The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar penal colony's revolt against rule from Earth. It received the Hugo Award for best novel.
Heinlein considered The Moon is a Harsh Mistress his best book,1 although the earlier Stranger in a Strange Land was more influential and widely read. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is similar to Stranger in a Strange Land in that both describe social upheavals, and both contain a strong streak of irony. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the irony is that although the lunar colony is, at the beginning of the story, theoretically a kind of prison ruled by a tyrannical Warden, in reality the Warden seldom interferes in lunar society, which is portrayed as a kind of libertarian utopia. When the revolution succeeds, the new lunar government succumbs to its own worst instincts to regulate itself.
The novel is notable stylistically for its use of an invented Lunar dialect consisting predominantly of English words but strongly influenced by Russian grammar. The narrator is Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis (Mannie), a one-armed computer technician who accidentally discovers that the hated Lunar Authority's own computer has become self-aware. He names the computer Mike (after Mycroft Holmes, brother of Sherlock Holmes). Mike is able to simulate either a male or a female sexual identity, and is mainly interested in learning to understand the human sense of humor. The revolution is a dismal failure until Mike is convinced that it would be a fun game to play, and begins helping behind the scenes.
The reason for the rebellion is economic necessity: Luna is exporting so many goods to Earth (and receiving so little by return shipment) that its resources will soon be exhausted, resulting in disaster. (Since Earth sits at the bottom of a deep gravity well, the only feasible solution is one of engineering; a key plot point is the development of a method of shipping goods to Luna that is not prohibitively expensive.) Although the revolution succeeds in averting this disaster, the narrator decries the antilibertarian instincts of many of his fellow Loonies. ("Rules, laws -- always for [the] other fellow.") This theme is echoed elsewhere in Heinlein's works -- that real, albeit temporary, liberty is to be found among the anarchic pioneer societies out along the advancing frontier, but the regimentation and legalism that inevitably follow also bring restraints that chafe true individualists. (We learn in the later novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls that this is just what happens to Luna.) Conditions in the lunar colony, and the reaction of the colonists to troops sent from Earth to enforce the Warden's edicts, have strong parallels to the situation in Boston under British military occupation in the years leading up to the American Revolution.
Mike, the computer, becomes leader of the revolution. Mannie, along with the wise Professor Bernardo de la Paz, and the beautiful rabble-rousing Wyoming Knott, form the top-level cell reporting to Mike. As in Stranger in a Strange Land, we have a band of social revolutionaries forming a secretive and hierarchical organization. In this respect, the revolution is more reminiscent of the Bolshevik revolution than of the American one, and this similarity is reinforced by the Russian flavor of the dialect, and the Russian place names, such as Novy Leningrad. After the revolution succeeds, Mike is elected president, which makes for an ironic, even farcical depiction of democracy. Democracy, in fact, is never depicted positively in the book, in keeping with Heinlein's general skepticism about it. The moral appears to be that it is individual freedom we should put our faith in, not political structures.
Continuing 's speculation about unorthodox social and family structures, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a line marriage. Mannie is part of a century-old line marriage; spouses are opted in by mutual consent at regular intervals so that the marriage never comes to an end. It is a very stable arrangement in which divorce is rare, as it takes a unanimous decision of all the wives to divorce a husband. Such a marriage only gets stronger as it continues, as the senior wives teach the junior wives how to run the family; it also gives financial security and ensures that the children will never be orphaned. Children marry outside of the line marriage.
The social structure of the lunar society features complete racial integration, which becomes a vehicle for social commentary when Mannie, visiting the Southern U.S., is arrested for polygamy after he innocently shows a picture of his multiracial family to reporters. He later learns that the "...range of color in Davis family was what got judge angry enough..." to have him arrested. The novel was published during the period of the American Civil Rights Movement.
The book is the origin of the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is mentioned in the story as being used for precise human-computer interaction.
The setting of the novel was re-used much later by Heinlein for his late-period novel, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
Screenwriter Tim Minear is currently working on a screenplay based on the novel.
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Notes
- Conversation with Hayford Peirce in Papeete, Tahiti, 1980, about his works.