The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein – Still Relevant Today

I’d have rated it higher forty years ago, but today it didn’t stir me the way it once did, and I’d give it only 3 stars. What, as a young man, struck me as brash and admirable just sounds bitter and angry to me now. Not that there’s not a lot about this novel that’s impressive – it did win a Hugo after all, and many people think it was Heinlein’s finest work.

In 1966, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” was classic science fiction – a realistic view of what life on the Moon might be like, with science and engineering that made sense. It was clever and innovative, and far more accurate from a predictive point of view than most works at the time.  And in addition to being good science fiction, its negativity aside, it was socio-political allegory in the grand style of “Star Trek.” Luna’s struggle for independence was closely modeled after the American Revolution, even to the extent of issuing its Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. The role of imperialist England is played by the Federation of Nations, but it’s clear that Heinlein’s ire is aimed squarely at the former USA, which is blinded by it’s own arrogance. None of Earth’s nations are spared Heinlein’s wrath, but countries like China and India can at least see that co-existence with Luna is in everyone’s best interest.

In the late sixties, during the heart of the Cold War, Heinlein chose to write this book in first person with the accent of a Russian speaking English. That seemed cute back then, but today I simply found it annoying, and I’m not sure what the point of it was. He was a very angry man when he wrote it, perhaps because he viewed our growing involvement in Vietnam as a betrayal of what our founding fathers intended America to be – I really don’t know.

Heinlein was well-known as a libertarian/anarchist and this book can be viewed as one long rant on the subject. From that point of view, giving the heroes of the book Russian personae seems to me nothing less than a directed insult. Did Heinlein think the Soviet Union was a freer place less fettered by laws and taxes than his homeland? That’s me shaking my head in wonderment.

If Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul collaborated on a science fiction novel, it might read a lot like “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Maybe that’s what irks me about it. But ironically, as a friend recently pointed out, regardless of his intentions, Heinlein ultimately wound up demonstrating that a nation without a strong Government cannot survive. He continued to rail against taxation, and he repeated his tag line, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” at every opportunity, but the overriding conclusion from this book is that a society cannot depend solely on human nature and hoped-for good sense to survive. It must have rules, and its citizens must collectively sacrifice a degree of freedom for the common good.

Sci-fi/Fantasy as Relevant Social Commentary

Long slandered as lacking in anything but escapism, science fiction and fantasy provide a virtually limitless tableau on which to build a story.  As such they are ideal genres for satire and social/political commentary. Jonathan Swift used it three hundred years ago.  H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs used it one hundred years ago.  And in the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Philip Wylie, Robert Heinlein, and John Brunner (to name a few) used it to warn against the dangers of unbridled industrialization, political extremism, bigotry, and social elitism.

Add to this list H. Beam Piper who is best known today for introducing the world to Fuzzies.  When my book group selected “Little Fuzzy” I recalled a cute fifty-year-old story about some playful, lovable mammals from a mining planet six hundred light years from Earth.  When they are discovered by a prospector who adopts them, the reader settles in for a delightful diversion.  But when old Jack realizes that they are far more than pets, he sets off a pitched battle that was a powerful allegory for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  On one side are Jack and his friends who believe the Fuzzies are sapient beings entitled to the same basic rights as the humans who have taken control of their planet.  On the other is the big, bad Company that stands to lose its monopoly to exploit the planet’s natural resources unless it can prove that the Fuzzies are mere animals.

Oddly, though it was also written during the heyday of the feminist movement, “Little Fuzzy” treats women rather gratuitously, except for one who acts heroically and actually turns the tide of the battle, which was typical of the way Negroes were portrayed in the books and movies of the previous decades.  But give Piper his due.  “Little Fuzzy” was a courageous, outspoken commentary on the American values of the time that inspired many other writers after his death.

It may be just coincidence, but as I was reading “Little Fuzzy” last week, the Attorney General of the United States announced that the Justice Department was entering the fight against reactionary forces that were attempting to deny ethnic and racial minorities their basic right to vote.

“The Portal” to be Reviewed on the Fire Pages Blog

Mark your calendars, folks. The editor of the Fire Pages Review blog has informed me that she loved reading “The Portal,” and she will be publishing a review on her book blog, Fire Pages: Romance and Erotica Edition, (http://firepages.wordpress.com/) this coming Tuesday, August 23, 2011.  She’s reviewing “Wednesday’s Child” as well, on Fire Pages: Mystery and Sci-Fi Chronicle, but no date has been set for that yet.