I also like history and political science and ideology. Of the hundreds of books I’ve read (as I type this in January 2021 over 1700) I have listed eight as my all time favorites: Heart of Darkness, Dune, The Dispossessed, Forever War, American Gods, Neuromancer, Breakfast of Champions – and Heinlein’s magnificent The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. This is on my short list of all-time favorites and I think this should be on a very short list of greatest SF books of all time. When I read SF I project this on that book and I wonder if that author read and was inspired.

A friend commented about Heinlein books and I realized as we talked that when I think about Heinlein, my mind automatically defaults to this book. ** 2018 addendum - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. I just re-read this (one the very few books that I have read more than once) and may re-read it again – it’s that good. Students of revolutionary movements will also see an allegory for “throwing rocks” as a statement about the earliest stages of discontent and reaction.įirst published in 1966, this was written at the zenith of his considerable powers and stands as a true classic of the genre. This story tracks with the American Revolution with unfair and distant landowners, inept and uncaring provisional governors (the warden) and even a declaration of independence on the fourth of July. There are very little rules and no real laws, so a hardscrabble anarchy has created a loose but tough and resilient populace who want freedom.Ĭertainly this libertarian paradise could have become an anarchistic hell, but in Heinlein’s hard loving hands, his creation is the Free State of Luna.

It is the perfect prison, get outside the underground warrens and beyond the air locks and you’re on the moon. The Moon (Luna to it’s residents – who call themselves Loonies) has been a penal colony for decades. Told from the first person recollection of a computer technician (with thick Russian accent) and of the birth and progress of the Lunar independence. This is a virtuoso science fiction futuristic re-telling of the American Revolution. I liked the setting, the use of libertarian principles and of course the brilliant work of the Grandmaster himself. And just as The Fountainhead is the better, though less epic, of the pair with Atlas Shrugged, so is Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the more focused and simple of the two, better than Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein vehicle for theology, so is Moon is a Harsh Mistress to ideology. As Stranger in a Strange Land was a Robert A. When I first read this years ago I loved it, I could not put it down. My three favorite books of all time are (in no order) Heart of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. TANSTAAFL = There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

The moon is a harsh mistress book