Reddit reviews The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
We found 43 Reddit comments about The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Reddit reviews The Moon Is a Harsh MistressWe found 43 Reddit comments about The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Quick! Distribute the Holy Heinlein!
The Moon is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
> 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 find 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. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with politics, humanity, passion, innovative technical speculation, and a firm belief in the pursuit of human freedom. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the winner of the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Everyone needs to read a copy of 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' by Robert Heinlein, right the hell now.
/threadjack
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven is pretty good.
Alas, Babylon is one of the classic post-apocalyptic scifi novels. As is a "A Canticle for Leibowitz", mentioned above.
EDIT: I just noticed that "Lucifer's Hammer" won the Hugo award, which is a big deal if you didn't already know. Another book that comes to mind that you might like is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. Not quite the same genre, but similar, and a real classic as well. And really good!
For some more ancap fiction threads and posts I have assembled
I listend to a talk David D. Freidman gave at Duke on Stateless and Semi-Stateless Societies in Fiction and Semi-Fiction. (Blog post) (Audio)
I was curious about the pieces he mentioned, so I decided to make a list of them.
*****
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
The Ungoverned - Vernor Vinge
True Names - Vernor Vinge
Oath of Fealty - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Syndic - C.M. Kornbluth
The Domination of Draka (series) - S.M. Stirling
Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Probability Broach – L. Neil Smith
The Great Explosion – Eric Frank Russell
The Cassini Division (Fall Revolution Series) - Ken MacLeod (I don’t believe the books by this author are mentioned but I believe this is the one concerning the “Einstein” in the capitalist enclave.)
Harald - David D. Friedman
Salamander - David D. Friedman
**
Here are also some links to other threads on the subject that have been posted in this sub:
Any An-cap friendly novels out there?
A permanent catalog of fiction with AnCap themes (please feel free to contribute)
Any representations of a stateless society that is positive in fiction?
Agorist fiction?
I have provided Amazon links. Most of these pieces can be found online, but I will leave that to the reader.
For fiction:
Tons more here: http://www.arsgratialibertatis.com/book-list
On the same train of thought, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one my favorite novels of his.
Have you ever read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"? In the book, they worry about the computer "playing a joke" where it releases all the oxygen in living quarters. Comedy is a hard rubric.
If anyone is interested in older science fiction books The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress Is a fantastic book that is still relevant today.
You've likely read most of these, but here are a few suggestions:
I can recommend others if you've already hit all of those already.
Check out The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. It's a scifi but in my opinion it addresses the issue very comprehensively. Very good book overall too.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 1957
The Colossus Trilogy *Edit: POI Really reminded me kind of the first book when I started watching it.
Colossus - the Forbin Project also a Movie based on it
The Fall of Colossus
Colossus and Crab
And also
When Harlie was One 2.0
Most of the characters in The Windup Girl are Thai or Chinese.
The Left Hand of Darkness messes around with gender in interesting ways. (Also, Ursula K. Leguin is an all-around fantastic author.)
Robert Heinlein can be a controversial author, but many of his works had non-white protagonists. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is multiracial, and Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers is Filipino, if I recall correctly.
Someone else in this thread recommended The Brief But Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and it's not exactly SFF (more in the vein of magical realism) but it is easily one of the best books I've ever read.
True polygamy is hard to argue the immorality against unless it appears to be coercing children. But usually the word polygamy is applied to Mormons incorrectly. They actually practice polygyny which is much more objectionable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny
The practical real world problem with Mormon polygyny is the fact that it ends up coercing very young women to "consent" to marry an older man. It's not exactly consent when they're children. Also, its overtly patriarchal and a form of female oppression which is both bad for women and another kind of coercion rather than consent.
If you were to, however, argue in favor of polygamy as a true plural marriage with various combinations of genders it would be harder to argue that is was patriarchal or oppressive or immoral. It may be unhealthy still, but I'm not sure we have enough real world evidence to arrive at that conclusion yet. Very few people engage in this kind of polygamy as far as I know.
If you would like to read some fiction dealing with the concepts of Group Marriage you should check out Robert A. Heinlein:
And many of his other books.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Is-Harsh-Mistress/dp/0312863551
Checkout Amazon's Look Inside preview. The grammar is similar to what you'd expect a Russia speaking English to use.
Heinlein did it
I dunno, I guess I can find the philosophy interesting even if I think it's wrong, or won't work in reality. Plus I see no problem picking and choosing bits that do resonate without taking on all the baggage.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
The story is the moon gets turned into sort of a future-past Australia, where they ship prisoners. Even if their sentence ends, they (and their children, grandchildren, etc.) end up stuck there because their bodies have adapted to the lower gravity. But these ostensibly free people are still faced with a monopsony in the form of the prison, and they're being taken advantage of, so they revolt against Earth. It also features a computer that "wakes up", explores different family styles than a typical nuclear family, and so on. It has a bit of a utopia/dystopia, with Earth and modern society as the dystopia to the moon's utopia. Oh, and it's written in a pidgin language he invented which is mostly borrowed Russian words and grammar here and there, like dropping pronouns.
But (barely) underneath that, it's basically a libertarian political manifesto. Examples:
> I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
I think that was a quote from the wisdom-dispensing old-author type that always feature prominently in Heinlein's books.
> Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Anyway, I recommend it, if you can stomach the occasional anachronism or sexist comments. Dude was way ahead of his time back in 1965, but not so much compared to 2017. In another of his books, there's some casually dropped line about women being partially responsible when they get raped, so he gets a lot of hate.
Oh, and the term "TANSTAAFL" comes from the book. You still occasionally see references to that.
Take a look at the list of past Hugo winners and look for easily accessible ones. A few jump out at me:
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Barrayar - Lois McMaster Bujold, or maybe the omnibus Cordelia's Honor
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
Which reminds me...
Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an excellent book!!
Why wait until Mars?
Heinlein yes!
Try:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
and
Citizen of the Galaxy
I'm currently reading Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and while I haven't finished it yet, so far it's been a really enjoyable read with a lot of ideas that force you to stop and think for a bit.
> Just an aside: for the economic calculation problem, wouldn't they say that even though it's less efficient it's still worth it?
They haven't. Try it sometime, see what sort of reply you get. I've never gotten one.
> I'm interested in your principles, could you type them or link to them?
I'll give you a brief description and a link to a justification by a libertarian source. I am not interested in defending these.
Chastity: sex is for married couples only. Justification: Chastity supports monogamy. Monogamy is a precondition for civilization. Even reason.com agrees.
Geography: people should be tied to the land in a permanent relationship. Justification: When people are tied to the land you don't end up with the problem of "the only problem with capitalism is too few capitalists". Instead capital accumulates. Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. Acquiring land and never losing land is essential to the growth of the religion. If all goes well eventually the whole earth will be ours.
Heredity: You are loyalty is to your ancestors and your descendants. Justifcation: the Prisoner's Dilemma, and the fact that behavior is mostly genetic. Ethnic societies expand at the expense of non-ethnic societies. There is no reason to persuade people, instead you need to outbreed them. Homogenous populations don't spend their time fighting over wedge issues.
Sovereignty: It is important to expand and defend the free action of the the land and associated lineage. This is similar to libertarianism, but it is family-centered rather than universal. Most people don't want to be libertarians and you can't do anything about it. So you need to focus on advancing and defending the rights of fellow believers.
> Ancap é muito utópico
Diz que é utópico mas não usa nenhum argumento...
>daria pra escrever um livro de ficção só com ideias ancaps
https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Harsh-Mistress-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0312863551/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501153276&sr=8-1&keywords=the+moon+is+a+harsh+mistress
I'll recommend three!
An exploration of how biology affects culture, framed in a hard science first contact story:
The Mote in God's Eye
In the near future scientists discover a dead astronaut on the moon... who died 50,000 years ago.
Inherit the Stars
A sci-fi classic with great characters along the way. The over-crowded Earth is heavily reliant on the food created by a prison colony on the moon, which decides to declare its independence, with the help of the first A.I.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I always preferred The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress! as far as Heinlein goes.
Not everything I'm going to list is really libertarian per se but I think they do give important context for the libertarian/broader right wing movement
Economics in One Lesson. It's repetitive but gets the point across
Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a philosophical perspective
IThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's difficult to call Heinlein a libertarian but this book definitely is. Also where the 'rational' part of my flair comes from!
There is No Alternative. I'm not sure how many people would consider Thatcher a libertarian but she's an important part of the history of the modern struggle against socialism that I think is overlooked in the United States
The Fatal Conceit. One of Hayek's must read works. A much shorter one that is I think just as important, Why I Am Not a Conservative
Atlas Shrugged. I'm not saying it's a good book or that you don't know of it but it's worth thumbing through just to see what all the hubbub's about. Prepare yourself for a latent S&M fetish.
Capitalism and Freedom. Maybe reading this will help you figure out why Naomi Klein seems to hate Friedman so much. Also very good and much more digestible is his television series Free to Choose and the similarly titled book
The Communist Manifesto. Provides good context. And maybe a chuckle.
I really enjoyed Ready Player one!
Some of my favorite sci-fi:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein
Course of Empire, by Eric Flint and KD Wentworth
Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, by Robert J Sawyer (Trilogy starting with Farseer)
Uplift Series, by David Brin, (trilogy, starting with Sundiver)
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Yep. Read them. Also coming to mind: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Good points. Let me address them:
The Mars atmosphere isn't all that useful to us. It's not breathable, and it's not significantly dense enough to allow a shirt-sleeve environment. I have heard proposals, some bordering on science fiction with our current technology levels, of melting significant amounts of the Mars-based water to bolster the atmospheric pressure. If doing so allowed a shirt-sleeve environment, that would be hugely significant -- working in a space suit sucks. Until such a time, all work has to be done in a pressurized environment, no matter where we go, so that's a wash.
The significant gravity is both a benefit and a hindrance. It is no doubt healthier for humans, and for our offspring that will be born there, but in terms of conducting useful work, it isn't an advantage. In a low gravity, like the 1/6th G of the Moon:
Lastly, the lunar dust is problematic. There is dust on Mars as well, so some of the comparison is moot and I will focus on the "razor-sharp" nature of that which is found on the Moon. Outside, it will gum up machinery and overall increase wear and tear on equipment. Inside, it has the potential to cause lung damage if inhaled, along with all the problems mentioned for outside work.
To combat this, we'll need some hefty material science to mitigate these effects. For example, NASA has been working for decades on lubricants that are able to survive the harsh conditions, both in temperature and in particulate build-up. Work such as this, along with manufacturing vehicles and equipment specifically for lunar work, machines that include hermetically sealed parts and cavities, can help mitigate some of this.
For the interior spaces, diligent airlock procedures and constant atmo scrubbing will be critical. These will become part of everyday life for those living there. It's not dissimilar to working in a bio lab, medical facility, nuclear facility, and the like -- You follow procedures or everyone suffers and potentially dies. These will all be professional people, not Joe Sixpack.
Your points are all true, and we will eventually have colonies on both -- colonies that will probably serve very different purposes. My point is that the ease of getting to and working on the moon, coupled with the vastly lower costs associated, make a moon colony much preferred as a starting point. Let's explore Mars while we work on the moon.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress!
I promise it isn't about space and Mike is the coolest character in the book!
EDIT: http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Is-Harsh-Mistress/dp/0312863551
History is cyclical. Science fiction authors that lean libertarian or ancap seem to understand this more than political philosophers and journalists. One of my favorite examples would be The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and all of Heinlein's works in that universe.
The desire for liberty pushes us out into the frontier, to a new horizon. Out there, freedom reigns. You're away from the centralized state apparatus, the military, the police and public corporate entities. For years or decades (or at other times in history, centuries), life just seems to go on somehow without these institutions of coercive force.
Eventually, society at large spreads out toward the now well-established frontiers, and thus the state takes over, the military has reign, the police are instituted, corporations buy up businesses or expand their chains to the region. Freedom quickly diminished, and the calls for it quiet down as most people find the comfort all too preferable.
But then what happens? The process starts all over again, when new lands are discovered by intrepid explores.
Well here's the thing... the colonization of space and our advancement to the stars gives us something that the Earth never could: a effectively limitless frontier. If we have the technology to travel freely from planet to planet, and the possibility of forging new settlements based upon current (i.e., future) technology at will, then there is no permanent frontier town that the state apparatus can catch up to.
Hence, Free Space. Anyone selling an end-of-history anarcho-capitalistic era is ignorant of history. But in the distant future, anarcho-capitalism will exist in a free space, because space is limitless, and there will always be room for any option.
Here is a list of some of my favorites so far:
There is actually a book about that, a few people read it.
I'm just going to say this is a really, really good book which explores something a whole lot like a modern exile.
Hmm, they may not qualify as 'sad but inspirational,' but here are a few personal favorites that should be good to get in to the swing of reading.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Revolution on the Moon! Also a bit sad at times.
A Wizard of Earthsea - First (and very good) book in an outstanding series.
Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke
Also The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and it is excellent!
Relevant
http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Harsh-Mistress-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0312863551
As I said, if you think it won't work simply because people will try to force their view of things onto society, I won't disagree. Humans, especially having seen how effective govts currently are at curtailing "bad behavior" in other places, seem to want to wield that power and control for themselves.
> I think libertarian societies just tend to allow themselves to form a central governance.
Yes, the bad side of an an-cap society is that it doesn't forbid anything ... even the creation of a govt. But I would say it is people that allow the creation of govts, not "libertarian societies".
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress described that process pretty well.
It's a lot of fun to think about, but it ends there for me. Check out The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you haven't read it yet--you'd like it!