The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Hardcover - USA - 1st edition.

Author Robert Heinlein Published 1966-??-?? Type Fiction Genre Science Fiction Themes Artificial Intelligence, Politics, Science Fiction Age Group Adult

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a political science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein. It was originally serialized in the magazine Worlds of If from December 1965 to April 1966, and then published as a novel in 1966.

Personal

Own?	No.
Read?	Audiobook read by Lloyd James.
Finished	2018-03-22.

I first become a fan of Heinlein from Stranger in a Strange Land, after that, I read Starship Troopers, which was decent, and The Door into Summer, which was awful. A friend suggested The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress as being one of his best, so I decided to give it a go, but was pretty disappointed by it.

Review

Overall:

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• I like the amalgam of cultures present on the Moon.
• It's interesting to hear about the various marriage systems put in place to handle a population that's only 1/10th female.

Bad

• The likelihood that Mike would become the first sentient AI without any notice from scientists or researchers seems especially slim. Why was Mike equipped so well when he was just supposed to run the catapult and basic systems of the moon? Shouldn't the Earth computers have been far more impressive?
• The idea that the Earth had the technology to build interplanetary spaceships, but didn't have a way to safely stop incoming bogies that can't perform evasive maneuvers was difficult to believe.
• Heinlein's description of futuristic computers is pretty uninspired. He describes them merely as faster versions of 1960s computers. Everything is still done with printouts and hardware with circuitry so large it can still be damaged by rogue insects.
• Heinlein was unaware of the uncanny valley, so this is forgivable, but Mike, powerful as he was, wouldn't be able to so easily create a believable human facsimile.
• The death of Mike and the Professor were both pointless and contrived.

Ugly

• For most of the book, I was bored. The Lunar rebellion always seemed several steps ahead of the warden and all of the Earth, so it never really seemed like there was any real danger. It was more just waiting for them to be victorious against an incompetent foe without suffering any major casualties.
• Despite women supposedly being important and in positions of authority on the moon, they still mostly stick to homemaking while all the major decisions in the rebellion are made by men.
• The book appears to be just another vehicle for Heinlein's anarchist approach to government. However, much like in Starship Troopers, he constantly touts the benefits of his ideals without giving any evidence for how they are superior. There is a particularly bad contradiction with the Professor. He lauds the importance of protecting the freedom of the individual, but his methods are the same as any other dictator: he uses dirty tactics to strong-arm his people into positions of power so they'll do his bidding and he justifies his tyranny by claiming it's for the "greater good."

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