The Man who Sold the Moon (Complete - all 6 Stories) [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert A. Heinlein (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Signet Books (February 1, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451071964
• ISBN-13: 978-0451071965
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,609,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Heinlein at his best, using and abusing the corporate mentality, December 1, 2009

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This collection of short stories is Heinlein at his best; his cynical view of the corporate world is as accurate today as it was when he wrote the stories sixty years ago. "Let There Be Light," describes an invention that will make lighting homes and businesses much cheaper and efficient. However, the disadvantage is that it will severely damage the business of powerful corporate interests so they band together in an attempt to suppress the invention. Faced with a battery of nuisance and money-sucking lawsuits, the main character and his female co-worker decide to insert the invention into the public domain. As the recent financial meltdown and bonus scandal indicates, the cynical, cutthroat attitude of powerful corporations as described by Heinlein is realistic.
The problem of having dangerous points of failure in a national system is the point of "The Roads Must Roll." Mass transportation in the United States is now performed by a system of rolling conveyors on which people and goods travel at speeds up to 100 mph. When a small gang of malcontent workers sabotage a small section of road with a few deaths and threaten to destroy even more, the chief engineer must find a way to literally and figuratively defuse the situation. He is successful but in the process learns that to make something fail-safe it is necessary to have overlapping redundancies.
In "The Man Who Sold the Moon" Heinlein maintains the same attitude towards corporate malfeasance, only now it is being channeled towards a positive, human movement into space. D. D. Harriman is a man possessed by a vision, to walk on the moon. Already extremely successful in business, Harriman takes every dime that he has, many that his business partners have and convinces many others to let him use theirs as he relentlessly pursues his dream of space flight and a moon colony. His ventures include selling letters to go to the moon, real estate on the moon, stock in a lunar transport company and many other "ship in the sky" schemes. He is successful and a small colony is established on the surface of the moon. The combination of corporate deception in pursuit of a grand vision makes this one of the best science fiction stories of all time.
"Requiem" is a continuation of "The Man Who Sold the Moon"; D. D. Harriman is now an old man in failing health. The moon colony and the economic spin-offs are doing well but Harriman has not yet traveled to the consequences of his dream. That is his final goal in life so he enlists two barnstorming rocketeers to aid him in his quest. They escape before the law can stop them and make an unauthorized landing on the moon. Harriman is able to stand and survey the surface for a few minutes before he dies. This story is a nice touch; it was an accurate way to portray the end of the life of a man with vision and the drive to achieve it.