A review by saxifrage_seldon
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

4.0

What happens when a cynic, a socialist, and an anarcho-capitalist living on the moon, which is now a penal colony, meet a recently sentient supercomputer that tells them that the food system will collapse if unequal exchange relations continue with Earth? Well, you get my forty-fifth book this year, which is Robert Heinlen’s 1966 science fiction masterpiece, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Like many science fiction authors during this time, like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlen is much more interested in the playing out of scientific and social scientific theories, at the expense of character development and pacing. However, I don’t think that is a bad thing. Instead, Heinlein creates a world in which computer science, ecology, political science, political economy, and sociology are taken seriously. The central revolution carried out by the “Loonies” (the inhabitants of the moon), isn’t a romantic or ideological venture, but one that is predicated and carried out through objective relationships, networks, actions, and reactions. The characters, and their motivations, are cold, calculating, and precise. In addition, the whole success of the revolution lies with the sentient supercomputer, Mike, who while being cold and calculating, is also the most whimsical character, who cares just as much, if not more, about understanding jokes and humor, than he does revolution. Another interesting aspect of the book was the family structure, which is extremely confusing, as it is polygamous, group-based (husbands can find other wives, and their wives, other husbands, and hierarchical (there are senior husbands and wives, as well as junior ones). The reasoning for this is both the gender disparity of the moon, in which men greatly outnumber women, but also the communal nature in which the moon’s harsh landscape demands. In other words, the moon isn’t just scenery but instead shapes the inhabitants' whole social structure and culture. It is very reminiscent of the Freman in Frank Herbert’s Dune, or the utopian anarchists of Anarres in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. While I found myself very bored at times and felt that the book could have been narrowed, I really enjoyed the book not only as a landmark science fiction novel, but a political theory text, in which revolution and state-building are seen as complex, messy, and structured through a wide variety of factors both within the group and outside of it. I would definitely recommend this book.