Hugo Project, Vol. 9

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein--Hugo winner for 1967

Our weekend in the hospital allowed me to read the increasingly exciting final 2/3 of the novel.

I've decided that Heinlein is really good at dialogue, and that he usually has one older cranky guru character whose job it is to lay out (often in pseudo-humorous fashion) the libertarian messages at the heart of his novels. This one is really, really good. I especially enjoyed the Russian-English pidgin that he uses for the narrator's voice. It works.

It's polemical science fiction, for sure--but one sees in reading his work how far from being mere fluff, well-written sci-fi can be a vehicle for compelling ideas.

This one's a classic, for sure. TANSTAAFL!