Paperback, 382 pages
English language
Published Feb. 24, 1997 by Orb.
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing computer lead the lunar population in a revolution against Earth's colonial rule.
Definitely an interesting book. Not completely sure what I think. That seems to be par for the course for Heinlein in my experience.
Captivating story
Great Sci-Fi classic!
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress pleasantly surprised me with how good it is. It has polyamory (healthily), a sentient computer, a point-of-view character with a prosthesis, and serious discussions of morality/ethics under oppression and during/after revolution.
The language and code-switching is cool, I knew enough of the words in the polyglot that I only missed things borrowed from Russian. The world building is on the right side of the balance between info dump and sparse description that all sci-fi books have to navigate. The polyamory and polygamy is described well, has a bit of a “relationships... in SPACE” feel but is really cool. Overall I have no qualms recommending this to someone, and I enjoyed it a lot. The main cw is for sexual assault/murder, but even that is handled very well and described in as low-stress of a way as is possible while still including it.
Although Revolution seems a bit too easy and it's really permeated by libertarian views, which you might or m,ight not share... the ideas on it are worth a thought. I liked the political reflection and the idea of a playful AI learning about jokes. :)
Clearly laying the foundations for science fiction to come, this is a strong politically-charged work with rich characters from one of the founding fathers of the genre.
I'll rate this book as one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read, right up there with Dune and Foundation. The fact that it was written in 1966, years before the age of the computer, is just remarkable. Heinlein manages to accurately predict so many things that we take for granted today: Big Data analysis, predictive modelling, voice recognition, social media marketing, pervasive electronic communications ("internet"). And this is just the computer side of things, scratching the surface of what this book is about.
The book may be categorised as sci-fi, but it's really about the human condition. The political drama is superb.
Highly recommended.
Still one of my favorite novels.
''When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic -- ''High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L'' -- HOLMES FOUR. He computed ballistics for pilotless freighters and controlled their catapult. This kept him busy less than one per cent of time and Luna Authority never believed in idle hands. They kept hooking hardware into him -- decision-action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve-digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half time that number of neuristors.
And woke up.''
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a political/sci-fi masterpiece. The book tells the story of Lunar (used to exile criminals and their families, once you adapt to life on the moon it was almost impossible to adjust back to the gravity of earth) and their struggle to become a free nation. Lunar while a place of criminals, political exiles or their descendants is like any other countries; yearning for liberty and to be free from the tyranny of their slaves. With the help of a supercomputer with a personality; Mycroft, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a well-paced, action charged, science fiction must-read. Without giving much away this book has a strong political message but done in such a way that the story and climax is never effected.
great classic sci-fi. i've forgotten what an interesting reading every heinlein's novell is.
