Top 20Internet Top 100 Short Stories Novellas, NovelettesHomeHugosNebulas P.K. Dick Locus Grand MastersNewbery

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Robert Heinlein

Hugo 1967, Internet Top 100

A recipe for starting a revolution, this was one of the hardest Hugo or Nebula winning books to find. I must have searched through 25 used book stores before I found a battered old copy. This was doubly surprising because Heinlein's other books are so ubiquitous and because this particular one was rated the best of the Hugo winners in an early Asimov collection. Was it because of the clear and practical suggestions on starting a political revolution? Like banning gun powder formulas so children won't hurt themselves? Was the Nixon administration secretly terrified enough to have the CIA buy and destroy all copies they could find?

Not high on suspense or excitement levels but filled with a touching kind of appreciation and warmth. The bad guys are not real or bad enough to feel much emotional support for the protagonists. In fact, it's amazingly light-hearted for a book about a revolutionary war. This may be one of Heinlein's messages - that people are what's important, not causes or philosophy or politics. At the end of the book-long, successful war for "freedom", political forms revert back and the main character concludes "Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden."

Serious but whimsical political discussions ­ "Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument." You might consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyrnny." Relationship wisdom ­ "I long ago quit being disappointed in men for what they are not and never can be." Personal ethics ­ "I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them. If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." Education ­ "One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die . . . and accepts his sentence, undismayed."

Though not a riviting page-turner, a seminal book recast in different guise by many later Hugo and Nebula winners. Recommended.

More opinions and discussion
(send your thoughts and we'll upload here)

Please email comments about this book or review to stroy@jade-mtn.com.

HomeHugosNebulas P.K. DickLocus Grand MastersNewberyTop 20 Internet Top 100Short StoriesNovellas, Novelettes