Rating: 
Summary: Fun, but pretty brain-dead.
Review: It's sexist, it's simplistic, it's kind of fun. Heinlein creates his fantasy world, where people without good manners are simply killed, society thrives without any government, and revolution is easy, fun, and mostly bloodless. Women are to be whistled at and are supposed to appreciate it and twirl for the guys. There's a whole range of wildly impractical marital arrangements which seem to work flawlessly. Also, there's a nearly omniscient machine which helps the revolution. Very convenient.
Oh and the science! Did you know that farming in sub-terran tunnels is so cheap on the moon, it somehow makes economical sense to ship food to Earth? Somehow, farming in tunnels on Earth would be MUCH more expensive. Huh?
Still, if you want to turn off your brain and imagine that you can overthrow the government with a computer, a professor, and a blonde at your side, this is your book!
Rating:
Summary: Lost In Translation...
Review: Look I would love to say this was a great read but frankly the writing style had some huge grammatical flaws-Perphaps, it's Heinlein's attempt at Sci-fi slang but I found myself reading sentences like three times trying to figure out what the heck he just wrote...this is what I am talking about,
example form page 48:
"My Pleasure. Move to couch and I'll rid of table and dishes,- no can't help; I'm host." I cleared table, sent up dishes, saving coffee and vodka, racked chairs, turned to speak.
-I'm not pretending to be a freaking English teacher - but hey man-this is just one paragraph from many like this- I get the idea of what Heinlein saying but for the love of God throw in a freaking adjective. "I moved to THE couch."
Maybe it was the Editors fault...I don't know.
So many people told me about this book, which made it even more disappointing. In my opinion, cool plot-painful read. I would recommend going to the book store and reading a chapter or two to see if you can handle this sytle of writing...I couldn't.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly realistic about difficulties of libertarianism
Review: Remarkably, Heinlein's 3 famous/controversial cult novels appeal to 3 different audiences: "Starship Troopers: -- career military men; "Stranger in a Strange Land" -- hippies; "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" -- libertarians.Of these 3, "Moon" is the best plotted and best written (including Heinlein's most ambitious attempt at a new prose style, which was influenced by Burgess' "Clockwork Orange"). While, for some mysterious (probably hormonal) reason, I love "Starship Troopers" more, this book certainly is the ideal introduction to Heinlein's novels for adults. It's literary merits are all the more surprising considering both it's abundant slam-bang action and it's status as a treatise on libertarianism. Moreover, for a work of ideological propaganda, it is clear-eyed about what you'd have to put up with to live in a libertarian society. Without the government to look after you, Heinlein points out that you'd have to make sure you are on very friendly terms with all your neighbors. Extreme neighborliness is a requirement for a libertarian society (Charles Murray reiterated this point in his recent "What It Means to Be a Libertarian"). Personally, as a surly introvert, the lack of privacy and the social conformity required to function in a stateless society would get on my nerves so bad, that I'd probably make myself a nuisance to all my neigbors, and no doubt they'd be justfied in eventually tossing me out an airlock. So, maybe I don't really want to live in a truly libertarian society. But, it's well worth visiting one in the company of a great mind like Heinlein's.
Rating: 
Summary: Welcome to Luna
Review: The description on the back of the book says it best: Libertarian revolution. If you're interested in this book at all, you should read it. It was brilliant, moving, thrilling.
What's it about? Well, there's a computer technician living on Luna, a prison colony where the lack of gravity causes irreversible osteoporosis that makes it impossible to move back to Earth after a few months. Earth is dealing with overpopulation and lack of food and shelter. Nations are still divided. And then the people of luna decide that they have had enough and want their freedom. They fight for it. This is their story, including the AI computer that helps them figure out a way to win against the mother world. But I won't tell you what that is or how it ends, because that's the best part.
As a standard caveat though, Heinlein uses a couple of obsolete concepts freely. Relish it, if you will, but be prepared. Sometimes that's what good sci-fi is all about.
My only real q!ualm with this book, and one that almost cost it a star is that it is narrated in the first person, and the narrator has a thick Loonie accent.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning achievement in hard-science and hard-politics
Review: Written at the peak of Robert A. Heinlein's creative powers in the mid-sixties, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" ranks with "Stranger in a Strange Land" as his most popular and acclaimed novel. Heinlein was furiously ingenious at this stage in his career, and this novel is an incredible feat of imagination, intellect, and writing talent. It is, however, a difficult and heavy novel (much like "Stranger in a Strange Land"), loaded with hard science and even harder politics: Heinlein at his best is a writer who attracts and repels the reader at the same time, and no one could read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" without forming some very strong opinions about it. The story follows a revolution on the lunar colonies against Earth authority. The lunar colony was originally a penal colony, but even though the lunar residents ("Loonies" as they call themselves) are no longer technically prisoners, they have become economic slaves of the Earth. Also, because of their adaptation to the Moon's lower gravity, they cannot safely return to live on Earth, so their exile is a permanent one. Amidst growing but unorganized discontent amongst the Loonies, four remarkable individuals begin the meticulous planning of a revolution to free the Moon: Mannie, an engineer and our narrator; Prof. de la Paz; fiery Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott; and a newly sentient supercomputer named Mike. Starting from this small group, the resistance spreads across the Moon. But how can the nearly defenseless colonists and miners face down the juggernaut of the nations of Earth? Mike has an ingenious solution: "Throw rocks at 'em"...literally! Told through Mannie's point of view, the novel is written in a clipped, abbreviated style that represents the Loonie version of English: many pronouns and articles are dropped, leading to sentences like: "Stomach was supposed to be empty. But I filled helmet with sourest, nastiest fluid you would ever go a long way to avoid." This takes a few pages to get accustomed to, but soon you won't notice the odd style at all and accept it as part of the book's revolutionary spirit. Heinlein unfolds the revolution in a meticulously detailed style, using lengthy conversations between the characters about how to step-by-step overthrow the authority of an overwhelming power. Heinlein not only provides in-depth details on the technology, but also of the philosophy of revolution and the unusual customs of the Loonies (such as their group marriages). Like most of Heinlein's great novels, this is a trip for the mind, and you have to be prepared to do plenty of thinking along with the passages of action. The novel does tend to drag somewhat in the middle, but the last hundred pages are feverish with both action and ideas. Where Heinlein really triumphs in this novel is in the characterization of Mike the computer. Mike, along with Hal from "2001," is one of great artificial intelligences in science fiction. You will quickly forget, as Mannie does, that Mike is a disembodied voice from a machine, and instead think of him (or sometimes 'her') as another character. Mike's growth from his shaky beginnings as a thinking being is fascinating and one of Heinlein's great achievements as an author. However, if you are new to Robert A. Heinlein (or science fiction in general), this isn't the novel to start with (and neither is "Stranger in a Strange Land"). You should ease yourself into Heinlein's brilliant mind first through his novels from the 1950s, most of which were aimed at teenagers but are nonetheless wonderful books that anyone can enjoy: "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel," "Starman Jones," and "Citizen of the Galaxy" are good places to start. Also recommended: "The Puppet Masters" and Heinlein's short stories from the 1930s and 40s collected in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" and "The Green Hills of Earth." You should definitely read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" -- it's an essential classic of the genre -- but you may need to build up to it. After all, as Loonies say: "TANSTAAFL!" ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!")
Rating:
Summary: If you've never read Heinlein before, start here...
Review: _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ is a wonderful first novel for anyone who has heard of Heinlein but hasn't had the pleasure of reading his books. His other two major works, _Stranger in a Strange Land_ and _Starship Troopers_ are easier works to misunderstand than this one. The great joy of the story lies in its four main characters, who can be roughly characterized as "the young guy who's got a lot to learn," "the old guy who already knows everything," "the attractive yet amazingly capable female lead," and "the outsider." The novel covers an amazing amount of philosophical terrain, from alternative family structures to politics, as well as the technology of lunar habitation. One "Big Theme" is the question of artificial intelligence. Can machines think? How would we know if machines could think? He tackles the Turning Test via the avenue, of all things, of humor. One of the most delightful news stories in recent years (1996) was the discovery of ice on the moon, something that Heinlein uses as a central prerequisite for lunar habitation. Now that the Chinese have gone into space (2003), maybe we will some day see Hong Kong Luna.
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