Saturday, 16 November 2013 07:00 pm
Book Review: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
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deckardcanineYou may recall that my only extensive past exposure to Robert Heinlein was Stranger in a Strange Land, which I found brilliant and enjoyable until the second half, when the hippie-esque wish fulfillment and extremely soft science became overwhelming. For a fifty-something, he seemed awfully close to adolescent. But TMIaHM, published five years later, shows a maturity, tastefulness, and intellect about on par with Isaac Asimov's.
Set in the 2070s, it has proven overly optimistic for space programs by 2013 (like pretty much all sci-fi from the 1960s) but still maintains a high overall credibility. The moon, always called Luna by residents (who call themselves Loonies), has been a penal colony for decades, much to the detriment of anyone born there. Sure, Loonies not under sentence may leave, but few can take well to Terra's gravity and germ presence, so few do. The Authority, led by a "Protector" who's still "Warden" to Loonie minds, cares no more about what Loonies do to each other than Lord Vetinari cares what goes on between most Ankh-Morpork citizens, to use a comparison from my last book review. The key difference: heavy taxation and high expectations of exports, threatening famine in a few years. A handful of individuals understand that nothing short of revolution will save Luna. The odds are decidedly against them, but hey, Loonies love to gamble.
The first-person narrator is Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, who, despite his name, talks like Boris Badenov by dropping many articles and pronouns except in direct quotations. I considered Rorschach from Watchmen, but "Mannie" slips in enough Russian words (not in the manner of A Clockwork Orange) to demonstrate a strong Russian influence on second-or-more-generation Loonies. No real surprise from a Cold War-era novel, but it did prevent me from reading as fast as I might have. Anyway, Mannie is a computer engineer who lost an arm and now has multiple talented prosthetics. He never had much interest in politics before, yet his experience-informed contempt for Terra and its "earthworms," New York Yankees aside, makes him the closest thing Luna has at first to a red-hot patriot. I had to remind myself that the author was Terran, so I shouldn't feel hurt pride. I took more offense at his use of terms like "Afro" and "Chinee," until I realized that for all I knew, they could be politically correct in the future.
The biggest driver among the rebels is Mannie's former teacher, a political exile named Bernardo de la Paz, typically called "Professor" or "Prof." True to his last name, he is basically a pacifist, albeit a pragmatic type. He also describes himself as an anarchist, but I would say a strong libertarian; he looks up to Thomas Jefferson and arranges the revolution very systematically. Not all his voiced ideas are practical -- an electoral system in which the candidate with the fewest votes wins would stop working as soon as people figured it out -- but he remains impressively sharp in old age and notes many possibilities.
Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott, a rabblerouser of some repute in Hong Kong, becomes a master of disguise but looks beautiful no matter what she wears, according to smitten Mannie. I should mention that men understandably outnumber "fems" in the penal colony, so the latter enjoy a certain status under the unwritten rules of lunar etiquette. But in their service to the cause, including Wyoh as one of the leaders, they do more than the women in SiaSL to convince me that Heinlein wasn't really sexist. I still wish she gave a little more input later on.
Stuart LaJoie is a pretty old newcomer to Luna, learning the titular lesson the hard way. It is to him that Mannie explains the lunar acronym "Tanstaafl": "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" -- true everywhere, but especially on Luna, where the Authority charges you indirectly for the air you breathe. Stu doesn't take long to convince Mannie he's the good kind of earthworm. He'll devote any amount of his considerable funds to their success, and he knows how to acquire more.
Last but certainly not least is yet another Heinlein character who goes by Mike and has a lot to learn about humanity but exercises awesome abilities and smarts. Only this time, Mike is a supercomputer of negotiable gender nicknamed after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter brother -- and more fun than Valentine Michael Smith IMO. He holds no allegiance to the government that created him, since they don't recognize his accidental sapience and emotionality and befriend him like Mannie. Unlike most AIs I know of, Mike wants to make good jokes, and his attempts thereat range from bland to intimidating. Mannie tries to help him find a pattern to what's funny never, once, or "always" (people like him must make memes possible). When the small cadre of knowing friends enlists Mike's help, he seems to view it as a challenging new game. With his versatile outlets, he's the best-kept secret and the least dispensable part of the mission, but of course the Prof worries what he'll do when/if Luna is free.
I felt like I'd have partaken in the revolution if I lived on Luna, but I'd have reservations about the apparently necessary deceptions of Terrans and Loonies alike. And once we moved from overthrowing the Warden to confronting Terra as a whole, I might be one of the many Loonies morally unsure about the catapult taking advantage of the gravity well. But ultimately, I think I'd've acquiesced to all rebel leader decisions.
My prime, if meager, disappointment in the end is that we hardly get any word about what happened after the war, when I had expected quite a lot of trouble in keeping with real life. Only the final page somewhat cryptically mentions that the Prof's vision never fully materialized. It sounds like things did get better than they had been under the Authority, but Mannie suspects too high a wartime price. (I don't consider this a spoiler; it follows both reason and genre savvy.)
The biggest controversy to my mind is in lunar marital practices. Heinlein mercifully cut back on the sex talk this time, but he somehow saw a crucial plot point in Mannie having multiple wives and co-husbands, including a wife he calls "Mama." I made a point not to think too hard on it for fear of disgust, but by the end I thought the unprecedented family structure (one of reportedly several in use on Luna) might just offer more stability on average than monogamy. Besides, polygamy isn't a biblically designated sin, just inadvisable in its conventional form.
The real beauty of this work is that it doesn't call on you to agree with one side or another. You just have to appreciate the complex realism of a situation getting out of hand, smart people learning from history, foolish masses learning the hard way, plenty of patience and impatience, sacrifices, ambiguous victories...and mostly believable sci-fi additions.
Next up: Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I'm a little apprehensive about this one.
Set in the 2070s, it has proven overly optimistic for space programs by 2013 (like pretty much all sci-fi from the 1960s) but still maintains a high overall credibility. The moon, always called Luna by residents (who call themselves Loonies), has been a penal colony for decades, much to the detriment of anyone born there. Sure, Loonies not under sentence may leave, but few can take well to Terra's gravity and germ presence, so few do. The Authority, led by a "Protector" who's still "Warden" to Loonie minds, cares no more about what Loonies do to each other than Lord Vetinari cares what goes on between most Ankh-Morpork citizens, to use a comparison from my last book review. The key difference: heavy taxation and high expectations of exports, threatening famine in a few years. A handful of individuals understand that nothing short of revolution will save Luna. The odds are decidedly against them, but hey, Loonies love to gamble.
The first-person narrator is Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, who, despite his name, talks like Boris Badenov by dropping many articles and pronouns except in direct quotations. I considered Rorschach from Watchmen, but "Mannie" slips in enough Russian words (not in the manner of A Clockwork Orange) to demonstrate a strong Russian influence on second-or-more-generation Loonies. No real surprise from a Cold War-era novel, but it did prevent me from reading as fast as I might have. Anyway, Mannie is a computer engineer who lost an arm and now has multiple talented prosthetics. He never had much interest in politics before, yet his experience-informed contempt for Terra and its "earthworms," New York Yankees aside, makes him the closest thing Luna has at first to a red-hot patriot. I had to remind myself that the author was Terran, so I shouldn't feel hurt pride. I took more offense at his use of terms like "Afro" and "Chinee," until I realized that for all I knew, they could be politically correct in the future.
The biggest driver among the rebels is Mannie's former teacher, a political exile named Bernardo de la Paz, typically called "Professor" or "Prof." True to his last name, he is basically a pacifist, albeit a pragmatic type. He also describes himself as an anarchist, but I would say a strong libertarian; he looks up to Thomas Jefferson and arranges the revolution very systematically. Not all his voiced ideas are practical -- an electoral system in which the candidate with the fewest votes wins would stop working as soon as people figured it out -- but he remains impressively sharp in old age and notes many possibilities.
Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott, a rabblerouser of some repute in Hong Kong, becomes a master of disguise but looks beautiful no matter what she wears, according to smitten Mannie. I should mention that men understandably outnumber "fems" in the penal colony, so the latter enjoy a certain status under the unwritten rules of lunar etiquette. But in their service to the cause, including Wyoh as one of the leaders, they do more than the women in SiaSL to convince me that Heinlein wasn't really sexist. I still wish she gave a little more input later on.
Stuart LaJoie is a pretty old newcomer to Luna, learning the titular lesson the hard way. It is to him that Mannie explains the lunar acronym "Tanstaafl": "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" -- true everywhere, but especially on Luna, where the Authority charges you indirectly for the air you breathe. Stu doesn't take long to convince Mannie he's the good kind of earthworm. He'll devote any amount of his considerable funds to their success, and he knows how to acquire more.
Last but certainly not least is yet another Heinlein character who goes by Mike and has a lot to learn about humanity but exercises awesome abilities and smarts. Only this time, Mike is a supercomputer of negotiable gender nicknamed after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter brother -- and more fun than Valentine Michael Smith IMO. He holds no allegiance to the government that created him, since they don't recognize his accidental sapience and emotionality and befriend him like Mannie. Unlike most AIs I know of, Mike wants to make good jokes, and his attempts thereat range from bland to intimidating. Mannie tries to help him find a pattern to what's funny never, once, or "always" (people like him must make memes possible). When the small cadre of knowing friends enlists Mike's help, he seems to view it as a challenging new game. With his versatile outlets, he's the best-kept secret and the least dispensable part of the mission, but of course the Prof worries what he'll do when/if Luna is free.
I felt like I'd have partaken in the revolution if I lived on Luna, but I'd have reservations about the apparently necessary deceptions of Terrans and Loonies alike. And once we moved from overthrowing the Warden to confronting Terra as a whole, I might be one of the many Loonies morally unsure about the catapult taking advantage of the gravity well. But ultimately, I think I'd've acquiesced to all rebel leader decisions.
My prime, if meager, disappointment in the end is that we hardly get any word about what happened after the war, when I had expected quite a lot of trouble in keeping with real life. Only the final page somewhat cryptically mentions that the Prof's vision never fully materialized. It sounds like things did get better than they had been under the Authority, but Mannie suspects too high a wartime price. (I don't consider this a spoiler; it follows both reason and genre savvy.)
The biggest controversy to my mind is in lunar marital practices. Heinlein mercifully cut back on the sex talk this time, but he somehow saw a crucial plot point in Mannie having multiple wives and co-husbands, including a wife he calls "Mama." I made a point not to think too hard on it for fear of disgust, but by the end I thought the unprecedented family structure (one of reportedly several in use on Luna) might just offer more stability on average than monogamy. Besides, polygamy isn't a biblically designated sin, just inadvisable in its conventional form.
The real beauty of this work is that it doesn't call on you to agree with one side or another. You just have to appreciate the complex realism of a situation getting out of hand, smart people learning from history, foolish masses learning the hard way, plenty of patience and impatience, sacrifices, ambiguous victories...and mostly believable sci-fi additions.
Next up: Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I'm a little apprehensive about this one.
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I've read The Left Hand of Darkness and I wasn't terribly impressed. It seemed short on action and spent most of its time on philosophizing about moral issues instead of advancing the story. Maybe those who were more enthusiastic about the morality being offered enjoyed it more.