Name: The moon is a harsh mistress
ISBN: 9780312863555

The moon is a harsh mistress

It is the late 21st Century and the Moon has been colonized -- as a giant, open, prison. Every aspect of life is overseen by the Federated Nations "Lunar Authority"; until one day when a self-aware Super-Computer, a Jack of all Trades Technician, an Anarchist Professor, and a beautiful Blonde Revolutionary decide to change their world. The conspirators' plans go along beautifully...for a while. TANSTAAFL! There ain't no such thing as a free lunch! Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence feel themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work. It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people -- a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic -- who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

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ramses0Aug 2026

"The Expanse" (or: "Leviathan Wakes" by James S. A. Corey).

They talk about "living at the bottom of the well" within our solar system (gravity well, that is). Mars effectively "divorces" from Earth (no kings / 1776, plus they need to be 100% self-sufficient), casually called "Dusters" presumably due to the Martian dust.

People working on the asteroid-based bases (in our "Asteroid Belt") are called "Belters".

Then also read: "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein, where humanity colonizes "Luna" and have "Loonies" for relatively obvious reasons.

Both books delve a bit into the physiological changes but also the socio-political ramifications of humanity in space, and both are _excellent_ reads!

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AncapistaniJun 2026

I'm not asking you to emigrate.

While my own views are likely closer to Musk's than I suspect yours are, I share those concerns. I don't think I'd be interested in moving there, at least not in the initial waves.

My optimistic view of the future looks more like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" than "Total Recall".

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NetMageSCWApr 2026

Early Heinlein e.g. Have Spacesuit - Will Travel, Farmer In The Sky, The Rolling Stones or for non-juveniles, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress have lots of science.

Later works, less so.

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ahhhhnooooMar 2026

Well there goes Orson Scott Card, Asimov, Heinlein, Orwell, etc.

The politics and sexuality were always in these stories. They were just more familiar, so they don't seem as self righteous. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a classic example of a story with sexuality and politics in old timey sci fi.

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mikkupikkuFeb 2026

There is no empirical test for consciousness. It's the 21st century equivalent of angels dancing on pin heads.

Engineers, who aren't trying to play at being new age theologians, should concern themselves with what the machines can demonstrably do and not do. In Asimov's robot tales, robots interpret vague commands in the worst way possible for the sake of generating interesting stories. But today, these "scripts" as you call them, can interpret vague and obtuse instructions in generally a reasonable way. Read through claude code's outputs and you'll find it filled with stuff like "The user said they want a 'thingy' to click on, I'm going to assume the user means a button." Now I haven't read the book since I was a teenager, but HAL 9000 applies literally instructions to achieve the mission in a way that actually makes him a liability to the mission. The best take was in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, in the intro when the narrator protagonist asks if machines can have souls, then explains that it doesn't matter, what matters is what the machine can do.

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ctothDec 2025

Wait, what?

Have you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? It's ... about the AI helping people overthrow a very human dictatorship. It's also about an AI built of vacuum tubes and vocoders if you want a taste of the tech level.

If you want old fiction that grapples with an AI that has shitty locked-in goals try "I have no mouth and I must scream."

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