -- drops to as low as 1/100, in unapologetic defiance of all mathematical logic), the plot's weaknesses don't matter. Heinlein is a gifted novelist, and a natural storyteller. Even when the characters decide to take 10 pages off and simply talk politics for a while, it's enthralling.

And talk politics they do. No one flinches at the notion of attempting to institute a perfect democracy run entirely by a handful of exceptional individuals, who themselves defer to the managerial expertise of a supercomputer (no tyrannic potential there, right?). Nor do they worry themselves with the philosophical contradiction of attempting to forge a pacifistic state by means of terrorism and interplanetary warfare (those who raise the issue, and thus violate Heinlein's worship at the Altar of Pragmatism, are conveniently Roslined out of the nearest airlock; it's okay, they're wormy enough that you won't miss 'em).

But all of this simply serves to illustrate Heinlein's mastery of the ideological paradox. He's more than smart enough to recognize the inconsistencies of his own personal politics, and to play with them to terrific effect. Notably, Heinlein did not self-dentify with the majority of his protagonists. Instead, his Mary Sues are characters like Stranger in a Strange Land's Jubal Harshaw and, in the case of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Professor Bernardo de la Harshaw--er, Paz. They are cynical old men who are, in novel after novel, infallible, brilliant, well-connected, and almost disturbingly capable.

Exit thought: why is it that the computer that makes the revolution possible just happens to share its name with the superhuman hero of Stranger In a Strange Land, both of whom disappear suddenly and inexplicably upon concluding their tasks?