wiki says....
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar penal colony's revolt against rule from Earth. Originally serialised in Worlds of If (December 1965, January, February, March, April 1966), it received the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel."
I've had this one on my "to read" shelf for a while too. I've been told that it's a Sci-Fi classic. I've even been told that when it comes to novels it's THE sci-fi classic.
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
Written in 1966
It says right on the cover that this book is a "Sciene Fiction Masterpiece". But I'll be honest, I was skeptical. I know... I know.... never doubt a dust jacket, right? If Stephen King says that it's the most riveting thing he's read sings Schlack's Almanac, then who am I to question? Or if Robert Ludlum says you'll be riveted to your seat the entire time, why would anyone second guess that sort of judgement.
But call me a doubter... because I doubted. ...like a doubter... doubting things... that are doubtful....
And it was written so long ago. For Gob's sake, it was written back in 1966. The moon landing was 1969, how the frak could anyone write effective science fiction before that. Much less science fiction that takes place on the moon?
Was the dust jacket right?
I'm not gonna tell you yet.
I'm building up suspense.
What?
That's too much suspense?
Okay I'll bore you with a tangent to sorta level it out.
I'd forgotten that there are two sorts of science fiction. I don't read a lot of science fiction. More than most maybe, but it's been a long time since I've read a good science fiction book - Ursula LeGuinn doesn't count as science fiction. I refuse to lump her in to that category.
And if I'm reading fantasy (what are they called this month, the "new Fabulist", or Urban Fantasy, or Elfless Fantasy) I want fluff. Not crap, but fluff.
So I'd forgotten about these two flavours of sci-fi.
And I forgot what they are labeled as too.
go go google power!
They are "Soft Sci-fi"and "Hard Sci-Fi". Which sounds maybe a little like a before and after commercial for trapezoidal little blue pills.
Hard sci-fi focuses heavily on the science. It's goal is to make the science as complete as possible. Almost more like predictions. The science drives the story.
Soft Sci-fi is the opposite. The science is just sort of a given. It might not be explained in as much detail, and there probably isn't as much of an effort spent in making the science plausible. The story is driven by the relationships and the society.
In Hard Sci-fi, you can drop in just about any story as long as the science is interesting and well developed. In Soft Sci-fi, the science is secondary, the story could take place in present time, or anytime, as long as it is a strong and interesting story.
Do you feel edjuh-mah-cated?
The The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely soft Sci-fi. There are sci-fi elements, foh schizzle, but they are the background.
I think this makes these elements more flexible, and almost 50 years after it was written, nothing jumped out at me as being "silly".
People are living on the moon. They are ice miners, and hydroponics farmers. ...sure, why not.
They have lasers, but they are used for mining mostly, and pretty limited in what they can do. ...no problem buying in to that.
Travel to and from earth is difficult, and except for shipments of grain, that are more-or-less dropped down to earth, people don't go back and forth often. Infact, if you spend too much time on the moon, you're body gets used to the gravity change, and you risk serious health problems (cardiac specificly) traveling to Earth. ...again, no problems with that really.
And that's about it for the sci-fi portions.
really. No lightsabers. Not X-wings and tie-fighters. No green aliens who eat brains or weave baskets. No evil overlord with telekinetic powers. Not even the ability to travel any further than the moon really.
Oh, there is one sentient computer that "wakes up." But he is unique, and if you read the book, you'll like him. His name is Mike.
Reading it, you really don't run in to anything that makes it hard to believe that this story isn't going to run it's course 40-50 years in the future.
So what drives the story?
(possible spoilers ahead, not too many, but maybe a few.)
At it's highest level, it's a story of revolution. The moon is a penal colony. People are sent there for anything that involves jail time. You serve your time, you're considered "free" but because your body has adapted, you can't go home. So you go to work, probably farming, maybe picking up some other sort of job.
But the moon is controlled by a "Warden". A loose police force for a private company that pays for the produce farmed there. They don't do much policing unless it involves grain shipments. They don't watch the inmates. They can't escape anyway. They don't try anyone for crimes, everyone there is guilty already. They don't keep the peace, the inmates do that themselves. You either get along or you don't eat. Rudeness can get you thrown out of an airlock, so everyone is pretty much polite to everyone else.
But the Warden does rule.
Things happen, yaddity-yaddity, and the loonies (lunar citizens) want independence. And the rest of the book is pretty much the story of that struggle.
That's the crinkly glazed layer of frosting on the fluffy Saturday morning gas station doughnut that is this book.
This book is a grrrreat conversation piece. (You're expecting me to go for a frosted flakes reference right about here, aren't you? Well I'm not gonna. This byatch ain't sellin' out like that)
* There are questions of justified violence.
* There's the big question about Mike and his role. Is he ever more than just a tool?
* There are challenges to social structure. Heinlein plays with the family structure. Starting with the posit that women are scarce in a penal colony. Continuing with the assumption that the family structure would need to change. And is that okay?
* There is a HUGE irony at the center of the book.
...wait....
...what's that sound...
...it's the pitter patter of padded feet approaching quickly...
Why it's Tony the Tiger (r) and he has a message for everyone one. He's telling me that I should warn you about SPOILERS again. Thanks Tony. Oh and by the way, you're fucking cereal scrapped the top of my mouth raw and I just about wept like a damn baby over my nachos at lunch because of you.
...okay, Tony's gone now.
That huge irony is that they start as a relatively free society. They are, strictly speaking, under the complete authority of the Warden. But their practical day to day lives are pretty much left up to them. No written laws, no day to day interference, no one listens in to your calls. As long as you keep selling grain, and don't protest or stir anything up, you are left alone. So were they "free" to begin with?
By the end of the book, the loonies govern themselves (I warned you about the spoiler, if you didn't listen you've got no one but yourself, and Tony, to blame).
And their first order of business is to create a sprawling bureaucratic government. And the first thing the gov't does is start making laws telling people how they should live their lives. So in the end, they are independent, they are "free". But they have less practical freedom in their day to day lives.
hmmmmm... More freedom under anarchy than govt? I don't know, and I don't think that's what the book is saying, but it give you something to talk about.
* There's the question of when a govt is justified in deceiving it's populous. When the revolutionaries are trying to move the general population towards revolt, they find that the general population as a whole lacks inertia. The people are comfortable, complacent, and generally don't give an ice-less cubic about their govt. So in order to move them to revolt, the revolutionaries inflate stories of Company abuse and scandal. They incite the enemy to attack so that the people will be unified and ready to strike back. Is that okay?
That's a lot to talk about in a Sci-Fi book.
Given that, I'm going to go ahead and say that the book lives up to its dust jacket.
I haven't read many sci-fi books. I probably won't read that many more. But I am glad that I read this one.
Oh, and I found a couple tidbits on wiki that I thought I'd tack on. If you've read this far you're either a) married to me (in which case you still probably skimmed over the middle, but love me too much not to see it through anyway), b) or you're a little sick in the head, c) or you actually have a middling interest in the book.
If it's a), you've done a good job honey. Don't torture yourself anymore. Go look at some cute kitties hiding in laundry baskets and saying cute things in mangled English.
If it's b) Hey look! bright shiny object! Oh no!!! Tony grabbed it first! Go catch him! He's heading down the belt line!!!!
C) doesn't exist. But if it did, you might find the following trivia interesting.
from wiki
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar penal colony's revolt against rule from Earth."
"the irony is that although the lunar colony is, at the beginning of the story, theoretically a kind of prison ruled by a tyrannical Warden, in reality the Warden, other than setting price controls, seldom interferes in lunar society, which is portrayed as a kind of libertarian utopia. When the revolution succeeds, the new lunar government succumbs to its own worst instincts to regulate society to the hilt."
"The book is set in the year 2075 on the Lunar Colonies, a collection of underground colonies scattered across the Moon. Most Loonies (Lunar colonists) are (or are the descendants of) people involuntarily transported to the Moon either for criminal or political reasons. Due to the low surface gravity of the Moon, Loonies who stay longer than a few months undergo irreversible physiological changes and become unable to live safely for more than a short time in Earth's much greater gravitational field."
"The book first publicized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"),"
"and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is mentioned in the story as being used for precise human-computer interaction. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits this novel with the first appearance of the phrase "There's no free lunch" that is primarily associated with the work of the economist Milton Friedman."
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