by Robert Harden

Created on: February 18, 2009

Robert A. Heinlein's tale of a lunar revolt against the Earth, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is regularly counted as one of the classics of Science Fiction and is a great read for fans of the genre. As literature, the book lacks some of the elements necessary for wide appeal but anyone familiar with his work will feel right at home with what is clearly the towering achievement of Heinlein's career.

As is typical of Heinlein, the book is light on actual story and spends an enormous amount of space on speculation and describing the universe as it is in his novel, the new technologies, family structures, etc. Most fans of "hard" science fiction will find this very interesting, however, and he manages to mix it with the plot very well. This is a vast improvement over earlier novels, particularly Starship Troopers, which could hardly be said to have a plot at all. It is perhaps the length of the book that provided the space fro both description and plot and it is considerably longer than most of his other works.

The themes of the novel are familiar ones to Heinlein and include libertarianism, revolution, world government, and consciousness. The exploration of consciousness actually provides the novel's most compelling character: a supercomputer named Mike (from Mycroft, Sherlock Holme's brother) that spontaneously gains consciousness and slowly learns to interact with humans. While he is essential to the revolution, he is frustratingly underdeveloped. His existence and personality are among the most interesting aspects of the work, but it feels like the author forgets about him halfway through only to suddenly remember that he has neglected his best character at the end of the book.

The main character and narrator, Manuel O'Kelley, is also interesting and represents a vast improvement over another common criticism of Heinlein's work: a lack of convincing characters. He is a technician who works on Mike and first discovers his sentience and as such is drawn into the revolution. Most of the work is written in poor grammar to show Manuel's lack of formal education, which is considerably annoying at first but it does not take long to get used to. Despite this oddity Manuel is one of Heinlein's more relatable and believable characters.

There are only a handful of other characters who appear with any regularity, such as the aged professor Bernardo and the requisite love interest Wyoming Knott, but there are a large number that appear in some random sentence or minor scene only to show up a hundred pages later. This does not create any factual irregularities in the story but can be confusing to figure out who's who at times and damages the story's continuity.

Despite these criticisms and Heinlein's sometimes quirky writing, this work still stands as one of the most notable works of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The story itself is monumental, beautiful, and important and any fan of science fiction will find the world of 2072 and conceived of by this master of the genre utterly compelling.

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