Book Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

(This content moved into it's own posting, sorry for confusion)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I read yesterday, cover to cover, in one sit. Was good book, but weird jabber-jabber lingo. Was russki blabs and computer called Mike, was real thinkum dinkum, no finkin. The loonies, they wanted freedom, see? Convicts, most. They threw rocks at earthworms and were nuke-bombed. Da. But they won.

Okay, snapping out of it now. The whole book was written in such language. Was an extremely good read, and would recommend to any sci-fi types, and even some non-sci-fi types. Story was mostly libertarian (IE: We are convicts shipped to moon as slaves, lets pretend we're Australia and become a country instead.) and had a lot of cynical overtones. Mike, the sentient computer (This book was written very long ago! Heinlein has great forsight) classified humanity into 'stupids' and 'non-stupids' and so on. The occasional politicking rants found throughout the book were the only parts that weren't entirely gripping, but the book was written in another era. The Hippies, I'm told, ate it up. *grins*

All in all, I'd recommend this read to almost anyone, except an American. They achieve independance by terrorism, particularly against the 'North American State', but only mention Mexico or Canada once or twice -- all targets in the US. That book, in the hands of the wrong American's right now could be grounds for charges of sedition. Distributing the book may be 'encouraging terrorism as a legitimate way to get things done' in the eyes of some.

The unique writing style hits you hard at first. It's written in first person, and the whole Narration is in a contrived lunar lingo that is 80% english, 5% romance languages, 5% russian, the rest is 'gobbily-gook'. Still, after you get the hang of it, it's quite smooth to read. Only time it relents is when a well educated type is making a speech, in which case Heinlein ensures us that his grasp on English is actually quite firm. Certain individuals are in fact so eloquent that they are unintelligible (spelling?). I am so convinced that he did this intentionally as a mirrored parody of his lunarspeak, making indirect message that Semantics are more important than Syntax.

I think I shall borrow this book to Mike, since it coincides nicely with his most recent post - one griping about democracy and also English. This book can handle both of those issues for him.