I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do
Mannie O’Kelly-Davis in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the 1966 novel by Robert A. Heinlein, I started to wonder if Kim Stanley Robinson, who is one of my favorite contemporary science fiction writers, has intentionally patterned himself after Heinlein. Both use science fiction as a way to write about politics, and new worlds as a way to imagine the societies that could be. Where Heinlein was a libertarian, Robinson is left-wing, but the distinction isn’t as clear as those labels suggest. Both Heinlein and Robinson are too thoughtful for that.
Heinlein’s libertarian sympathies didn’t only extend to economics, like some modern libertarians. He was also socially libertarian, positively portraying family structures that aren’t traditional, had a positive view of immigration, and was no racist.
If you don’t like politics in your science fiction, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress isn’t for you. If you don’t mind it, there are plenty of other interesting ideas. There’s an AI that initially just generates text, but over the course of the book learns humor and video generation and becomes super-intelligent. There are space catapults. There is intrigue and there are moral dilemmas. There are some lovable characters.
One drawback: The narrator talks English with lunar syntax, which is approximately the same than how Russians talk English. This doesn’t make for easy reading, and a friend told me that he had to stop the novel half-way through because of it. I finished it and I’m glad I did, but it requires some effort.
Related: My posts on Robinson’s New York 2140 and Shaman. Here‘s Robinson talking with Ken MacLeod. Here is a quote from another book by Heinlein I like.
