Skip to main content

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (SF) - Robert Heinlein ****

Revisiting this 1966 classic, which despite a few issues is Heinlein’s best novel, showed that it holds up surprisingly well. Amongst the big names of science fiction's ‘golden age’, Asimov may have had the edge on ideas, but Heinlein was a far better writer and this shows from the very beginning when the narrator comments of a self-aware computer ‘I had nicknamed him for Mycroft Holmes, in a story written by Dr Watson before he founded IBM.’ 

 It might come as quite a surprise to those familiar with Heinlein’s politics, but in this study of colonial revolution, the author doesn’t shrink from including some communist ideas and terminology, while coming relatively soon after the McCarthy era, arguably Heinlein was brave in scattering speech with Russian terms and a tendency to drop the definite article. He was also critical of the US for institutional racism.

 The story itself plays out the transformation of a prison colony on the Moon into a self-determining republic. The reluctant central character (as is often the case, pretty much Heinlein himself in thin disguise) Mannie is aided by the newly conscious central computer, Mike, whose abilities enable the conspirators to take on the might of Earth. Heinlein has clearly thought through the difficulties of life in the Moon tunnels and adds in impressive detail on the mechanism of rebellion and political machinations without ever losing the momentum of the plot.

 To get the negative issues out of the way, three things conspire to limit the way the book now comes across. While the writing is still extremely lively and readable, modern readers coming to the book for the first time are liable to be held back by the computer technology, the politics and particularly the approach to women.

 Most trivial, though the conscious computer is incredibly capable, Heinlein's prediction of future IT is fairly weak. (Incidentally, the story is sent in 2076, but the Moon has been colonised since before 2000). Mike seems to have very limited use of video, relying mostly on audio. His speech work is handled by the antiquated concept of a voder/vocoder, with separate physical circuits for each conversation. And, in a throwaway remark, Heinlein shows how computer memory has far exceeded expectations: at one point, Mike sets apart a large amount of memory. It’s 100 megabits.

 The politics of the Moon reflects a viewpoint that became stronger in Heinlein’s later novels: it’s not far from that of Ayn Rand, which many will find uncomfortable. Having said that, the importance of self-sufficiency is arguably justified by the harsh lunar environment. Sadly, the treatment of women reflects that Heinlein was an author of the Mad Men era. While women are treated with respect on the Moon as there are twice as many men, women are literally referred to as a scarce commodity, and it's quite clear from the allocation of roles that a woman’s place is considered the home and the kitchen. At one point, Adam Selene, the fake public persona adopted by Mike, is asked if he can cook. He replies ‘Certainly. But I don’t; I’m married.’ Because of the shortage of women, the Moon has complex marriage forms, mostly featuring polyandry, and marriage is often at around age 14, which feels more than a little creepy.

 If, however, you can see past this (bearing in mind both that the book was written in a different era and that Heinlein was setting up the culture of a frontier colony under extreme conditions), this is still a great book that deserves its place as a classic of the genre and should still be read.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

  1. 8ling19 May 2022 at 12:37

    I was so tempted by this book but something held me back. Not any more after reading your review. https://scottharral.com/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically?  Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...
Post a Comment
Read more