Book reviews: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

[baloonworld]

Junky space porn celibrating anarco-sydicatism. Refutes the values of other governmental systems by having peple in an immaginary socity say that they have never seen the need for n where n is somthing provided by an existing socity. Given that the socity is based on the premise that it is cheaper to grow grain hydroponicly on the moon and ship it to Earth than grow it hydroponicly on Earth, the validity of the hypothetical socity is pretty much nil. Heinlien sets up an ideal oppertunity to explore ideas concerning utilitarian socity ran by a loving machine overlord, and then carefully avoids it at the last minute, presumably for reasons of it being interesting. Charitors are almost psycopathic in their emotional detachment from the death of their loving machine-god.

With two exceptions (below), all the other (54) reviews on iRead are either libertarians saying "this book describes a world just like the one I imagine I live in. It is therfore excellent" or "this book is good"

"libertarian tough-guy writing at its best. Which isn't really saying a whole lot."

"Well, I'm TRYING to read it, anyway. I find Heinlein's take on gender to be REALLY off-putting."

Comments

[fourmyle.livejournal.com]

It could be cheaper to grow the grain on the moon and ship it to Earth using the following points

1. Cheaper to ship to any where on Earth by dropping it right next to who needs it, rather than shipping it around a third of a curve.
2. Cheap trained slave labour in the form of convicts.
3. worsening weather conditions on Earth.
4. Better grain, possibly from better sunlight (unfiltered) or requires less energy to grow in low gravity environment.
5. virtually a by product of the oxygen production needed on the moon anyway
6. Nutrients in moondust.

and so on. It's fiction, after all. The moon as a penal colony is a perfectly valid basis of the society. Austraila + transportation. Characters who don't marvel at the Artificial Intelligence because they don't realise how unlikely it is... again possible.
A chav who finds a dodo wandering around isn't going to phone the natural history museum, it will just throw rocks at the ugly chicken.

And the take on gender? What take on gender? Or which take on gender? None of his characters are particularly realistic - they aren't supposed to be, I guess.

If you want a 'view on gender' read the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels.

[baloonworld.livejournal.com]

Some of your economic arguments could help bring down the cost of lunar grain; it is an example of my ain point rather than being a focus in its own right.

My main objection was to the Libertarian Moon-Utopia* being subjected to no scrutiny as a viable society, while societies known to be viable from having existed were torn down using straw-man (straw state?) arguments. It is not a convincing way to sell your ideology to a questioning audience.

I assume that the view on gender which the other reviewer found such hard going was that Wyoh's beauty is mentioned repeatedly and to no point, while demonstrations of her intelligence, courage or resourcefulness simply do not occur (by memory. Please don't make me go back and re read it).

*I love this phrase

[trailingvortex.livejournal.com]

I have only read one book by him, Starship Troopers (nothing like the film) and I would not call it particularly libertarian. It appears to advocatewhat I would call...militaristic authoritatian meritocratic democracy. I'm not sure that's very helpful. Sorry. Read it. It's a good book.

[baloonworld.livejournal.com]

The moon-revolution did have a bit of an authoritarian streak: it was masterminded by a small band of heros of exceptional talents acting for the good of the people*. They didn't much respect the yammerheads; they were never really consulted, the post-revolution election was rigged, and the yammerheads were given a parlement and a series of committees to keep them out of the business of running the place.
The libertarian ideal lead to the heros stepping down as soon as they could, after establihing a set of governmental systems that effectivly meant that their sucessors could not change the system to a less libertrain one.

*Henceforth refered to (perjoratively) as yammerheads, as in the text