The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Extract: Because of my experiences with Heinlein's previous two winners, Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land, I began reading this book with some trepidation. To compound matters, I realized that the narrator, Mannie, spoke with what seemed to me to be a Russian accent, despite his Hispanic sounding name. For the first 150 pages, I couldn't read without hearing the accent of Andre Codrescu, from NPR. Though not Russian, Codrescu's accent was sufficiently Slavic to match my perception of the accented writing. Those first 150 pages were slow reading because of this Codrescu filter in my head. Once I got into the rhythm of the language, I was able read much more quickly.

At one point, in the first 100 or so pages, I couldn't understand how the book could be so long. I felt that once again, this book was a merely a collection of essays of Heinlein's political and sociological beliefs. It felt like this was filler and rehashing of previously espoused libertarianism, militarism, and free love. Eventually I eased into the text with a little more patience. I realized it read much more naturally than the posturing he did in the other two books. I went from being annoyed at the politics, to being totally enrapt by the descriptions of the society...