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The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress [Paperback]

Robert A. Heinlein (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (303 customer reviews) |
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Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1997
Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work.

It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people--a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic--who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with politics, humanity, passion, innovative technical speculation, and a firm belief in the pursuit of human freedom.
 
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the winner of the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tom Clancy has said of Robert A. Heinlein, "We proceed down the path marked by his ideas. He shows us where the future is." Nowhere is this more true than in Heinlein's gripping tale of revolution on the moon in 2076, where "Loonies" are kept poor and oppressed by an Earth-based Authority that turns huge profits at their expense. A small band of dissidents, including a one-armed computer jock, a radical young woman, a past-his-prime academic and a nearly omnipotent computer named Mike, ignite the fires of revolution despite the near certainty of failure and death. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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"We proceed down a path marked by his ideas." --Tom Clancy
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Orb Books; 1st edition (June 15, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312863551
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312863555
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (303 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Robert A. Heinlein Page
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein, four-time winner of the Hugo Award and recipient of three Retro Hugos, received the first Grand Master Nebula Award for lifetime achievement. His worldwide bestsellers have been translated into 22 languages and include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Time Enough for Love, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His long-lost first novel, For Us, the Living, was recently published by Scribner and Pocket Books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
297 of 303 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Written at the peak of Robert A. Heinlein's creative powers in the mid-sixties, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" ranks with "Stranger in a Strange Land" as his most popular and acclaimed novel. Heinlein was furiously ingenious at this stage in his career, and this novel is an incredible feat of imagination, intellect, and writing talent. It is, however, a difficult and heavy novel (much like "Stranger in a Strange Land"), loaded with hard science and even harder politics: Heinlein at his best is a writer who attracts and repels the reader at the same time, and no one could read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" without forming some very strong opinions about it.

The story follows a revolution on the lunar colonies against Earth authority. The lunar colony was originally a penal colony, but even though the lunar residents ("Loonies" as they call themselves) are no longer technically prisoners, they have become economic slaves of the Earth. Also, because of their adaptation to the Moon's lower gravity, they cannot safely return to live on Earth, so their exile is a permanent one. Amidst growing but unorganized discontent amongst the Loonies, four remarkable individuals begin the meticulous planning of a revolution to free the Moon: Mannie, an engineer and our narrator; Prof. de la Paz; fiery Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott; and a newly sentient supercomputer named Mike. Starting from this small group, the resistance spreads across the Moon. But how can the nearly defenseless colonists and miners face down the juggernaut of the nations of Earth? Mike has an ingenious solution: "Throw rocks at `em"...literally!

Told through Mannie's point of view, the novel is written in a clipped, abbreviated style that represents the Loonie version of English: many pronouns and articles are dropped, leading to sentences like: "Stomach was supposed to be empty. But I filled helmet with sourest, nastiest fluid you would ever go a long way to avoid." This takes a few pages to get accustomed to, but soon you won't notice the odd style at all and accept it as part of the book's revolutionary spirit.

Heinlein unfolds the revolution in a meticulously detailed style, using lengthy conversations between the characters about how to step-by-step overthrow the authority of an overwhelming power. Heinlein not only provides in-depth details on the technology, but also of the philosophy of revolution and the unusual customs of the Loonies (such as their group marriages). Like most of Heinlein's great novels, this is a trip for the mind, and you have to be prepared to do plenty of thinking along with the passages of action. The novel does tend to drag somewhat in the middle, but the last hundred pages are feverish with both action and ideas.

Where Heinlein really triumphs in this novel is in the characterization of Mike the computer. Mike, along with Hal from "2001," is one of great artificial intelligences in science fiction. You will quickly forget, as Mannie does, that Mike is a disembodied voice from a machine, and instead think of him (or sometimes `her') as another character. Mike's growth from his shaky beginnings as a thinking being is fascinating and one of Heinlein's great achievements as an author.

However, if you are new to Robert A. Heinlein (or science fiction in general), this isn't the novel to start with (and neither is "Stranger in a Strange Land"). You should ease yourself into Heinlein's brilliant mind first through his novels from the 1950s, most of which were aimed at teenagers but are nonetheless wonderful books that anyone can enjoy: "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel," "Starman Jones," and "Citizen of the Galaxy" are good places to start. Also recommended: "The Puppet Masters" and Heinlein's short stories from the 1930s and 40s collected in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" and "The Green Hills of Earth." You should definitely read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" -- it's an essential classic of the genre -- but you may need to build up to it. After all, as Loonies say: "TANSTAAFL!" ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!")

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80 of 82 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I just re-read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress after not having read it since I was a teenager. (Well, that was in the 60's, oof.) I must say, this book holds up well against science fiction written far after it, and also after the technological surges of the 90's that made computers a household item and not just a device at work that spewed out yellow punchtape.

Heinlein attended Annapolis and was in the Navy; his experiences feed into many of his books (most famously, Starship Troopers.) And the theme of liberty, alternate marriage styles, animate computers also turn up in many of his works (Time Enough for Love.) Heinlein was kind of a libertarian; his ideas about society show up in many of his novels.

The endearing part of this book is the wonderful relationship between Mannie, jack-of-all-trades and computer technician, and Mike, the self-aware computer that runs everything on the Moon from the air systems and transport to accounting and telephones. The moon has been settled by various countries (Russia, US, China) and has been turned into a penal-colony and excess population dumping zone. The government is lead by the Warden, who views the post as a sinecure, and aside from keeping general order, does nothing. Since escape is pretty much impossible, the convicts and transportees have been left to set up a semi-anarchic society ruled mainly by common sense. (As long as you leave your neighbors in peace, they'll do the same for you.)

However, when Manny attends a Free Luna rally, he learns that the resources of the moon are being depleted and that without halting the one-way export of resources to the earth, the moon and its inhabitants will be soon be doomed to starvation. Manny joins an ad-hoc revolutionary cabal with his friend the Professor and blonde hot-head Wyoming Knott. Together with Mike the computer, who has an enviable insider view of everything that goes on and a puckish sense of humor, they found the Revolution with a novel cell structure depending on the savvy computer's abilities to remember everything and keep a secret. Mike takes on the alter-ego as Adam Selene, the revolutionary leader (and bit of a stuffed-shirt) and the struggle begins.

How the Revolution is fought and won is an exciting tale. The end is bittersweet, as the moon must inevitably change and not everyone does survive the heroic struggle for freedom. This is a must-read science fiction book in my opinion, and one of Heinlein's best.

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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful
Blueprint for Revolution August 20, 2001
Format:Paperback
This is my favorite Heinlein novel, and I've read all of Heinlein's works. It is a great mixture of adventure, humor, politics, technology, some thought provoking looks at alternate types of marriages, and the most lovable sentient computer ever to grace the pages of a novel. Mike (the computer) is really the star of this book, from loving to tell jokes, to deciding to help a group of revolutionary-minded Luna 'citizens' actually accomplish their dreams of freedom because the human interaction would keep him from being lonely.

Along the path to revolution, Heinlein, (as usual), inserts thoughts and ideas that challenge your basic assumptions about what is right, normal, necessary, or appropriate. Is a representative democracy the only 'good' form of government? What's so sacred about a 'majority'? How should a government finance itself? (Maybe make the representatives pay for their pet projects out of their own pocket - taxes not allowed!). Are polygamy, polyandry, or other forms of multiple marriage wrong or can they be used to help preserve the stability of a child-rearing environment? How do you most efficiently organize a revolutionary group that must be kept secret from the authorities (given the assumption that there will always be 'stool pigeons')?

Some have quite correctly noted that this book should not be read by ultra-grammarians, as it is told in first person Luna-speak, an odd pidgin mixture of English and Russian, with occasional items thrown in from Chinese, Finnish, and several other languages. Far from being a detriment, I consider this to be a great accomplishment. Most writers have trouble accurately portraying the dialect, say, of the Deep South in a convincing manner. Here, Heinlein has created his own dialect of the future - and makes you believe it.

This book is not quite as deep as Stranger in a Strange Land, one of Heinlein's other great books, but it has a faster, more action oriented pace, and characters that you will get emotionally involved with. I cried at the end of this book the first time I read it (and the second, and the third...) and I think you will too. TANSTAAFL indeed - but in this case, you get more than you paid for.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Noooooooooooo!
Where's the freaking Kindle version of this - Heinlein's best book? Where? Garbage like I Will Fear No Evil has a Kindle version. Read more
Published 22 days ago by L. Morgan
Favorite Heinlein novel
This is, as far as I am concerned, RAH's best novel. He'd gotten his skills up, and he wasn't quite to the point where, apparently, editors were afraid to edit him. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Celestialabyss
RAH's Greatest Mistake: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
First I need to explain that I LOVE Robert A. Heinlein. I Love every book he wrote, I Love his characters, his plots, his sense of optimism for humanity, all of it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by D. J. Foley
Interesting concept, not so interesting execution.
I found the plot creative and interesting and was really excited to get into it (as I love politics and dystopian novels), but I am not a fan of the execution. Read more
Published 2 months ago by D. Ben Jones
Sobering yet entertaining; highly recommended
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), by Robert A. Heinlein

This is an engaging science fiction work, one of Heinlein's more popular books. Read more
Published 2 months ago by James R Ament
Eclipsing the Competition
A work of this magnitude clearly does not require another glowing review so this will be kept short. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Pat S.
Bad pacing, exposition and thinly written characters ruined a great...
I always hate reading and then reviewing a book that so many people love, especially when I can't understand why it gets the love it gets. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Peter M. Bush
I'd forgotten how good it was
I read "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" over 40 years ago and although I had fond memories of Robert Heinlein as an author I'd forgotten just how good a book it was. Read more
Published 3 months ago by J. Fiet
Masterpiece by the Master
Another classic that lives up to the blling.

This is the story of a computer tech, a mis-guided hot female revolutionary, an aging professor and a computer that take... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Brad
Revolution of the Moon
Luna is the Australia of the future. Populated largely by criminal transportees and their families, it supplies critically-needed food to a near-starving Earth. Read more
Published 4 months ago by John M. Ford
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I see in Lunaya Pravda that Luna City Council has passed on first reading a bill to examine, license, inspect-and tax-public food vendors operating inside municipal pressure. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lock thirteen, catapult head, ballistic radars, executive cell, new catapult, laser drills, grain barges, parking orbit, other warrens, new chum
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Adam Selene, Luna City, Hong Kong, Great China, North America, Lunar Authority, Old Dome, Federated Nations, Tycho Under, Honorable Chairman, Peace Dragoons, Free Luna, Professor de la Paz, The Rock, Wyoming Knott, Finn Nielsen, Mare Undarum, Tube Station West, Luna Free State, Cheyenne Mountain, Comrade Clayton, Grand Assembly, Simon Jester, Mort the Wart, Professor Bernardo de la Paz
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