The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Difference between revisions

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One day, Mike becomes sentient -- apparently, his circuit complexity just reached critical mass. Mannie is the only person to know about it, simply because he's the only person to actually talk to Mike. Mike likes him, and creates spontaneous computer errors so they can meet up and learn from each other.

Soon enough, Mike sends Mannie to an underground revolutionary meeting out of curiosity. Mannie meets a girl named Wyoming Knott ("Wyoh" for short -- and don't say "why not?"), an activist from Hong Kong Luna who argues that, since farming is becoming harder on Luna, farmers need to strike for higher prices. She is answered by Professor Bernardo de la Paz, an old genius who was sent to the Moon for being an insurrectionist. He argues that the Loonies should stop sending any food to Earth ''at all'', until the Earth starts sending organic material back.

 

 

And so, the battle begins to set the moon free from the Lunar Authority and the Earth before the inevitable beginning of food riots. On their way to freedom, the characters have to deal with a corrupt leader, pesky tourists, space travel, advanced calculus, low-gravity gunfights, bureaucratic holdups, love, death, racism, India, one court session, two weddings, and a little girl named [[The Rolling Stones (novel)|Hazel Meade]].

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* [[Ambiguously Brown]]: Not quite [[In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race]], but there is a lot more racial admixture on Luna than on earth due to its smaller population. When one group wants to ban immigrants from Luna, Manuel muses about what race they would put ''him'' in.

* [[Artificial Limbs]]: Mannie has a cybernetic arm which can be swapped out for other prosthetics.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Heinlein's politics ''and'' Heinlein's ideas of sexuality.

* [[Author Filibuster]]: Discreet, but there, especially on race and sexuality.

* [[Author Tract]]: This is a very political novel. If that's not your cup of tea, be prepared to skip over large portions of the book.

* [[Beige Prose]]: Mannie's narration is very sparse and minimal, which is simply the way Loonies talk (see [[Future Slang]]).

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: {{spoiler|The Loonies win their independence, but Mike winds up lobotomizing himself out of existence by decentralizing life support controls. And Prof dies of a heart attack.}}

{{quote|'''Mike''': But we can throw rocks at Earth, Man. We will.}}

* [[Brilliant but Lazy]]: Mannie. He's a good engineer, good enough that he can steal power and water from the Lunar Authority without them noticing, can sweet-talk a churlish AI, and sketch out a three-dimensional circuit diagram on the fly. When he gets hold of the dossier the Authority has compiled on him, however, he sees that he's been labelled "not too bright," which he claims is both unfair and true.

* [[Casual Interplanetary Travel]]: It's relatively easy to travel between Earth and the Moon, although tourism is still not that common due to the expense. As well, there is no [[Artificial Gravity]], so earthworms can't stay too long without permanent changes to their bodies.

* [[Character Filibuster]]: The lectures of Professor de la Paz.

* [[Collapsed Mid-Speech]]: While {{spoiler|Professor de la Paz}} was on Earth he suffered greatly from the Earth's greater gravity, as it was six times what he was used to. After he returned to the Moon he seemed to get better. Near the end of the novel, after the Moon had won the war with the Federated Nations of Earth, he gave a speech to a crowd of Loonies.

{{quote|He stopped for cheers, then went on, "But that lies in the future. Today-- Oh, happy day! At last the world acknowledges Luna's sovereignty. Free! You have won your freedom--"

Then he did die.}}

* [[Colony Drop]]: The Loonies declare their independence from Earth by throwing rocks at it. Very ''large'' rocks. From a railgun.

* [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]]: Apparently believed of Cyborgs, as even Mannie refers to them as "ex-humans".

* [[Distracted by the Sexy]]: When a new bunch of Earth soldiers is transferred to Luna, female revolutionaries take to walking around very nearly naked (not at all uncommon on the Moon) right in front of them to keep them from doing their jobs. Their boss ''begged'' for them to have their own women, brought up from Earth, but was refused; a group of soldiers finally snapping and attacking one of the women is the spark that ignites the Revolution early.

* [[Emergent Human]]: Mike, in some ways.

* [[Everything Is Online]]: ''Despite'' there being no official internet. That's what happens when a sentient computer is in charge of the phone switches and the printing presses.

* [[Fantastic Slurs]]: "Earthworms" and "chums" (pronounced ''choom'' like in Russian).

* [[Fetus Terrible]]: Wyoh was traumatized after giving birth to a mutated child.

** To the extent that there's a mention of one fellow suffering this fate, and the crowd that did it only finding out afterwards that she was a prostitute and he was being difficult about paying the fee.

* [[Going Native]]: Stuart, eventually.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: More than one.

* [[Humans Are White]]: Averted. The Loonies come from all corners of the globe, and racial mixing is so common that Mannie at one point comments that he'd like to see someone try and pigeonhole his race. His youngest wife is implied to be black, and the other members of his marriage are never given even that much physical description. Professor Bernardo de la Paz is South American, though whether he's European or Latino is never addressed. Wyoh is described as blonde and fair-skinned, which only serves to make her stand out among Loonies (she was transported to the Moon at the age of five).

* [[Icon of Rebellion]]: Rebels against the Lunar Authority wore red caps called Liberty Caps. Heinlein got the idea from the French Revolution.

** The "Simon Jester" symbol, which was used with anti-Lunar Authority graffiti.

{{quote|A matchstick drawing of a little horned devil with big grin and forked tail. Sometimes he was stabbing a fat man with a pitchfork. Sometimes just his face would appear, big grin and horns, until shortly even horns and grin meant "Simon was here".}}

* [[Instant AI, Just Add Water]]: Possibly the first.

{{quote|''They kept hooking hardware into him — decision-action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve-digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors. And woke up.''}}

* [[Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future]]: Which is amusing considering that the book features in-universe CGI decades before such was possible.

* [[Override Command]]: The lunar revolutionaries are able to read all the government's secret files because, although the files have heavy security restrictions on them, there is apparently nothing preventing the computer that runs everything from just summarizing their contents to his buddies if they ask him to. Need a password to access a file? Just ask what it is.

* [[Penal Colony]]: The original purpose of the Lunar settlement.

* [[Planet Terra]]

* [[Pyrrhic Victory]]: Breaking free from the Lunar Authority ahead of schedule -- ''before'' people's hearts and minds were completely won over.

* [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]: Loonies live way longer than Terrans because of the reduced strain on their bodies, and they age slower, too; Mannie, for example, points out to some Terrans that even though he looks twenty or thirty he's actually been ''married'' longer than that.

* [[Refusal of the Call]]: Mannie is wholeheartedly determined not to join the Revolution. At least, not until Mike can quote him odds that he likes.

* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]: Both played (somewhat) straight and subverted: The group outright fabricates events, lies to the Lunar citizens on multiple occasions, steals from their own people, fakes assassination attempts and bombings, and provokes riots, shootings, and a rape/murder (although ''definitely'' not on purpose); and only plays by the rules they set for themselves when it is convenient to do so, in order to turn public opinion against the (already unpopular) Lunar Authority. Yet they warn ahead of time of their targets for orbital bombardment and attempt to shed no innocent blood on Earth. This isn't done for altruistic purposes, but because if they did, Earth would squash them like bugs in retaliation. And, in the words of one character: "Whenever possible, leave room for your enemies to become your friends."

* [[Superweapon Surprise]]: The Loonies' primary weapon in their war for independence is a catapult originally used to ship grain from Luna to Earth without having to make costly space flights.

** The real surprise is that they've managed to build a ''second'' catapult by the time Earth officially declares war.

* [[Swiss Army Appendage]]: Mannie has the ability to swap out his prosthetic left arm for other models bearing useful tools. No [[Arm Cannon|guns]], though; number seven, whatever it is, is implied to work as a pretty serviceable club, however.

* [[Terminally Dependent Society]]

* [[Xanatos Speed Chess]]

* [[You Fail Economics Forever]]: There's some disagreement over the economics of Luna being able to produce a measurable chunk of Earth's food (if it does). See the [[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/Headscratchers|Headscratchers]] entry for details.

* [[Zeerust]]: Mike, despite being the most powerful computer in existence, does his calculations on printing paper. Because he doesn't have a screen. At the same time, he creates a perfect digital human representation of himself for remote video conferences, and taps into any (phone, etc.) communication port to share and receive information, pretty much inventing 3D computer graphics, virtual acting and ''the internet''. In a book written in the '60s.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Nebula Award]]

[[Category:The Sixties]]

[[Category:Hugo Award]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]