History Literature / TheMoonIsAHarshMistress

The action is set in 2075-2076. The Moon has been colonized for several generations (originating as a PenalColony), but is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged society of its own. The proud Lunar people (Loonies) have their own distinct culture: they value politeness, respect, fair trials, hard work and consensual polygamy. But they also see no problem with [[ThrownOutTheAirlock summarily executing]] people who violate their customs or just piss someone off too much. They're a harsh but loving society, built on sexual autonomy and religious freedom.

The narrator is Manuel Garcia O'Kelly ([[MeaningfulName Man]] or Mannie for short), a regular Loonie guy. He works as a tech support contractor for the Lunar Authority government, maintaining a HOLMES IV-type mainframe computer which Mannie names [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Mycroft]] -- Mike for short. While it started out by running the "catapult" that sends things from the Moon to Earth, adding capacity to the existing machine is cheaper than shipping new hardware up the gravity well from Earth, so now it [[MasterComputer runs almost everything on the Moon]].

Soon enough, Mike sends Mannie to an underground revolutionary meeting; the revolutionaries have disabled all the security cameras and microphones that he could potentially eavesdrop with, and he's curious to know what they're talking about. Mannie meets a girl named Wyoming Knott ("Wyoh" for short -- [[NeverHeardThatOneBefore and don't say "why not?"]]), an activist who argues that, since farming is becoming harder on Luna, farmers need to strike for higher prices. She is answered by Bernardo "Prof" de la Paz, a professor who was sent to the Moon for being an insurrectionist. He points out that regardless of the prices, the food being sold for export is steadily detracting from the Moon's store of usable water, soil, and biomass, and argues that the Loonies should put a complete embargo on exports until Earth starts sending replacement resources back.

The meeting is interrupted by a police raid. Mannie escapes with Wyoming, and they go into hiding. Wyoh and Prof are introduced to Mike, who calculates that based on depletion levels, growing food will become more and more difficult, and they can expect food riots in seven years, cannibalism two years after that. The PowerTrio begin to plan a full-on revolution, with the help of Mike's near-omniscience and Mannie's extended polyamorous family. Mike, under the name of "Adam Selene", becomes the unseen leader of a massive underground resistance movement.

* AccentuateTheNegative: The revolution begins in earnest when a group of stir-crazy soldiers rape and murder a young woman, then kill another who discovers the body. Prof and Mannie hear tell of an exaggerated version of events, which has soldiers running amok, raping and murdering all the women in the complex. Prof tells his cell leaders to spread ''that'' version over the true story, so as to whip the mob into a frenzy.

* CasualInterplanetaryTravel: Generally [[AvertedTrope averted]], or at least [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]]. While ships do travel between Earth and the Moon, and do so cheaply enough to dump convicts there, manned vessels are a rarity. Tourism is still uncommon due to the expense and lack of interest in visiting what is still basically a penal colony. Also, there is no ArtificialGravity, so earthworms can't stay too long without permanent changes to their bodies. Worse, Loonies can only visit Terra for short periods of time, and at great risk to their health. Our main characters must endure physically grueling preparations for ''months'' against even the small chance of a brief trip to Earth. It is implied, however, to have become more prevalent at some point after the novel's events.

* DistractedByTheSexy: When a new bunch of Earth soldiers is transferred to Luna, female revolutionaries take to walking around very nearly naked (not at all uncommon on the Moon) right in front of them to keep them from doing their jobs. Their boss ''begged'' for them to have their own women (implied to be a detachment of military hookers), brought up from Earth, but was refused; a group of soldiers raping and murdering a Loonie woman is the spark that ignites the Revolution early.

* EccentricAI: Mike, who's HOLMES IV, the MasterComputer of the Lunar Autority (having [[GrownBeyondTheirProgramming acquired sentience]]) joins the rebellion only because it seems funny and Mannie has to remind him to not do "pranks" such as giving the rebellion a ZillionDollarBill or depriving the Warden's room of oxygen.

* IgnoredExpert: Alvarez, the chief of the Lunar Authority police, is a villainous example: he knows ''exactly'' how to keep the Loonies from rebelling and what he needs to do it, but his superiors on Earth won't give him the resources he needs because it would be too expensive. As a result, the rebellion is successful. Alvarez dies shortly after his IWarnedYou to the officer in charge.

* NuclearOption: A plot point is that the Federated Nations could put down the Lunar rebellion with a single ship and six large nukes (said as much by Mannie)--but are actually ''very'' reluctant to do so as long as they have other options, to the point their first attempt to forcefully suppress the rebellion is a dangerous armed invasion with no nuclear weaponry. To which the Loonies reply by hitting Earth with [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter kinetic payloads just as powerful as nukes]] because by now the Federated Nations have no other options and they need to break their will before they get a ship in range.

* PlanetTerra

* PowerTrio: Mannie, Prof, and Wyoh. The exact sub-trope is tough to nail down. Prof is the most experienced of the trio, and the most logical, but is also a bit whimsical and subversive, oscillating between treating the Revolution as SeriousBusiness or a big game. Wyoh is the most emotional, often thinking with her heart rather than her head, but isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Mannie, in an [[GenderInvertedTrope Inversion]] of CloserToEarth is the most grounded and level-headed of the three, though in a rather cynical way.

* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker: Everyone on the moon speaks in an unusual manner, which is also found in Mannie's narration. Need save air makes clipped syntax, drop unnecessary words. Lack of articles also feature of Russian language.

* TerseTalker: Narration mostly elides articles, prepositions. Represents Loonie argot influenced by a large Russian contingent among early transportees, as well as limited oxygen leading to .

** Another example; the Moon has no portable phones (although, to be honest, Mike would have been even ''more'' valuable if such things had existed). Though according to Mannie's senior wife, they didn't have phones at all when she was young, so it's possible they never got imported to the Moon.

* FutureSlang: The very analytical dialect spoken on Luna, which is full of foreign loanwords, e.g. "Gospodin" (Russian) for "Mr.", "no huhu" (Chinese) for "no problem", and so on. There are also words changed in English, for example "fem" is now the slang for a woman.

* MultiethnicName: The protagonist is named Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis. Due to Luna's melting pot status, such names are common.

* TerseTalker: Narration mostly elides articles, prepositions. Represents Loonie argot, influenced by large Russian contingent among early transportees.

* TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup: A heavy theme in the novel, keeping with its status as a libertarian quasi-tract. At one point, the Professor notes that his plan (which involves not reaching a peace deal for a certain amount of time) was almost spoiled by having to meet with an FN delegation that was "too small, its chairman too intelligent ... Had we been able to force our case before the Grand Assembly there would have been no danger of intelligent action."

* GrammarNazi: One member of the Lunar congress wants to revise the Lunar Declaration of Independence (literally just the American Revolution version with the SerialNumbersFiledOff) due to a few grammar errors (including the famous "unalienable" vs "inalienable" issue). In a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]], he drops his argument quickly once Adam Selene entreats that it's more important to just get the damn thing ratified, and Mannie notes that he's actually a good guy apart from his "fetish".

** We're never given any real information on how Mannie's "line marriage" treats sex. Given Heinlein's [[AuthorAppeal propensities]] [[EverybodyHasLotsOfSex everybody has sex with everybody else]], but the narrative treats it almost exclusively as an emotional support system--an anxious Mannie spends the night with his "senior wife" but nothing sexual is ever implied to happen, as she's much older and both she and the oldest husband are implied to be past being very interested. On the other hand, younger husbands blush excitedly at the idea of Wyoh "opting in".
*** One thing that is mentioned is that when Ludmilla married into the family, as she was potentially the granddaughter of the senior husband and he wasn't too randy anymore, they spent the night together without consummating the marriage as a formality, and Greg, the second husband, was the first to have sex with her.

* FailedFutureForecast: 'Sovunion' is still around; India has become socialist; there are nations called "[[WeWillUseWikiWordsInTheFuture PanAfrica]]", "Mitteleuropa" and the "Brasilian Union". Luna's only Earthside ally, the North African nation of Chad, is a 'Peoples' Directorate'.

The action is set in 2075-2076. The Moon has been colonized for several generations (originating as a PenalColony), but is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged society of its own. The proud Lunar people (Loonies) have their own distinct culture: they value politeness, respect, fair trials, hard work and consensual polygamy. But they also see no problem with [[ThrownOutTheAirlock summarily executing]] who violate their customs. They're a harsh but loving society, built on sexual autonomy and religious freedom.

The meeting is interrupted by a police raid that turns deadly. Mannie escapes with Wyoming, and they go into hiding. Mannie introduces Wyoh to Mike by phone, and Prof as well when he meets up with them. Wyoming doesn't believe that an embargo is needed until Mike calculates that based on depletion levels, growing food will become more and more difficult, and they can expect food riots in seven years, cannibalism two years after that. The PowerTrio begin to plan a full-on revolution, with the help of Mike's near-omniscience and Mannie's extended polyamorous family. Mike, under the name of "Adam Selene", becomes the unseen leader of a massive underground resistance movement.

* CharacterFilibuster: The lectures of Professor de la Paz.

** The Directorate of Chad is the first (and for a long time, only) nation to recognize Luna as a free state. This is due in no small part to a massive amount of money given to them by the Resistance (implied to be where the bulk of the Resistance's money went).

* FailedFutureForecast: 'Sovunion' is still around; India has become socialist; the Moon's only Earthside ally, the North African nation of Chad, is a 'Peoples' Directorate'.

** Just about everything the "earthworms" do is stupid, from their ham-handed reactions to Lunar unrest, to their incompetent attempts at propaganda, to the people who picnic at the site of an impending nuclear-scale attack. The in-universe justification for all this stupidity is that no one takes the Lunar threat seriously (at least, not until the rocks start raining down on them), and in general don't give a damn what happens to Loonies so long as the grain shipments continue on schedule. Also, the Loonies used heavy ObsfucatingStupidity in their strategies.

''The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress'' (1966) is a ScienceFiction novel written by Creator/RobertAHeinlein. It's notable for originating many sci-fi tropes, including a sentient computer, ColonyDrop tactics, and virtual acting.

The action is set in 2075-2076. The moon (Luna) has been a prison colony for several generations, but is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged society of its own. The proud Lunar people (Loonies) have their own distinct culture: they value politeness, respect, fair trials, hard work and consensual polygamy. But they also see no problem with [[ThrownOutTheAirlock killing people]] who violate their customs. They're a harsh but loving society, built on sexual autonomy and religious freedom.

The narrator is Manuel Garcia O'Kelly ([[MeaningfulName Man]] or Mannie for short), a regular multiethnic Lunar guy. Mannie is part of the Davis Clan: a large, polygamous family of various creeds and ages, who get by through farming, stealing a little electricity and water from the government, and helping out friends in need. By day, Mannie works as a tech support contractor for the Lunar Authority in Luna City. His job is to maintain a HOLMES IV-type mainframe computer which Mannie names [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Mycroft]] -- Mike for short. It talks, scans, prints and calculates. While it once started out by running the catapult that sends things from the Moon to the Earth, adding capacity to the existing plant is cheaper than shipping new hardware up the gravity well from Earth, so it now runs almost everything on the Moon.

Soon enough, Mike sends Mannie to an underground revolutionary meeting; the revolutionaries have disabled all the security cameras and microphones that he could potentially eavesdrop with, and he's curious to know what they're talking about. Mannie meets a girl named Wyoming Knott ("Wyoh" for short -- [[NeverHeardThatOneBefore and don't say "why not?"]]), an activist from Hong Kong In Luna who argues that, since farming is becoming harder on Luna, farmers need to strike for higher prices. She is answered by Professor Bernardo de la Paz, an old genius who was sent to the Moon for being an insurrectionist. He points out that regardless of the prices, the food being sold for export is steadily detracting from the Moon's store of usable soil, water, and biomass, and argues that the Loonies should put a complete ''embargo'' on exports until the Earth starts sending replacement resources back.

The meeting is interrupted by a raid that turns deadly. Mannie escapes with Wyoming, and they go into hiding. Mannie subsequently introduces Wyoh to Mike by phone, and the professor as well when he meets up with them. Wyoming doesn't believe that an embargo is needed until Mike calculates that based on depletion levels, growing food will become more and more difficult, and they can expect food riots in seven years, cannibalism two years after that. The PowerTrio begin to plan a full-on revolution, with the help of Mannie's extended polyamorous family and Mike's virtual omniscience. Using a "pyramid" system to organize the revolutionaries, Mike, under the name of "Adam Selene", becomes the unseen leader of a massive underground resistance movement.

And so, the battle begins to set the moon free from the Lunar Authority and the Earth before the inevitable beginning of food riots. On their way to freedom, the characters have to deal with a corrupt leader, pesky tourists, space travel, advanced calculus, low-gravity gunfights, bureaucratic holdups, love, death, racism, India, one court session, two weddings, and a little girl named [[Literature/TheRollingStones1952 Hazel Meade]].

* AccentuateTheNegative: The Revolution begins in earnest when a group of stir-crazy soldiers rape and murder a young woman, then kill another who discovers the body. Prof and Mannie hear tell of an exaggerated version of events, which has soldiers running amok, raping and murdering all the women in the complex. Prof tells his cell leaders to spread ''that'' version over the true story, so as to whip the mob into a frenzy.

* DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: Lampshaded and explained. Because of the huge gender disparity on the Moon, a woman can hit a man "so hard she draws blood," and the man will be severely punished ''by other men'' if he retaliates, because of the intense competition for female favors. Attitudes on Earth, where there is no sexual imbalance, are very different.

* EliteMooks: The Peace Dragoons who are sent from Earth to pacify Luna. After a group of them [[spoiler: rape and murder a Loonie woman]], however, there's no chance for them. Earth never sends enough, and they never have enough time to get used to moving in Luna's low gravity.

** The Directorate of Chad is the first (and for a long time, only) nation to recognize Luna as a free state. This is due in no small part to a massive amount of money given to them by the Resistance (it's implied to be where the bulk of the Resistance's money went).

* FantasticSlurs: "Earthworms" and "chums" (pronounced ''choom'' like in Russian). Also inverted with "jailbird," which is considered a friendly greeting among those who had been sent to Luna for criminal sentences; when the exiles begin addressing the native-born Mannie as "jailbird," it's a compliment.

* FutureSlang: The very analytical dialect spoken on Luna, which is also full of foreign loanwords, e.g. "Gospodin" (Russian) for "Mr.", "no huhu" (Chinese) for "no problem", and so on.

** The group outright fabricates events, lies to the Lunar citizens on multiple occasions, steals from their own people, fakes assassination attempts and bombings, and provokes riots, shootings, and a rape/murder (although ''definitely'' not on purpose); and only plays by the rules they set for themselves when it is convenient to do so, in order to turn public opinion against the (already unpopular) Lunar Authority.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: The PowerTrio is well aware that the Lunar Authority [[HanlonsRazor is not evil]], but they do their damnedest to make sure the Loonies think it is, because the alternative to overthrowing it is starvation for everyone.

* StealthInSpace.

* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker: Everyone on the moon speaks in an unusual manner, which is also found in Mannie's narration. Need save air makes clipped syntax, drop unnecessary words. Lack of articles is also feature of Russian language.
* StreetUrchin: Called "Stilyagi," after the counterculture of 50s Russia. Boys who "roam the corridors" do so because their families couldn't find another family to marry them into, and girls do so because once they hit "husband high" no one, not even their own mothers, can tell them what to do.

** Just about everything the "earthworms" do is stupid, from their ham-handed reactions to Lunar unrest, to their incompetent attempts at propaganda, to the people who picnic at the site of an impending nuclear-scale attack. The in-universe justification for all this stupidity is that no one takes the Lunar threat seriously (at least, not until the rocks start raining down on them), and in general don't give a damn what happens to Loonies so long as the grain shipments continue on schedule. And in the earthworms' defense, making Luna look weak and foolish was a major part of the Loonie strategy for winning.

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: The plan for the revolution is hatched in an early scene. The rest of the book is the plan coming to fruition almost without a hitch. Some parts of the plan aren't even revealed to the members of the inner circle.

* WritersCannotDoMath: Unusual for Heinlein, he conflates one chance in seven with seven to one odds. One chance in seven is equivalent to ''six'' to one odds.
* WouldntHitAGirl: The attitude of the men on the moon. Woe to you if you do, because 'Judge' Lynch would be on your case in a heartbeat and you'd have [[ThrownOutTheAirlock severe breathing difficulties]].
* XanatosSpeedChess: The Revolution slides into this mode after having overthrown the Lunar Authority two months ahead of schedule. Having a sentient supercomputer as the key member of the Revolution certainly helps. So does having another major player be a man who's studied Revolution to an extent that would make UsefulNotes/CheGuevara look like a hobbyist.

** In 2075, Major League Baseball is apparently still running on the old system, in which the pennant in each league was simply awarded to the team with the best win/loss record. In real life, a mere three years after the book was published, the leagues split into two divisions each, and the teams with the best records out of each division would play a best-of-five series for the title. The playoffs further evolved into their current form over the years, and one can only imagine how it might change by 2075.

* ArtisticLicenseStatistics: Heinlein ups the drama by having Mike the supercomputer constantly decreasing the plan's odds of success overall after each objective is successfully completed, stating that there are "more opportunities for failure" in the next objective, but this isn't the way overall probability is calculated; the only way odds can get worse is if something goes wrong, or new problems crop up. If Mike knew about the low odds of the later steps from the beginning, he should have factored them into the probability he gave at the beginning.[[note]]To put it in simple terms, the chance you'll flip a coin and have it come up heads is 0.50; the chance of getting heads twice in a row is 0.50 x 0.50 = 0.25. But once you flip that coin and get heads the first time, your chance is now 0.50, because that first successful flip is no longer 0.50 -- it's happened, so it now has a probability of 1. The odds get better with each successfully completed step.[[/note]] Also [[spoiler: the odds of success are based on Prof's desired outcome of a free Luna that avoids starving. Which can only happen if peace is avoided until after the FN blows up the main catapult.]]

* FictionalFlag: After the revolution, the flag of the independent Moon features a black fields with stars, a brass cannon, in the words of Professor Bernardo de la Paz, as "a symbol for all fools who are so impractical as to think they can fight City Hall", TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch") to proclaim the origin of this revolution and a red bar sinister to say how most of the inhabitants came there.

* ArtificialLimbsAreStronger: Inverted; although perfectly serviceable for every day use, Manny's prosthetic lacks the muscle needed for handling a laser drill (his profession prior to losing the arm).
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: There's some disagreement over the economics of Luna being able to produce a measurable chunk of Earth's food (if it does). Mannie himself, however, mentions that the claim that Luna feeds "one hundred million Hindus" is true only if by "fed" you mean the difference between malnourished and starvation.

* BerserkButton: On the Moon, you don't do anything to an unwilling woman due to the huge gender disparity. If you do so much as trying to kiss one when she's not in the mood, you risk being spaced (the one Earther tourist who did it survived only because the men around there decided to get him a trial first, and Mannie as a judge spared him on account of ignorance and told him to not try it again). When a group of [[EliteMooks Peace Dragoons]] [[spoiler: raped and killed a woman]], the whole Moon rose in arms before [[TheDragon Alvarez]] could hang them to try and calm the people.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Loonies win their independence, but Mike winds up lobotomizing himself out of existence by decentralizing life support controls. And Prof dies of a heart attack. Years later, Mannie is so dissatisfied by the intrusive nature of the post-independence government that he's seriously contemplating emigration.]]
* BrickJoke: When first discussing how the largely-unarmed Loonies will resist Earth's armed forces, Mike says that they will "throw rocks", which Mannie dismisses as a joke. Later the Loonies do exactly that -- using a hundred-kilometer long magnetic catapult to drop barge-sized rocks from orbit onto Earth with effects similar to that of nuclear bomb strikes.

** When it's all over, Man wonders whether Prof deliberately encouraged Earth to knock out the catapults instead of the warrens, not just to preserve lives but to ensure the Loonies stopped exporting grain.
* CasualInterplanetaryTravel: Generally [[AvertedTrope Averted]], or at least [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]]. While ships do travel between Earth and the Moon, and do so cheaply enough to dump convicts there, manned vessels are a rarity. Tourism is still uncommon due to the expense and lack of interest in visiting what is still basically a penal colony. Also, there is no ArtificialGravity, so earthworms can't stay too long without permanent changes to their bodies. Worse, Loonies can only visit Terra for short periods of time, and at great risk to their health. Our main characters must endure physically grueling preparations for ''months'' against even the small chance of a brief trip to Earth. It is implied, however, to have become more prevalent at some point after the novel's events.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: Discussed briefly. When they find out how riddled with spies the old underground was, it's pointed out that some of them may be double agents. Prof comments that the tricky thing with a double agent is figuring out which side ([[WildCard if any]]) they're loyal to. Since they subsequently gain access to the reports these spies send in, they presumably know which ones are actually giving the security chief useful information.