The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by Lloyd James

Oh boy. This was my first re-read of this book in at least a couple of decades. And—spoiler alert!—it is flawed.

I should start by saying a bit about my history with Heinlein. My first Heinlein book was Friday; I read that when I was about 15 or so, and I was instantly hooked. The plot grabbed me by the collar and roared along like a freight train, and I loved every moment of it. I also loved the self-assured competence of the plucky-yet-vulnerable protagonist, and I was super intrigued with the future and with the alternative relationship models the author presented.

So I began reading every Heinlein book I could get my hands on. When I began to have a hard time finding new ones, I re-read the old ones. (To this day, there are a handful of his “juveniles” that I’ve never gotten my mitts on.) A few—Friday, The Number of the Beast, The Door into Summer, I Will Fear No Evil, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset—I read over and over and over again. They were deeply satisfying worlds to crawl into; they were my happy place.

Much as I loved these stories and uncritical as I was at that age, even then I knew they weren’t perfect. I got that his ideas about gun-toting and personal liberty—I didn’t know the word “libertarian” yet—worked out so well in his universe only because he was in charge of everything in it, and could conveniently ignore all the real-world reasons why we don’t actually want that kind of society. And his ideas about sex—some were great, even enlightened, but many were clearly misguided and a few were flat-out harmful if taken as advice for how to conduct one’s life.

And o lord did that man love a soap box. Politics, economics, gender roles—if he had an opinion on a subject (and o lord did he have a lot of opinions), he didn’t hesitate to climb up and hold forth, at great length. Don’t even get me started about his long lessons on engineering and ballistics.

Still. When you’re reading an otherwise excellent book, by an author for whom you have great affection, it’s easy to quickly scan through the boring or squicky bits and get back to the good stuff. And there’s so much good stuff there. The “dean of science fiction writers,” as he was often called, could write a ripping yarn like nobody else. He was spilling over with story ideas—a universe full of them—multiple universes, actually—and he knew a thing or two about how to make them compelling.

Fast forward to 2018. I was nosing through the science fiction audiobooks on Hoopla, trying to decide what to read next, when The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popped up.

This was never one of my favorites. I had found the narrator’s pseudo-Russian patois a little annoying, as well as his pretense of having no political opinions. On the other hand, the book covers an interesting period in Luna’s history (in that particular timeline). As such, it gives important background for some of my favorite plot lines in other books. (Cameo by a very young Hazel Stone, anyone?) Also, I’ve always loved his stories featuring artificial intelligences.

So I decided to go ahead and download it. I listened to the first chapter or so on my own, and found the accent of the narrator even more annoying when read out loud than when printed on the page. It wasn’t so annoying that I couldn’t fall under the spell of the story, though. The next day I had a long car ride with my 14-year-old, and I asked if they would mind if we listened. They did not mind.

Almost immediately I had to stop the story to explain stuff to my kid. First, of course, was the basic setup—where the story takes place, and at what point in its history, and who Mike was (Mycroft Holmes, the first self-aware computer and the centralized administrator of way too many civic functions). Then mention was made of the main character’s line marriage, which my kid wondered about, so I paused the story to briefly explain the various sorts of marriage described in the book.

Then came a heaping pile of condescension toward Wyoming Knott, a female character who was putatively admirable, and I had to stop again.

Women’s place in Heinlein’s Luna… ugh, what a can of worms. I think he means to be generous and respectful toward women, in his way. But...

So, basically, Luna is a penal colony (much like Australia back in the day), and the male-to-female ratio is heavily skewed in favor of males. And there are no laws, as such; only the Authority’s rules. The way this plays out is that women’s sexual agency is considered sacred, and all decisions about marriage and divorce are theirs to make. Men universally band together to defend women's right to make these decisions, though it's so ingrained in the culture that it only needs to be defended against outsiders and "new chums."

Good as far as it goes (though why they should have to be underrepresented in the population in order for this to be the case is a fair question). However, the way men show “respect” to women is to howl, snap, and wolf whistle instead of, say, shaking hands. Whether this “respect” is paid to women past a certain age, or who present as butch, or are otherwise sexually unappealing or unavailable to a given man, isn’t mentioned—but it seems clear from context that women’s status is firmly based on their sexual availability and desirability in a situation of scarcity. And it’s unambiguously clear that women who choose to sell their sexual favors are considered to have the right to do so—but are also looked down upon as flighty, at best.

Wyoming Knott—Wyoh—is presented as intelligent, a beauty, and a political leader. She is simultaneously presented as a charming little fluff-head whose misapprehensions about politics are to be gently but firmly corrected. Oh, and whenever she does anything unusually admirable, she’s praised for being almost like a man. It’s not just that she’s imperfect; it’s that her imperfections are cute little specifically-female qualities that add up to there being no need to take her seriously. (That Mannie and the Prof take her as seriously as they do is clearly meant to be taken as admirable gallantry on their part.) Women are supposedly treated extra well in Luna because they are scarce—but they are treated like a scarce commodity, not fully human.

So I told my kid, awkwardly, that Heinlein had a lot of strange ideas about women, and that he was, in lots of ways, ahead of his time, but in other ways he was very much a man of his time. And, my kid being 14 years old, I left it at that. They are, after all, able to ask their own questions if they have any. We listened. We didn't get as far as any of his numerous instances of casual racism thinly disguised as admiration, so we didn't have to have that conversation. Not that that isn't a good and important conversation to have with your kids, and not that I haven't had it before and won't have it again—but just then I wanted to hear a story, not give a series of lessons.

And it’s an engaging story. It is. It's about a lonely computer, a revolution, and an engineer pulled into it for friendship’s sake. One character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, is clearly a stand-in for the author, and he’s a charming old coot in his way. This book is definitely worthwhile—it won a Hugo award in its day—though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Heinlein.

Verdict: read it, but with a very large grain of salt.