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A review by logantea
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
4.0
I can totally understand both loving this book or hating it. It definitely reads like a not very subtle piece of libertarian propaganda at some points. However, I quite enjoyed it. It's not a poorly crafted story in service of a worldview -- it's a well crafted, rich, and believable piece of science fiction that has a worldview.
The characters are enjoyable, the world of Luna is strange but has clearly explained logic and rules that make sense in the context and make it easy to engross yourself in their world. The science of the tech is never fully explained, but never really seems unbelievable. There's also a great use of an AI that goes contrary to the common portrayals of what sentient computers will be. Although that could be less because the machine is significantly different from other fictional AIs and more because the way it is treated and utilized by others in the world is quite different.
There are some sections in the middle where the story gets a little bogged down in technical descriptions -- rebel cell communication algorithms that were clearly meant to be fully explained but never truly made sense to me, but these are small quibbles. I really enjoyed this book and if you don't mind or can look past the libertarian propaganda vibes it's definitely worth a read.
The characters are enjoyable, the world of Luna is strange but has clearly explained logic and rules that make sense in the context and make it easy to engross yourself in their world. The science of the tech is never fully explained, but never really seems unbelievable. There's also a great use of an AI that goes contrary to the common portrayals of what sentient computers will be. Although that could be less because the machine is significantly different from other fictional AIs and more because the way it is treated and utilized by others in the world is quite different.
There are some sections in the middle where the story gets a little bogged down in technical descriptions -- rebel cell communication algorithms that were clearly meant to be fully explained but never truly made sense to me, but these are small quibbles. I really enjoyed this book and if you don't mind or can look past the libertarian propaganda vibes it's definitely worth a read.