Heinlein Marathon: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Introduction and Initial Thoughts
This is it, probably the most divisive of Heinein’s entire catalog and it took me nine goddamned months to read it requiring three restarts and a commitment to completing this book that bordered on madness. I did not enjoy this book. In fact, as for Heinlein goes I did not enjoy any of this book at all. Part of that, I think, is that all of his big ideas in TMIAHM I’ve read in other books. Maybe I would be more enthusiastic for this book had I read them in publication order or something. I don’t know. We’ll get into the specifics later in this review. But, for a quick intro, this is Heinlein’s most political book in which he writes through the emancipation of the Moon from Earth’s control with all of the Libertarian rosy glasses of a world with no rules. Except— There are rules, it’s a government and governments need rules, at least some. But, like Ayn Rand (who Heinlein was very complimentary of) the delusions of starting a state based on the principle of rational self interest and the smartest people have the most power because they wouldn’t be the smartest people if they didn’t have the most power. See? Easy-peasy. Anyway, this is more a conversation for the Heinlein’s Government Stuff heading below, and that is where it will be. This one has all the hallmarks of Heinlein, technically inclined iconoclastic main character, old wise character, pretty girl who is also smart, insanely complicated polyamorous family arrangements, distrust of established government types including representative democracy, way too many goddamned characters. All of this stuff is covered one way or the other in a shi…urprisingly large number of the stories I’ve already reviewed here at Crap. I understand why Heinlein has said that if you grok The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Stranger in a Strange Land then you grok him. I got this story, but I didn’t like it. One of the big take-aways for me from this story is realizing that Heinlein doesn’t really write villians. All of the antagonists in his stories are either systems themselves or people who represent those systems. There is no counter to the plot that is guided by the machinations of a real antagonist.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s update on other stuff before getting into the meat of this lunar Libertarian fever dream...
The second issue of BAM! Is out and available! go to www.bam-mag.com for the links to buy your copy. You know you want one (or both) of the issues and they are both linked at the website, paper and digital available. The magazine is selling pretty well with over 40 sales of issue 2, and with me about to open for submissions again, that’s a lot of secret word buyers! I at least hope they read the stories rather than just ferreting out the secret work like kids ignoring the cereal for the prize inside.
For the next Heinlein marathon book I may crack into Have Spacesuit Will Travel. Haven’t read that one since I was a little kid. Either way, I’ve got a tower of to-be-reads that I have to at least crack the spines on before grabbing another Heinlein. Either way, keep watching for the next one (all two of you who are human and the 18 that are porn bots…).
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls ⭐
Methuselah’s Children ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stranger in a Strange Land⭐⭐⭐
The Door into Summer⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ←You are Here!
The Man Who Sold the Moon
Have Spacesuit Will Travel
Let me state for the record that this book, like The Cat Who Walks through Walls, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Friday, has way too many characters. So, in an effort to simplify for this review I’ll be listing the most important characters with the rest being mentioned by title.
Manuel/Mannie/Man - The main character. A computer programmer/repair person with six interchangeable artificial arms
Prof. de la Paz - The wise old man of this story
Wyoming/Wyoh Knott - The girl who, through her speeches, draws the attention of Manny (Also in The Cat Who Walks through Walls)
Mycroft/Mike/Dr. Adam Seline/Simon Jester - a giant networked computer that has become self aware and has his digital fingers in all of the subsystems of Luna. (Also in The Cat Who Walks through Walls)
Mimi - Manny’s oldest wife (she is in her 80s I think - but everyone on Luna lives to be into the 150s)
Ludmilla - A teen girl who marries into Manny’s family
The Stilyagi - Teenagers, usually in gang format
The Federated Nations - There are a lot of people in this, diplomats, presidents, etc… and they all have pages of speeches and arguments with Prof. de la Paz to read, and for my sanity I will just be referring to them all as The Federated Nations
Stuart LaJoi/Stu - An Earthman who has come to Luna and immediately through his actions runs afoul of the Stilyagi (it’ll make sense below… trust me)
Hazel - A kid who fights hard (Also in The Cat Who Walks through Walls)
Tish - a 14 year old girl
There are, no kidding, like a dozen and a half more characters in this thing but they matter a lot less than the bunch I’ve named so we’ll go from here. Unlike a lot of other Heinlein books this one doesn’t give the women a lot to do after their initial introduction, mostly playing the other side of expository conversations, or marveling at some of the straw man arguments that Prof. de la Paz uses to deconstruct government. Wyoh has the most agency in this story but after a great intro she is sort of pushed aside as a side character, though an important one, but a side character none the less. Okay, let’s wrangle this plot…
Here’s the short version of the plot - The people who live on the moon are supplying grain to Earth. There is an Earthside famine (or something…), either way Luna and her subsidiary cities Lunar Hong Kong, Novalyn, Catapult Head, and a couple of domes and other tunnels etc… It’s big. I think the book says there are around 50,000 people on Luna all together. I am not going back to hunt for that information, but I think that is what I remember. Luna was founded two generations or so back, the story takes place in 2076 for whatever that is worth. Let me say that this week the US sent a capsule around the Moon. This was the first time since the 1970s that the US has sent anyone out beyond the International Space Station. In Heinlein’s future the Moon was already colonized by now. And, it was colonized as a prison. Not just any prison but a full on, “you ain’t never coming back” prison.
A few generations of people have been born on Luna, the “Loonies” as they are known, and have the run of the place. The whole enterprise is funded and operated by the Federated Nations through The F.N. Authority, essentially a prison management organization with a warden and guards etc… The Loonies spend their days growing tons and tons and tons of hydropnic grains and shipping them back to earth via a big magnetic catapult. This is where Catapult Head comes in as a place. Catapult Head is the city where all of the grain is collected, packed into special giant barrels, and fired into Earth’s orbit for collection or re-entry and safe retrieval. For some reason in this story India is the main country taking the grain from Luna. I have no idea, considering the VAST amount of land in India, why this would even be necessary but I guess you have to figure out how a bunch of prisoner/colonists are going to survive on the moon you have to give them food to work with. So, like I said, the Moon is a giant prison where nations of the whole Earth send prisoners. The successive few generations of humans born and raised in one of the Lunar cities can’t really go to Earth without a massive amounts of physical preparation. The Luna economy runs on two currencies, the Hong Kong Dollar which is pegged to currency on Earth and Authority Scrip pegged to Hong Kong Dollars. So, the economy on the moon is also a prison economy even for the people who aren’t incarcerated. Heinlein is using the moon as a stand in for Australia (for now) and for the 13 colonies (later) with the Federated Nations standing in for colonial Great Britain in this analogy. Beyond that there is some limited discussion about the independence of the countries that make up the Federated Nations but none stands out as a clear leader of the organization. When Mycroft, the big computer that controls all of the communications and other digital infrastructure of Luna need repair Authority contracts with Mannie. What no one but Mannie knows is that Mycroft is sentient. Going by the name Mike, he creates and tells jokes to “Man” and while they are generally not funny they do show that Mike has the ability to think creatively. On the way home after one session with Mike, who Mannie believes is faking occasional malfunctions solely to bring Mannie in for conversation, he stops by a political rally on the way back to the cave where his family dwelling is located. Speaking on stage is a red haired woman named Wyoming Knott. She rallies the large group of Loonies around the idea of throwing off the yoke of Authority and forcing Earth to deal with an independent Luna with free market capitalism. After her, and refuting her point, is Professor Bernado de la Paz, who not only wants Authority overthrown, but to take possession of the government for the Loonies and force the Earth to deal with them on their own and more prosperous terms. The rally is forcably broken up by the Peace Dragoons, ultimately the police/prison guards of Luna, during which Wyoming and Mannie flee together. This is our meet cute for these two. It doesn’t amount to much romantically as Wyoming, for all of the responsibilities put on her later in this book doesn’t get to do or say much in this narrative. TMIAHM follows the same style/format of all of Heinlein’s non-juvie works and structurally this book is nearly identical to both Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange land.
The other thing that I realized as I was reading this was Heinlein’s lack of a villain or even a real antagonist for, not only the characters in this book, but in almost all of the others ones. The antagonist is some ephemeral system - usually a government, or the Bugs, which are also portrayed almost as a system as well. Ultimately they are a faceless, nameless, bureaucracy with multiple legs and occasional laser weapons. I don’t know if this makes these stories better or worse, but it definitely makes them more interesting from an idea level. Maybe this lack of clear antagonism is what makes Heinlein and other hard science fiction so interesting. It doesn’t have to deal with combatting the machinations of a human, rather, the consequences of how they have become organized.
I think I like that. I don’t like it much here… but I like it as an abstract concept.
Back in the story we get to meet Mannie’s family which is way more complex and weird than I am going to spend any time on. Suffice it to say that if you understand that Heinlein’s characters are often in confusing polyamorous families, then you understand it here. I didn’t care about any of this because I have already experienced it in his writing. That said, I can imagine someone never reading Heinlein before reading this and being freaked out by the future take on marriage. Heinlein knew the concept was weird and even makes a point of making it a point in the narrative when they want to arrest Mannie for bigamy when he is down on Earth… But we’ll get to that in a bit.
Mannie introduced Mike to Wyoh, and not long after to Prof. de la Paz. The three of them start the process of fomenting a revolution. The rest of the story, in shortest form is - The cells that Mike, Mannie, and Wyoh start begin spreading through the Lunar cities. There is a strategy to keep everyone not really knowing what the other cells are doing or who is in them. This allows the main cell to act as a sort of overseer, steer potential spies for The Authority/Warden into misinformation, and complete a communications network that is very hard to disrupt or police as even if a cell is arrested they don’t really know much about any other cells. It’s a good strategy. Meanwhile Mike invents two new personalities, one is a populist politician named Dr. Adam Seline, and the other is a poet named Simon Jester. Through these two personalities he antagonizes the warden both by providing an uncapturable face of the coming revolution and a way to disseminate embarrassing propaganda about The Authority. The warden starts pushing back and the Federated Nations sends a platoon of Peace Dragoons up from Earth to re-establish order. They are easy to spot because they aren’t used to the 1/6th gravity of the moon. One of them rapes a loonie which triggers reactionary murder, other are “accidentally” spaced, and ultimately it is worse than tit-for-tat as this is very rapidly become a very bloody revolution. During this time Mannie and Mike start the process of building a new catapult in case the Authority shuts off or bombs the one at Catapult Head. Mannie and Prof venture to Earth as representatives immediately after they transmit a Declaration of Independence to Earth. On the planet they have several meetings that start out quizzical, then business oriented, then finally hostile and punitive at which time Mannie and Prof are snuck back to the Moon. A war takes place and after defending themselves and dropping thousands of tons of moon rocks onto Earth, the moon gets its independence. Several of the secondary characters die in the tube-to-tube fighting. Yay.
Heinlein’s Government Stuff
Brace yourselves… This is the big one for government stuff.
While Heinlein didn’t really espouse, at least not in his writing, the Ayn Randian the smartest people are the wealthiest because if they weren’t they wouldn’t be either philosophy, he does lean really hard into the independent people, protecting their own self interest, will always do best for the civilization because they don’t want to hurt themselves ultimately by hurting someone else.
This is all well and good. But, it is not realistic, and I am sure some of my Libertarian friends will argue with me, but civilization has NEVER existed with rational and enlightened self interest as a core principle. Societies can’t work that way. Humans are notoriously self serving and since the dawn of civilization have required rules and a decision making body to keep that society from falling in on itself. Don’t believe me? The Babylonians have The Code of Hammurabi, what is that, you may ask? It’s a big stele covered with rules for how their society works from stuff as simple as don’t take your neighbor’s stuff, to how many sheep you have to pay them if you flood their land when irrigating yours. Sounds relatively simple but as civilizations grew and more people lived in closer and closer proximity the need for more rules became more important as did a more overreaching governing body. Secular governments are very modern, but they take a lot of their foundational operating principles from the religious-based governments stretching back to Hammurabi. For those who aren’t aware the code of Hammurabi was reportedly given by Shamash to king Hammurabi. From this to the Egyptian Pharoes to Judaism’s Talmud to the old testament to Shintoism and who knows how many different religious traditions stretch back into the countries and regions and civilizations in Africa. These all came about because you needed a way to adjudicate disputes without stabbing people, regular how businesses operate so they weren’t obviously ripping people off or killing their competition with fire and big rocks… I mean, all of the stuff in society we take for granted now all stretch back to these early situations. Heinlein posited that government was mostly unnecessary save for maintaining a military, though, he ran for office himself, and proposed several rules to improve how voting works to ensure that voters are engaged enough to have a good grasp of what they are voting on, so as you read through him there are definitely some contradictory elements.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress really explores the rational self interest and (mostly) unregulated capitalism that underpins modern Libertarian philosophy. In this book, for example, the non-convict Lunies are still under the same authoritarian government as the convicts. It makes perfect sense if not hits a little too on the nose for them to be called “Authority” but I guess it’s as good a name as any if your whole story is about rising against authority. Anyway, within that system there is a separate code of conduct that isn’t tied to the central government. Since the Lunar Authority still treats the place like a prison the non-prisoners have their own judges (whoever wants to adjudicate something) their own police (mobs) their own economy based on Authority scrip and Lunar Hong Kong Dollars—when they can get them. The rest of the economy, air, water, food, electricity, medicine etc… doesn’t get much ink in this book because those things add a lot of complexity to the idea that every person for themselves is the best way to structure a society.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Heinlein. He’s still my all time favorite writer and even books that I don’t like are better than a lot of other books I like more in the ideas, structure, characterization, etc… but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read these with a critical eye. Moon was released in 66 before the counterculture really took off, so he was ahead of the anti-establishment vibe by a year or two. I think he may have sided with the anti-war movement not because of the military itself or the operations that the military participated in, but because of conscription. Anyway… I am getting away from the core here. The main governing body we deal with here is the Federated Nations, think the UN. The US, China, and India get most of the page time because their economy (the US) or their people power (China and India) give them outsized power in the Federation. These countries, especially the ones who interact with Prof and Mannie when they are on Earth, bring to the forefront Heinlein’s greatest criticism of centralized national governments. Namely, that all of them are inherently corrupt and will undermine their partners at every opportunity and use the military as an extension of their economy. I am short-discussing this because the entire middle half of the book is hearing or meeting after meeting or hearing where Heinlein sets up a straw man using the representative from some part of the Federated Nations as the construction company, and Prof as the wolf with the big lungs. At first the Federated Nations greet the idea of Lunar independence as a curiosity but not a serious proposition. Prof and Mannie present to some countries, the potential of an economic boom for specific countries who could support their own magnetic catapult. This would give them a way to trade independlty with the moon rather than having to abide by any trade treaties that Luna discusses with the Federated Nations. This rapidly devolves into threats, then a suggestion that Mannie take over as the leader of Luna and the FN will take some of Luna’s concerns more seriously with regard to the economy, the price of wheat and rice that Luna supplies, among other things. Once it is clear that none of this is going to sway Prof or Mannie, the pair flee before they can be arrested and held for ransom until Luna capitulates. Anyway the whole middle of this book is Mannie telling you about these meetings in the interim where he and Prof are recovering from their exhaustion on Earth. Heinlein hammers so much of this home over and over again that it gets irritating. All of Prof’s arguments can be distilled down to “liberty means we can sell grain and you have to sell us water and other supplies because that is in both of our economic best interests” but, ultimately, he doesn’t set up a reason in the book as to why the wheat and rice (and later vodka) from the moon is so important. When Mannie and Prof are back on Earth he doesn’t really give us their impressions on the world as they are learning over it. Like so many of Heinlein’s older characters Prof already “knows” all of the ills on Earth and if they would only adopt his thinking they would all be solved. The thing is we never really get the origin of whatever these problems are. Why does India need so much grain from the Moon? India is huge. This assumes some strange famine on Earth but it is never really brought up. I don’t know, it was irritating. It reminds me of so many of his other wise old man characters who insist that the only truly free market is completely unregulated trade where individual dickering for the best price is the purest form of business and government. And, I would argue that even the most ardent capitalist would argue the same.
Heinlein’s Weird Ability to Make the Eventual Mundane Before It Was Invented
There’s not much here, really. Maybe the idea of Mike the computer being a pretty clear description of a data terminal connected to central processing stuff that was an extension of the computer technology that they had in the mid 1960s. Maybe the fact that Mike is cross-linked into every system is more stuff we interact with all day but don’t really see the background of. You could probably argue that the best computer arrangement is client/server style like in old Token Ring LANs. Considering just about everything we use is software to which we connect from a standalone terminal to centralized data assets it’s pretty similar in concept.
This is a tough one because while I think the ideas here are interesting I don’t think Heinlein accomplishes what he attempted with this novel, in that I do not believe that anyone who reads this will immediately think that classical Libertarianism is some rational way to create a government. I think a lot of the rational questions raised by this book don’t get anywhere near a rational answer - namely people need rules and a governing hierarchy to keep us from devolving into cave people. Heinlein himself even says this in Podkayne of Mars where he declares that politics is the greatest invention of mankind because without it we’d be hitting each other over the head with sticks.
Now, this isn’t just a critique of the philosophy in this book, it’s more a look at a whole swath of ideas that Heinlein would explore in subsequent works - as noted, Podkayne of Mars, Job a Comedy of Justice, and to a much lesser extent in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. There are always elements in the books that I really gravitate to, scenes or chapters that really sing out and make me think and smile at the same time. In the case of this book it’s the trial where Stu is charged by the Stylagi with accosting a girl on the Moon. That whole segment is really well done and shows how Heinlein sees the strength in individuals when paired with ideas of institution. He has Manny, a regular nobody, acting as judge to a bunch of young teens who want to kill a guy for not understanding the rules on the Moon. It’s a great little piece and says a lot about how he sees the value of individual understanding and also individual compassion. It’s a really well done piece in here and it’s the one that would encourage me to recommend this to other readers who haven’t explored Heinlein much, or at all. He also draws good characters in here, at least in Mannie. He’s an interesting choice for main character in that he doesn’t really do anything. He just observes all of the big events (minus the battle at the end, and even then it’s muted) and provides our window into the big story elements without having to participate much in them.
I also like how Heinlein continues his exploration of polyamorous families in this book and, admittedly, subsequent ones. That said, once you’ve read a story where one of them is explored even a little you don’t get any more of it here, but Mimi is an interesting side character and Mannie’s explanation of why it’s like this on the Moon due to the significant ratio of men to women makes it rational and interesting to dissect.
There’s the whole bit about 14 year old girls… He does this in Podkayne of Mars and generally gets a pass as he fudges her age some there, 14 Martian years are like 17 Earth Years or something like that, and here on the Moon humans age differently due to being cut off from Earth’s full gravity - or something - that makes young teen girls the most revered thing on the Moon. It’s, well… it was one of the stumbling points for me in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls as well and while to a large extent here it is relatively benign in the storytelling, you can see him testing the waters about making this more prominent in other, later, works.
Could this be a TV Show or Movie?
Absolutely. I am surprised it hasn’t already been adapted. This would be the kind of presitge TV that Netflix or Hulu or something should have already found a way to adapt. Would I watch it? Yep.
Definitely not my favorite of his works, but worth a read for his discussion of how this society can function without a centralized government. Though, admittedly that isn’t entirely fair, they do establish a central government at the end it just doesn’t have any real power to legislate, only to negotiate trade with the Federated Nations.
blakekathryn
titsay
discoholicmusic
dededos
ellievsbear
kaledo-art
vaporwave