Book 26: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Robert A. Heinlein

As someone who thoroughly enjoys science fiction, it's somewhat embarrassing to admit that this is the first work I've read by one of the genre's giants. This book, often regarded as one of Heinlein's finest, came with a lot of heavy expectations, and it stands up fairly well, though with a few hiccups. Narrative duties fall upon a central character who speaks the lunar dialect, which is essentially a stripped-down English with some borrowed slang from other languages. The dialect seems reasonable enough as an extrapolation, but its tendency to drop articles and pronouns creates an instinctive negative reaction to the speakers, which may cause readers to doubt their intelligence. Though the problem is ameliorated with time, and particularly during long sessions with the text, the language occasionally undermines the political ideas that permeate the novel. While Heinlein absolutely excels at throwing readers directly into the setting, both temporal and physical, with remarkably efficient brevity, he is less adept at exploring the politics that form the backbone of this novel. The plot centers around the political relationships between the Moon and Earth, and much of the main characters' screen time is spent in deep discussions, which often seem reductive or naïve. On one occasion, a character strongly advises against trusting a cache of information to a computer, while both speaker and author completely fail to recognize that this kind of "mistake" is, in fact, central to the entire premise of the plot

Heinlein isn't particularly assisted by his characters, who tend toward stock molds despite some valiant efforts to differentiate them. The young gun drawn in over his head, the newly-awakened AI, the all-knowing gray-hair, and the token female are all present.  Despite these and other missteps, the plot moves along fairly briskly, especially considering its more ideological construction and focus. The politics behind the events may be introduced in a somewhat clunky manner, but the whole thing plays out believably enough, and the novel excels as a thought experiment. The utter completeness of Heinlein's vision of a future lunar colony is amazing, and he considers many subtle aspects of a prison colony finding its identity, such as the effects of a highly unbalanced gender ratio and the forms of justice available when murder by airlock is a viable solution. The societal aspects of Heinlein's future are just as interesting, if not more so, than the politics, and his handling of them displays his ability to foresee and explain without much overt prodding, an ability unseen in his handling of the politics. While modern readers will question the novel's gender politics, and rightly so, it all hangs together as a reasonable, if undesirable, possibility.  As a whole, the book is a worthy thought experiment that can spur intriguing discussions over 45 years after its initial publication. While The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress may not excel on all levels, it certainly contains enough interesting fodder to justify its place on a list of high-ranking, lasting science fiction stories, even if it doesn't warrant quite as much praise as it has garnered.

Grade: A-