The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

  • Author: Robert A. Heinlein
  • Page count: 398
  • Started on: 2025/02/24
  • Finished on: 2025/03/02
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • ★★★★★

Book cover of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. The background is bright yellow with bold, blocky text in dark brown and teal. The title appears in large, stacked letters, with "ROBERT A. HEINLEIN" at the top. Below the title, there is an illustration of a chained moon and a broken shackle, symbolizing themes of rebellion and freedom. The tagline "The Science Fiction Classic" is printed at the top.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress plays out in a future lunar colony, where oppressed rebels fight for independence using an AI named Mike. As revolution brews, they battle Earth’s control in a gripping tale of politics, technology, and freedom.

The book mixes worldbuilding (how would the economy on the moon work, how is law maintained), technology (catapults to move freight from the moon to earth, a hyper-intelligent self-aware AI), and a healthy dose of politics (on the moon, on the earth, and between them).

I can’t believe this book was written in 19661, almost 60 years ago! What I can believe is that it won the 1967 Hugo award, as it is a masterpiece. I liked Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, but loved this one.

Footnotes

  1. Well OK, when women are described you can at times see the book’s age, but the women get fuller roles than in many of the sci-fi books of the golden age. ↩

Magic pixel View count: