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Robert Heinlein

[The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (S.F. MASTERWORKS)] [Author: Heinlein, Robert A.] [December, 2008] Hardcover

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Popular Highlights in this book

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Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws—always for other fellow.
Highlighted by 703 Kindle readers
“My point is that one person is responsible. Always. If H-bombs exist—and they do—some man controls them. In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”
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I wasn’t impressed. As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00GX3RT7A
Language ‏ : ‎ English

Best Sellers Rank: #3,249,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Robert Heinlein

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Robert Heinlein was an American novelist and the grand master of science fiction in the twentieth century. Often called 'the dean of science fiction writers', he is one of the most popular, influential and controversial authors of 'hard science fiction'.

Over the course of his long career he won numerous awards and wrote 32 novels, 59 short stories and 16 collections, many of which have cemented their place in history as science fiction classics, including STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS and the beloved STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.

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When our Cannons will roar "Revolution!"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 7, 2022

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This book is about the revolution on the Moon. Its very entertaining story is thereby split into three parts: In the first part, the revolution is planned and prepared until at the end of this part, the revolution starts. The second part is how the main protagonists travel to the Earth, ostensibly to negotiate with the Federated Nations, but in reality, to lay the ground for future tactics. In the third part, finally, the people from Luna must defend themselves against the savage attacks from the Terrans in order to preserve their newly acquired freedom.

It is a really packing, eventful story, that I managed to read in a week and two day. Just, whereas the fate of the Prof was kind of expected, the one of Mike was not and was therefore quite a negative blow in an otherwise positive story. At the end, there remains thus a kind of bittersweet feeling.

For me, this book turned out to be a positive surprise. I had before read Starship Troopers, which turned out to be quite a disappointment. Apart from the first and the last chapters, that book is base training and then officer training. But I had wanted to read that book in order to compare it with the Forever War. This book, on the other hand, was an enjoyable read from the first to the last page. I wanted to read one or two more books from Robert Heinlein, just as I had done with Joe Haldeman, and as with The Forever Peace, where I did not know what it was about and what to expect and where I subsequently has been absolutely positively surprised, also with this book, I didn’t know what to expect and it was a very positive surprise. I sometimes wonder why the wrong books are famous.

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Brian K. Miller

There is more here than meets the eye

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 4, 2012

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I don't claim to be a genius. Robert A. Heinlein, on the other hand, is one of the most brilliant writers the United States of America has ever produced. He starts with a kaleidoscope of colorful characters, posits a world no one living has ever experienced, then uses science to bring them together in a multilayered study of human existence. And he achieved this in every single book he wrote.

Consider Mike, the supercomputer who becomes sentient and helps free the former prison colony of Luna from the tyrannical and oppressive "Authority" based on Earth. The name and character allude to "Michael", an archangel, the only archangel in the Bible clearly identified as a warrior angel. Thus it is not the least bit surprising that Mike the supercomputer comes up with and executes the strategy that helps Luna's revolution succeed. Nevertheless, the two personality traits that give his character such charm are a childlike naivete and a love of practical jokes. His naivete is so overwhelming that when he realizes the destruction brought by his strategy it renders him catatonic.

Consider also Hazel Stone. She first appears in a book published almost ten years before this book ( The Rolling Stones ) as the grandmother of that book's two charming halfwit brothers. Ten years after the publication of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress she reappears as a tertiary, yet critical character in The Number of the Beast , then a few years later as the central character in The Cat Who Walks through Walls , and finally in 1988 as a pivotal character in To Sail Beyond the Sunset . Hazel Stone starts out as a minor character in a book published in 1955, and becomes one of the most important members of the Long family in the four "Boondock" books where Heinlein finally brings together and reveals how his works are all bound together in a literary examination of the philosophical concept of the world as myth. Most importantly, despite evolving over four books and three decades Hazel Stone never once violates the key elements of her wildly independent, doggedly determined personality. That kind of career-long internal consistency is extremely challenging for a writer to pull off successfully.

Some critics disparage Heinlein's female characters because they do not think and act like men. Somehow they never notice that when push comes to shove, it is always the women in a Heinlein book that have the most initiative, the most common sense, and the greatest ability to change the course of human history. No matter how the male characters stumble through the plot, the women always provide the missing piece of the puzzle or the critical decision that eventually wins the day. Heinlein's female characters, like Hazel Stone and Wyoming Knott, are always the focal point of the events that move a Heinlein novel forward and bring it to its conclusion.

The main character of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress , Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, meets Wyoming Knott at a subversive meeting he has no interest in attending. The only reason he goes is because his "thinkum dinkum" friend Mike the Supercomputer cannot observe the meeting directly and asks Manuel to attend for him and tell him about it. The meeting is interrupted by a police raid and in the course of the raid Manuel is charged with protecting Wyoming Knott, a keynote speaker invited from the Hong Kong colony. On the strength of Wyoming's kiss, ready sense of humor, and ability to win the trust of Mike, the next twenty-four hours finds Manuel drafted into leading a revolution against the Warden and the Authority that oppress Luna.

One of the most brilliant strokes of genius is how through this providential meeting the reader learns that Luna is a libertarian society with no written laws while the Authority is a Soviet-style collectivist big government attempting to dictate every aspect of life in Luna. The subversives use Soviet style revolutionary titles and hierarchy, but are fighting for an American style free market economy. This reversal of roles is a literary device that keeps the reader questioning their assumptions about labels versus the genuine truths those labels are applied to. What becomes apparent only after reading the Boondock books is how The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a key lesson in understanding the difference between a label and the thing itself. The continuity of Hazel Stone's character is one of the powerful literary tools Heinlein uses to teach this lesson not once, but repeatedly over a period of three decades!

As I said at the beginning, I am not a genius and I do not claim to be. Nonetheless, when I read some of the negative and disparaging reviews of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress here at Amazon, it strikes me that none of the people who rated this book with one or two stars actually understood the book and several of them probably did not even bother reading it beyond the first chapter or two. Just as in every book Heinlein wrote, there is far more going on here than meets the eye. On the surface, it is a rollicking space opera of revolution and freedom. Peel back the layers and you find a critical assessment of everything that is wrong with American culture in the post war years as well as a dire warning about the civil unrest that tore through our society in the decade after this book was published.

Some science fiction writers claim to be prophetic. Robert A. Heinlein actually was.

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BigOrangeDave

memorable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 30, 2023

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Memorable characters, lasting quotes and ideas and an entertaining story; what more could one ask for?

Definitely lives up to its reputation as a genre classic. Vivid sense of place and a story that starts from humble beginnings to world shaking events.

Very enjoyable!

VFL.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 28, 2023

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Amazing for it’s time. Not as dated as most Sy-Fi from the era. Part revolutionary handbook, part political libertarian philosophy, part slightly nutty.
Interesting for the thoughts on AI way before current technology.

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Candyspaw

Good story after midway through

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 21, 2023

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One of his better stories, because there's some action to keep it interesting. Not all Talk-Talk. Well written and engaging.

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Sunil Goswami

Does not deserve five-stars!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 22, 2016

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It deserves 500! I have lost count how many times I have read it in the various formats - hard cover, paperback, ebook, audiobook. And bought it again in Kindle format even though I still have the paperback because I don't know how many times I would still read it again before I die.

No matter whether a book is fiction or non-fiction I always need my books to be entertaining. TMIAHM is great that way. Every time I start it I have to make no effort to keep reading, it just keeps grabbing me and taking me forward.

Many years ago when I read it the very first time, it was a hard cover library copy and I was sitting on the window seat in a bus going to the public library in Delhi. The purpose of reading it then was to see if I wanted to keep it or return it and get something from the library. As I read the first few paragraphs of Mannie's weird mixed up dialect I knew it was going to be a return. However by the time the bus reached the library I was waist-deep in intrigue and wild horses could not have pulled the book from my hands.

Not only do you get engrossed in the story itself, but you start caring about the characters as if they are your own family. Only RAH has that magic! Who else can make you care about a computer as a person?

I would not say you must read this book. No, be very careful picking up this book as it would shake your preconceptions, your prejudices, your lifelong beliefs! And it will probably make you cry. If you have any soul at all, it would make you cry with emotion, happiness as well as sadness. And it will haunt you. For ever!

"What is it that's moral for a group to do but not moral for a member of that group to do alone?" This and other questions like this have stayed with me ever since I read it.

So be careful, but if you can handle the rollercoaster of emotions, and if you love sci-fi, if you love good storytelling, you are in for a treat!

33 people found this helpful

Annie

Dreary and tedious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 23, 2022

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My only previous Heinlein book was read many years ago and I didn't like that either. I remember very little about it except that it was sexist and uninteresting.
I found The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to be excessively tedious and dreary to read. I did get to the end but have now regretted the time spent on it. I appreciate that there are a lot of ideas in it, political and otherwise but found that I couldn't care less about them because of the way the book was written. I just cannot understand all the eulogies to it. I can say with certainty that this was the last Heinlein book that I will ever read.

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

A well-written book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 29, 2022

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A point about the language: syntactic particles such as 'the' are seldom used. The same is true in Russian, which Heinlein's wife Ginny learned. Perhaps Lunar colonists would learn such a language. There's a smattering of influences by other cultures, such as Australia - which makes sense if the prisoners/colonists were from everywhere on Earth.
Indirectly I think the novel led to the Lunar Treaties - as Mike pointed out, it's easier for a Lunar colony to attack Earth than the reverse, since they're at the top of the gravity well. That was a clever point, that a Lunar colony would possess an enormous tactical advantage. It's *hard* to get out of a gravity well. It's very easy to get *into* one.
The reasons for the revolution were very well laid-out and made perfect sense. Mike did, too. It's not impossible that such a self-aware entity could arise; I recall an episode of Equinox which dealt with AT & T before it was broken up - its network kept finding routing solutions spontaneously. I wonder what it might eventually have become. Maybe the Internet will go the same way.
Maybe it has, and no-one's noticed...
Some parts of the novel are a little dated, but it's still an excellent read. In fact the example of Mike helped me on my degree course with an assignment for the AI course; I used his example to prove a point - in fact I argued the complete opposite of what the assignment was supposed to be about! - and as an example of what AI could and hopefully will be one day. I got a good grade.
Mike was a friend to mankind. We'd better hope the Internet (whatever it becomes or has already become) will be, too.

Paul of Essex

It's a classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 20, 2021

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This book has been described as Heinlein's masterpiece. Not sure about that, but it's a fun read. Essentially it documents how the lunar community, used and abused by their earth masters, stage a determined and violent revolution. The narrator's voice is quirky and he takes a high level view of events so the first few chapters read more like a history book than a regular novel. It took me a while to get used to, but once accepted it worked ok. This is an old book and the dialogue is sometimes cheesy and even controversial, but again it's all part of the charm. I'm not a huge fan of Heinlein, I always preferred Clarke, but this is well worth reading.

3 people found this helpful

J. W. Treadaway

I really wanted to like this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 26, 2018

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I've read a lot of Heinlein's work in the past and usually enjoyed... well, most of it. I was recommended this book (granted four decades ago...) and thought I'd give it a go. Conceptually it works well but I found some of the characterisation a little, I guess, juvenile. I don't have the "shock horror" reaction that some reviewers have had about the choice of disguise for the lead female: it seems perfectly reasonable if you can pull it off and there is certainly nothing derogatory implied with it (no more than the choice used by the 'Prof' if dressing as a homeless man. Shades of Sherlock Holmes...

But I found the explanations of setting up revolutionary 'cells' unnecessarily over detailed (this is a novel not a 'how to' manual) and the shortened grammar in use by the main character from his first person viewpoint (and the other characters too) hard work and 'jarring'. It reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. It wasn't bad, per se, and - in a post text message world - probably not 'inaccurate' but it did make the book a strain to read.

Not one I'll return to.

8 people found this helpful

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