Robert A. Heinlein

Start Free Trial

Robert A. Heinlein American Literature Analysis

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

The hard science underlying Heinlein’s fiction is more that of the engineer than of the researcher or theoretical scientist. Many science-fiction writers show the gadgets and institutions of a possible future; Heinlein shows how they work. It is his skill in integrating scientific explanation with the dialogue and plot of his stories that makes him one of the most reknowned science-fiction writers.

Paradoxically, however, this “hard science,” nuts-and-bolts science-fiction writer introduced the term “speculative fiction” as a wider-ranging name for his field, in order to include nonscientific fantasy. In his fiction, Heinlein bridges the gap between pure science and pure fantasy by offering the incredible “magic” of fantasy fiction but providing plausible scientific explanations. For example, one finds a fire-breathing dragon in Glory Road (1963), yet when the hero laments the reek of the flammable ketones in the dragon’s breath, the reader must admit that it is possible to ignite the by-products of digestion.

Further, in The Number of the Beast, one encounters denizens of the Land of Oz and other fictional characters, but their “real” existence is attributed to the nature of infinity. Although Heinlein’s purpose in that novel is satirical, he makes it clear that a ship which can travel through space and time can follow an infinite number of time lines, making all worlds accessible.

As popular as Heinlein is, some readers have criticized what they have perceived as a didactic or moralizing tone. Some reject Heinlein on these grounds for being too “preachy”; others embrace him as their spiritual father for the same quality. Whatever the reader’s reaction, definite moral values are implicit in virtually every Heinlein novel. Yet even morality is given a scientific basis. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein presented “the first scientific theory of morals,” which he articulated in his own voice in a 1973 lecture at Annapolis, later published in his collection Expanded Universe (1980). Defining moral behavior as “behavior that tends toward survival,” Heinlein makes it an aspect of evolution: “Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards. Every baboon generation has to pass this examination in moral behavior; those who bilge it don’t have progeny.” Placing the welfare of one’s tribe before one’s own is moral behavior, but it also ensures the survival of the tribe, even at the cost of the individual’s life.

The emphasis on moral teaching in Heinlein’s fiction is appropriate for his juvenile series for Scribner’s (1947-1958). Each of the novels has a young protagonist who learns an important lesson about growing up, usually related to his or her responsibility to other people. In Space Cadet, for example, an early exploration of themes developed in Starship Troopers, recruits in the Space Academy learn diplomacy in making contact with another race on Venus. In Between Planets, a youth with dual planetary citizenship must choose sides in a war between Venus colonials and Earth. In Starman Jones, a boy who rises to the top in the space voyagers’ hierarchy has to decide whether to reveal the lie that helped get him there.

In all the juvenile novels, a vital decision made by the young hero, usually affecting the fate of a great number of people, is the turning point of the plot. The decision invariably marks the first step toward adulthood for the protagonist. Adulthood, in Heinlein’s moral framework outlined above, consists in making decisions based on the good of the group rather than one’s personal needs. The group may be as small as the family unit,...

(This entire section contains 5911 words.)

Unlock this Study Guide Now

Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.

Get 48 Hours Free Access

as inThe Rolling Stones, in which an interplanetary freighter is run by an adventurous family, or Farmer in the Sky, in which a teenage boy battles to save his family’s homestead on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. At the other extreme, the group for whom the protagonists of The Star Beast and Have Space Suit—Will Travel sacrifice is the entire human race.

Although Heinlein has a reputation for moral conservatism on civic issues, he has been accused of (or praised for) expressing liberal views of sex and religion. In terms of religion, the charge is unjust: The ethic usually presented in his fiction is simply religious tolerance. In fact, what is remarkable about Heinlein’s view of the future is that religions will not be snuffed by the advance of science but will take on many new forms. The Martian-raised protagonist of Stranger in a Strange Land becomes the messiah for a new sect and invests it with Martian religious ideas. The hero of Job: A Comedy of Justice is a fundamentalist minister who falls in love with a Scandinavian woman who worships the Norse gods.

Even Heinlein’s supposedly licentious treatment of sex in his fiction is a direct result of his “future history” approach—projecting the realities, both scientific and social, of the possible worlds to come. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein explains line and clan marriages that exist on the moon, where women are scarce and are shared among several husbands. In Time Enough for Love, every imaginable family and sexual arrangement is described over Lazarus Long’s thousand-year life span; the same aspects of his mother’s long life are explored in Heinlein’s last novel. Yet, although Heinlein wrote increasingly about sex after 1961, he was never explicit in wording or description.

Red Planet

First published: 1949

Type of work: Novel

A young man, with the help of his Martian “pet,” thwarts a plot against the Martian colonists.

The third of Heinlein’s juvenile novels, Red Planet was his first story to describe the Martian culture to which he would return in Stranger in a Strange Land. The main Martian character, however, is not the adult biped described in that book but a bouncy, spherical nymph named Willis. Willis is kept as a pet by a human colonist named Jim Marlowe, who is unaware that Willis belongs to the same race as the tall, silent, dominant species who built the ancient Martian cities.

As the story begins, Jim and his friend Frank Sutton enter college at Lowell Academy (Heinlein’s tribute to the nineteenth century astronomer Percival Lowell). Jim goes against the wishes of his parents—and, as it turns out, the rules of the college—by bringing his “pet,” Willis, to school. Willis is a Martian roundhead, a hairy sphere about the size of a billiard ball, who can imitate any sound and has learned enough English to converse with Jim and his friends. More important, Willis’s familiarity with the adult Martians makes him an intercessor on behalf of the Earth colonists.

When the college authorities confiscate Willis, Jim faces a dilemma. He was raised to respect authority, yet in this case he believes that the authority is wrong. Furthermore, Willis’s abilities as a sort of Martian tape recorder reveal to Jim a plot by the Earth company that runs the colony to cancel the migration, thereby forcing the colonists to face the deadly Martian winter—and making room for more immigrants (and greater profit for the company). The colonists, warned by Jim and backed by the Martian elders whom Jim and Frank befriend through the mischievous Willis, storm the company offices and force the bureaucrats to reinstate the migration.

The “revolution” of the colonists is a larger version of the coming-of-age theme in Jim’s character. Just as Jim learns in the course of the novel to make mature decisions for himself, away from his parents, so the colony must become independent from its earthly “parent.” There is even a further variation on the theme in the character of Willis: Willis is a “nymph,” an earlier stage in development from the mysterious Martian elders whom Jim and Frank meet. Willis will metamorphose into an adult Martian; Jim will become an independent, mature man; the colony will become an independent political entity.

The science in Red Planet is outdated, yet the novel illustrates Heinlein’s contention that science fiction is not ruined when science catches up with it. “Updating can’t save a poor story,” he said in Expanded Universe, “and it isn’t necessary for a good one. All of H. G. Wells’ [science-fiction] stories are hopelessly dated . . . and they remain the best, the most gripping science fiction stories to be found anywhere.” For example, Heinlein’s premise of a southern-hemisphere Martian colony farming by the water melted from the ice cap each spring (a seasonal phenomenon observed by telescope) fell apart when satellite analysis revealed the poles to be frozen carbon dioxide, not frozen water. Nevertheless, the basic picture of a colony dependent on Earth remains valid.

Another bit of science in Red Planet illustrates Heinlein’s confidence in technology’s ability to help humans survive in hostile environments. Many science-fiction writers have been reluctant to base future colonies on Mars because of the scarcity of oxygen in its atmosphere. Yet Heinlein points out that there almost certainly is oxygen on Mars—not in the atmosphere but in oxide compounds in the soil. Jim’s father in Red Planet is involved in a massive project to release the oxygen locked in the Martian soil and pump it into the air, making Mars more habitable to humankind. Human beings will survive in space, Heinlein insists, not only by adapting to harsh environments but also by adapting the environments themselves.

The minor conflict that opens the story—Jim’s reluctance to give up Willis—returns at the end as a difficult reality Jim must face in coming of age. In negotiations with the Martians, it becomes necessary for Jim to return Willis to his own people so that he can metamorphose into an adult Martian. The novel ends at that turning point, but Willis’s projected physical transformation is a reflection of Jim’s less tangible passage into manhood, which is, in turn, a reflection of the colony’s coming-of-age.

Doc MacRae, the colony’s physician and Jim’s friend and mentor, comments on Jim’s loss of Willis in the closing lines of the book: “He’ll get over it. Probably he’ll find another bouncer and teach him English and call him Willis, too. Then he’ll grow up and not make pets of bouncers.” MacRae is one of many mentor types in Heinlein’s juveniles, though the type appears in the adult fiction also. He is an adult who represents the values of the adult society yet sympathizes with the boys. Jim and Frank talk with Doc more freely than with their parents.

Red Planet is a classic initiation or coming-of-age story. Jack Williamson, Heinlein’s friend and fellow writer, considered it the first artistic success of the Scribner’s juvenile series. Teenagers can readily identify with the protagonist, Jim Marlowe, but the most memorable character is the scene-stealing Martian nymph Willis, who is one of the most enjoyable and fully realized alien characters in science fiction. “Here, for the first time,” says Williamson, “Heinlein is making the most of his aliens.” Willis makes the book worth reading.

Citizen of the Galaxy

First published: 1957

Type of work: Novel

A boy who begins life as a slave inherits a fortune and works to crush the interplanetary slave trade.

The Scribner’s juvenile series took a giant leap in a new direction with Citizen of the Galaxy. Though the protagonist is a boy who comes of age in the novel, the point of view is much more adult (it was the only one of the juveniles to be serialized in Astounding Science Fiction), and the locale, for the first time in the series, is outside the earth’s solar system. The world in which Thorby, the main character, grows up is much darker than any previously seen in Heinlein’s fiction. The reader first sees Thorby in the dirty, decadent, savage streets of the spaceport Jubbulpore; he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. When the story opens, he is on the auction block again, so thin and scarred that no one but a dirty beggar offers to buy him.

The beggar, Baslim the Cripple, is one of Heinlein’s most fascinating characters. Though a beggar, he and the hole in which he lives have unexpected resources. He turns out to be a secret agent of the Exotic Corps, an interplanetary police force combating slavery. He begins to train Thorby in his trade, without telling the boy about the “X-Corps.” Baslim is killed by powerful enemies before Thorby can learn his secret.

Following Baslim’s orders, given to him under hypnosis before Baslim’s death, Thorby seeks out Captain Krausa of the spaceship Sisu. Krausa adopts him into “The Free Traders,” a race of space gypsies who travel the galaxy, buying and selling. Thorby adapts to this strange new culture with the help of an anthropologist traveling with the ship, who explains the ways of these people who spend their entire lives in a city-sized ship, the Sisu. Just when Thorby gets accustomed to the nomadic life, however, he discovers where he came from before he was kidnapped, and he is returned “home”—to Earth. Further, he discovers that he is “Rudbek of Rudbek,” heir to a vast fortune and head of an international conglomerate that makes him the most powerful individual on Earth. Ironically, his company is behind the very slave trade that victimized him.

This is not a rags-to-riches cliché, and the story is not over. Wealth isolates Thorby, and powerful men who know more about the treachery of international trade attempt to keep him from finding out too much about his own company—about shady operations such as the slave trade, for example. Thorby fights back, with the help of a young woman who seems intent on marrying him. They win, but Thorby is not ready for a family. Instead, he enlists in Baslim’s Exotic Corps to continue the fight against intergalactic slavery.

The key to understanding the major theme of Citizen of the Galaxy, and of the juvenile series as a whole, is in the title. Each stage of the plot is concerned with various aspects of citizenship: the relationship of the individual to society. As a slave, Thorby is not a citizen, so society is an enemy. It is impossible to engender any sense of duty toward society in a boy when that society denies his value as a person. Baslim not only frees Thorby legally but also gives him the personal dignity necessary to become a citizen. At this stage, however, Thorby’s sense of duty does not extend beyond Baslim.

In the Sisu, however, Thorby is adopted into a family and learns to feel a loyalty to the entire ship. When he discovers that he is a galactic citizen, however, with records on Earth, he becomes a citizen in the moral sense: He discovers, at the end of the novel, his responsibility to his entire race. He devotes his life to ending slavery.

The science in Citizen of the Galaxy is not the nuts-and-bolts explanation of gadgets and planets found in the earlier novels. Here the science is anthropology, the study of how people get along together. Much of the technical explanation is given by the anthropologist Thorby meets on board the Sisu, Dr. Margaret Mader (a near anagram of the name of twentieth century anthropologist Margaret Mead). She teaches Thorby a version of Heinlein’s moral Darwinism—that rules of social behavior are necessary to the survival of the species and cannot be ignored. “Few things are good or evil in themselves,” she tells him. “But things that are right or wrong according to their culture, really are so.”

The rule under discussion at that point is the law of exogamy—a rule that requires marrying outside the tribe. Dr. Mader explains that such a rule is necessary, not only to avoid inbreeding but also “because a ship is too small to be a stable culture.” Therefore, no trader may marry anyone from his or her own ship, even if there is no blood relationship between them.

Psychology is another social science explored in the novel. Thorby’s emotional scars from his years as a slave and as a triple orphan (first losing his natural parents, then “Pop” Baslim, then his adoptive father, Captain Krausa) make him a psychological risk for the Exotic Corps. Baslim begins Thorby’s psychiatric healing with hypnotherapy shortly after he adopts Thorby. The disruption of losing Baslim, however, and being thrust into an unfamiliar culture unsettle Thorby until Captain Krausa officially adopts him in a solemn public ceremony.

When the Exotic Corps discovers Thorby’s identity as a missing person from Earth, and Captain Krausa sends him back where he “belongs,” Thorby feels abandoned again. Thus, like many from broken homes who come of age, he finds an artificial family in the military. By joining Baslim’s service, the Exotic Corps, Thorby feels he is returning home. In fact, he tells the recruiter he wants to be “adopted” by the Corps. When the recruiter corrects him, saying “Enlisted,” Thorby simply responds, “Whatever the word is.” To him, membership in the Corps is adoption, whatever the terminology.

Starship Troopers

First published: 1959

Type of work: Novel

A young recruit in the space navy learns the values of citizenship as he fights in Earth’s first intergalactic war.

In addition to winning for Heinlein his first Hugo award, Starship Troopers put an end to the Scribner’s juvenile series. Heinlein wrote it for the series, but Scribner’s rejected it. That rejection was the beginning of years of controversy over Starship Troopers.

Many readers, and a majority of academic critics, objected to the overt militarism of the book. Despite the Hugo, science-fiction fans at conventions in 1960 distanced themselves from the book’s philosophy; a youth-oriented radio talk show on WMCA in New York even devoted its October 23, 1960, broadcast to a critique of Starship Troopers and its philosophy. There had been military settings in the juvenile series before: Space Cadet describes an interplanetary military; the protagonist of Between Planets joins a militia on Venus; Citizen of the Galaxy ends with its hero enlisting in the Exotic Corps. What is different about Starship Troopers is that it describes a society in which government service of some sort (though not always infantry) is an absolute requirement for full citizenship.

This system, often distorted by critics into a fascist nightmare, is what caused the controversy—and guaranteed sales. It is described through the experiences of the narrator, Juan (“Johnny”) Rico, who enlists in the Mobile Infantry and tells of his training. Much of the story is interrupted by his flashbacks to a high school civics course on history and moral philosophy. Mandatory for all high school students in the society Heinlein depicts, this course teaches the moral imperative of citizenship: placing society’s welfare before one’s own. The course must be taught by a veteran of government service who has by that service proved this moral imperative.

The flashbacks do not interrupt the flow of the narrative, for the points discussed in the classes are always germane to what is happening to Johnny in boot camp. Furthermore, Johnny’s instructor of the class, Jean V. Dubois, is very much like his drill instructor, Ship’s Sergeant Charles Zim. Indeed, it turns out that Dubois, whom Johnny is shocked to discover was a lieutenant colonel in the Mobile Infantry, was a battle comrade of Sergeant Zim.

Both Dubois and Zim are mentor characters, a familiar type in Heinlein’s fiction-—especially in the juvenile series for which Starship Troopers was originally written. They are distanced from Johnny a bit more than in the juveniles by the institutional respect necessary in high school and in the military. Nevertheless, these characters give Johnny the moral and intellectual guidance that he cannot get from his parents.

Following the pattern of the coming-of-age story in the other juveniles, this book depicts Johnny Rico’s maturing process as a function of his independent decision making. His first independent choice is the enlistment itself. Johnny’s father, a successful businessman, scorns the military and denounces the history and moral philosophy course as a shameless recruiting device for government service. His mother, a domineering, overly protective woman, weeps at the news of his enlistment and refuses to see him off.

Johnny’s breach with his parents is healed, paradoxically, by the completion of his “breaking away.” Halfway through the novel he receives a letter of reconciliation from his mother, though she reveals that his father will still not allow Johnny’s name to be mentioned. When his mother is killed by an alien attack on Earth, however, Johnny’s father sees the wisdom of Johnny’s decision to enlist and joins the Mobile Infantry himself. In the final chapter, the reader sees Johnny’s father as a platoon sergeant in “Rico’s Roughnecks,” Johnny’s first command as an officer. Father and son fight side by side.

It may be argued that the powered suit described in Starship Troopers is the true hero of the book. It is perhaps the best example of Heinlein’s skill at scientific explanation, and of his “engineering” approach to science fiction. There are tidbits of description and explanation throughout the book, but chapter 7 is virtually all a treatise on the “p-suit.” The science behind it is the principle of negative feedback, which Johnny describes as a nontechnical expert. Any muscular movement of a soldier wearing a p-suit is picked up by sensors in the suit and amplified by its hardware, turning every p-suited soldier into a superman.

The delivery system for p-suited Moblie Infantry is described in almost as much detail in the opening chapter. The Moblie Infantry are also known as “cap troopers.” The “cap” is short for “capsule,” the metal egg in which the Mobile Infantry soldier is dropped from a spaceship onto the surface of a planet. The metal skin burns off in the atmosphere, and the cap trooper lands by parachute and suit jets—an interplanetary version of today’s paratrooper.

In Expanded Universe, Heinlein categorized the four most common criticisms of Starship Troopers and the society it depicts and defended his novel against each of them. The first, an objection to a requirement that only veterans could vote, is based on a popular misunderstanding of the word “veteran.” In Starship Troopers, as in common usage, the word does not necessarily mean military veteran. The book makes clear that most veterans are what could be called former civil servants.

To the second objection, that the system traps people in government service indefinitely, Heinlein specifies that any enlistee can resign at any time, except soldiers in combat. The third objection, especially pointed during the Vietnam War, is a repugnance for conscription. There is no conscription in the novel, however, and Heinlein also objected to the draft. The final criticism, that the novel and its society are militaristic, is somewhat imprecise. As no member of the military is allowed to vote, the government is not a military one. Starship Troopers does glorify the military, however, and that fact delighted Heinlein.

Stranger in a Strange Land

First published: 1961

Type of work: Novel

A human born on Mars is raised by Martians and returned to Earth, where he finds human ways strange.

Though Stranger in a Strange Land is the publisher’s title for this novel (Heinlein called it The Heretic or The Man from Mars), it expresses some of the subtleties of the title character. The “Stranger” is Valentine Michael Smith, and the “Strange Land” is human culture, for though he is human, Smith was raised by Martians, the same inscrutable race described in Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars (1963).

Probably Heinlein’s most critically acclaimed book, it is usually most praised for messages that Heinlein did not intend. Depicting a society in the near future reveling in lax sexual mores and yearning for a new religion, Stranger in a Strange Land was misunderstood as celebrating those aspects of contemporary culture. Hence, the novel became a cult classic on college campuses through the 1960’s and 1970’s, read both in and out of class. Though easily refuted, the rumor that Stranger in a Strange Land influenced the mass-murderer Charles Manson still persists in science-fiction circles: It is even reported as “fact” in some reference works.

The appeal of the book is in the character of Smith himself: more Martian than man, he has psychic and physical powers beyond those of most humans, and he trains his friends to develop those powers. The artificial “family” that Smith attracts appealed to the communal nature of the 1960’s counterculture (and led to the spurious connection with Manson). The head of the family is not Smith, who is a young man throughout the long novel, but one of Heinlein’s most fascinating creations, Jubal Harshaw.

Harshaw is one of Heinlein’s perennial mentor characters, an attorney, medical doctor, scientist, and popular author, who has amassed enough of a fortune to isolate himself from the rest of the world. When Smith is brought to Earth from Mars, where he was born when his parents made the first expedition there, the government keeps him in seclusion. When a young nurse “rescues” Smith (or “Mike,” as his friends begin calling him), Harshaw offers them both protection from overzealous government thugs.

What makes Mike an effective point-of-view character is the common science-fiction technique of defamiliarization. By presenting common aspects of his readers’ society as unfamiliar (as they would be to a human raised on Mars), Heinlein is able to bring readers to question the basic presuppositions of their culture. Tolerance of new ways of thinking, necessary for any technological or cultural advance, is the result Heinlein desires.

One vehicle for conveying the idea of tolerance is the minor character Duke, a handyman employed by Jubal Harshaw. Duke is revulsed by Mike’s “inhuman” ideas, and he says so bluntly. Jubal, though he is fond of Duke, will not tolerate intolerance and offers an ultimatum: Accept Mike as he is or leave Jubal’s employ. Duke stays and becomes one of Mike’s closest friends.

Because much of the book’s thrust is social, not scientific, it does not contain much of Heinlein’s famous scientific explanation. What little there is, however, is interesting: When Mike first comes to Earth, he has to be kept in a hydraulic bed to protect him from the strain of Earth’s gravity—two and a half times that of Mars. The bed, described in detail, is what is now known as a “water bed.” Heinlein had invented it when hospitalized for tuberculosis after his discharge from the Navy, but he never patented it. Although the first commercial versions were made from Heinlein’s specifications, the patent courts ruled the invention to be in the public domain.

Of psychology and sociology, on the other hand, there is much in this book. Heinlein’s attempt to produce a truly alien psychology—with the ironic twist of placing it in a biologically human frame—is a masterpiece of the genre. It introduced the word “grok,” which became a catchphrase in the counterculture of the 1960’s. The novel’s hesitation in translating this word shows Heinlein’s understanding of the intimate connection between language and thought. Much of Mike’s Martian philosophy/psychology/theology cannot be expressed in English. Consequently, Jubal orders his “family” to learn Martian.

The meaning of “grok,” as it slowly unfolds in the course of the book, is manifold. While it seems to have no English equivalent, some approximations are offered: “to understand, “to cherish,” “to become one with.” Its implications seem to be metaphysical: When one enters the essence of a thing, one “groks” it. The ceremony by which this term is introduced is a Martian “Water Sharing.” This invention of Heinlein’s, referred to also in Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars (the Martians of Double Star are totally different), is akin to the Christian Eucharist. By sharing water—sipping water from the same source—two individuals become one. One is expected to perform any duty for a “water brother”—even to die.

It is not wide-eyed innocent Valentine Michael Smith but the cynical huckster Jubal Harshaw who suggests making a religion out of the water ceremony. His motives are not pious but mercenary: He rightly observes that religion is big business in his corrupt culture. The curious relationship of Smith and Harshaw modulates Harshaw’s position as a mentor character. Though Smith’s primary importance to the people on Earth lies in what he can teach them, and though he brings the ancient wisdom of a culture much older and more advanced than anything on Earth, he turns to Jubal to learn about his human heritage. Still, Jubal learns as much from him as he does from Jubal.

The structure of the novel is a function of Mike’s learning process. Many critics have observed that this most “adult” of Heinlein’s novels fits the pattern of his juvenile series. It is divided into five parts, all of whose titles describe Mike’s maturing process: “His Maculate Origin,” “His Preposterous Heritage,” “His Eccentric Education,” “His Scandalous Career,” and “His Happy Destiny.” The book’s structure has often been criticized as episodic and aimless, but Heinlein revealed in Expanded Universe that this is the only novel he ever outlined before writing. Every piece fits in this novel, which won for Heinlein his second Hugo award and his first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

First published: 1966

Type of work: Novel

The moon’s main computer develops a personality and helps lunar colonists in a revolution against absentee landlords on Earth.

Heinlein received his fourth and final Hugo award for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Though the work is a masterpiece in every way—scientific background, plot construction, setting, characterization—it is usually remembered for the brilliant characterization of “Mike,” the supercomputer that develops a personality. Though Mike receives the most attention, all the major figures are among Heinlein’s most completely realized characters. Mike’s first friend, the computer technician Manuel Garcia O’Kelly (“Mannie”), is the narrator of the novel. Born free, but the son of criminals transported to the moon when it was a prison colony, Mannie shows the cautious independence of an ex-con in a repressive system.

Mannie’s narration is a stylistic masterpiece in itself, for Heinlein has created, as he does in no other novel, a version of the streamlined language a moon colonist (or “Loony” as they proudly call themselves) might speak in the year 2076. Because, as Professor Leon Stover observes in his book-length study of Heinlein, there is little stylistic play in Heinlein’s fiction, it is worth looking closely at his only stylistic experiment in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It is a fair extrapolation of what might someday be spoken on the moon, as it amalgamates Russian, Chinese, and Australian and American English. As all four nations are potential colonizers of the moon, one should not expect pure English among the settlers.

Even the English is mutated. Articles are used rarely, perhaps under the influence of Russian, and personal pronouns are often dropped when they appear as subjects. The expletive “there” is dropped in the phrase “there is”: In the opening paragraph of the novel, Mannie observes, “I see also is to be mass meeting tonight.” Many other words are dropped if they can be supplied by context. Thus, one finds Mannie saying, “Won’t worry about what can’t help,” and asking, “Matters whether you get answer in microsecond rather than millisecond as long as correct?”

Mike’s only other friends are a tall, beautiful, blond woman, Wyoming Knott, and Mannie’s old mentor, Professor Bernardo de la Paz. The professor is a typical Heinlein mentor character, yet his seemingly Marxist politics have puzzled critics who had typed Heinlein as a right-wing fanatic. A close study of the political theory laid out by the professor in chapter 6, however, will help the reader to square it with Heinlein’s theory of citizenship discussed above. The professor places the welfare of society above his own, which is Heinlein’s definition of patriotism, yet does not identify his current corrupt government with “society.” Wyoming Knott, or “Wyoh,” is a feminist and political activist, well-read in revolutionary political theory, but from Mannie’s point of view naïve about the real world. The second human being Mike meets as a self-aware personality, Wyoh immediately helps him to create a female persona, “Michelle,” to become her computer friend.

Mike’s personality is the main attraction of the novel, as well as one of Heinlein’s most masterful technological creations. The theory of artificial intelligence in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, written long before “AI” was a common term in computer science, is proposed by Mannie in the opening chapter. Mike was designed to draw conclusions on limited data, an inductive method foreign to computers but very human. On top of that, other computer systems were linked to him as the lunar complex grew, until he had more circuits than the human brain. This large number of connections, Mannie guesses, is what made Mike “come alive”:Somewhere along evolutionary chain from macromolecule to human brain self-awareness crept in. Psychologists assert it happens automatically whenever brain acquires certain very high number of associational paths. Can’t see it matters whether paths are protein or platinum.

Whether or not Mannie’s theory is correct—and he admits in the epilogue that it remains only a theory—Mike is as human as most Loonies, and is as scornful of the moon’s dependence on Earth.

Another bit of scientific background in the novel is an exercise in interplanetary ballistics, worked out (quite accurately) only a few years before the first moon landing. The Loonies, though exploited by Earth, are reluctant to rebel because of Earth’s superior firepower. When someone laments, “What can we do? Throw rocks?” Mike suggests exactly that. Because the moon rides on the “top” of Earth’s “gravity well,” it is simple to catapult large pieces of lunar rock. If directed to enter Earth’s atmosphere obliquely, the rocks can hit with enough impact to cause an explosion, like striking sparks on flint. As Mike had been Luna’s ballistic computer, making the needed calculations is an easy task for him: The Loonies win their independence by throwing rocks.

It is no accident that Heinlein gives so specific a date for the setting of this novel—something he rarely did. The Loonies declare their revolution on July 4, 2076—on the tricentennial of American independence. This date, chosen by Professor de la Paz (with his devotion to political history), highlights a connection Heinlein made consistently in his fiction between the spirit of independence that forged the American nation and that same spirit in the future colonizers of space. Almost twenty years earlier, Heinlein had explored the theme in Red Planet, wherein Martian colonists fight for independence from Earth. Recognizing that the pioneer spirit is flagging in the land of his birth, Heinlein urges readers, through his fiction, to see that they need to recapture it if they want to participate in the bonanza of outer space.

Next

Robert A. Heinlein Short Fiction Analysis