The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein - Book Report #237

This was not what I was expecting.

I mean, come on!  It was published in 1965, in the middle of the Apollo program!

Instead of an adventure story about colonizing the moon, building the infrastructure or mounting some kind of rescue, it was, instead, a handbook on how to mount a revolution.

It was political.

It was rather dull actually.

I know I'm going to get a lot of rolled eyes from those people who are real Heinlein fans.  I suspect he was trying to develop his own kind of libertarian paradise and couldn't make a novel work on Earth.


So yea.  It wasn't for me in the same way that Infomocracy wasn't.

It's not like it was badly written it simply was not a subject that interested me, so I was let down by it.

Book Report #121 - Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

Book 45 of 52
Page count - 223

Classic SF!  You know, for 1948, the author got much of his speculation right, except for Venus.

This is one of his juvenile books where we follow the adventures of Matt Dodson, a teenager who joins the Space Academy in the hopes of joining the Solar Patrol.

Matt is a very straight laced kid who makes good friends along the way.  The academy is not an easy place to learn and he is challenged continually.

I liked the book quite a lot but I found the ending bogged down and I did not enjoy it as much.  With the explosion of Young Adult fiction these days this book can hold it's own, even though it may read a bit stiff compared to more contemporary works.

Robert A. Heinlein

The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Have you ever imagined what our cities would look like if the automobile was no more?  Seems almost impossible given, just how important and integrated into our society they are.

In Heinlein's world fossil fuels became so rare and valuable (sound familiar) that the US government decided that the military should have priority access to it.  Fuel prices became so expensive that a new method of mass transportation was created, he re-imagined roadways to be a series of conveyor belts each one going a bit faster than its neighbor, up to speeds of 100 MPH.  These roadways were powered by solar panels; very well imagined considering this story was published in 1940.

At the time the leading thinker on photovoltaic energy was Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work in the area.  Look HERE for more information on that.

It takes a lot of work to keep the roadways rolling, during this story a revolt unfolds from the trade unionists that maintain the infrastructure.

This has all the right ingredients to make a fine modern day science fiction, action movie.  While reading it I kept thinking this story had the same look and feel of the movie I Robot - a gleaming city on top and a gritty world underneath it all, keeping it all running.

Good story even if the end of it is a bit clunky.  I'm sure it could be improved in the movie. (Just kidding)

Information or Robert A Heinlein can be found HERE and HERE

Robert A Heinlein

The story was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1940