What I’m Reading: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

I’m beginning to suspect there is something seriously wrong with my science fiction education. I’d never heard of this novel before it was recommended to me on a Facebook fiction forum about artificial intelligence. Thanks to editor Ellen Campbell for the tip.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is about a revolution on a lunar penal colony in 2075. To call it a penal colony is really a misnomer. Think of it more like Australia in space: it started as a place to send prisoners, but over time grew into a stand-alone civilization.

Heinlein does some fabulous world-building in this novel. For example, the lunar colony’s main function is agriculture. By mining ice from the subsurface of the moon, the colonists have a source of water and plant grain in the cleared sub-surface caverns. The grain is harvested and shipped to Earth in containers using a giant catapult (and earth’s gravity). The problem is the Earth sends nothing back, like fertilizer or water, and the colony's resources are slowly being stripped away. Mike, the self-aware computer, predicts the colony will run out of resources within seven years. (More on Mike in a minute).

As you might expect in a former penal colony, the male-female ratio is out of whack, but Heinlein uses some clever world-building to solve this issue as well. Luna is a consent-based society, meaning that a man and a woman are free to do whatever they want as long as the woman consents first. Touch a woman without her permission and you’re likely to get yourself a one-way trip out the nearest airlock. Marriage on Luna has evolved into various non-monogamous forms as well. Rape in non-existent and crime is low in this self-policing society.

There is a warden and a small police force, but they’re there to make sure the grain shipments to Earth continue uninterrupted. Once you’re on Luna for more than a few weeks, you’re a prisoner in all but name anyway since the human body weakens in the low gravity of the moon.

The story itself is a tale of a libertarian revolution. A computer technician, a professor, a young female revolutionary, and Mike, the self-aware computer, conspire to free Luna from the yoke of the Authority. Curiously, Heinlein chooses to create a Soviet-like setting with lots of “comrades” and smatterings of bastardized Russian in the language. It seems an odd choice to make your heroes pseudo-Soviets during the Cold War. (The book was published in 1966).

Cold War analogies aside, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an underdog story and has the classic, old-school sci-fi feel that I love. If you’re looking for that kind of vibe, this one is highly recommended.

Side note: it's ironic that I was unable to buy a digital copy of a book by one of the premier sci-fi writers of the 20th century, but it's true.

David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. Check out his website for a free sample of his work.