Book cover of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Book description

Tom Clancy has said of Robert A. Heinlein, "We proceed down the path marked by his ideas. He shows us where the future is." Nowhere is this more true than in Heinlein's gripping tale of revolution on the moon in 2076, where "Loonies" are kept poor and oppressed by an…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

TMiaHM is perhaps the crowning masterpiece of a legendary science fiction author. People have told me to read it for decades, and now I understand why. It completely changes the socio-political outlook of our solar system, or at least Earth’s small neighborhood.

The book begins innocently as a techno-optimist, coming-of-age story exploring the limits of AI (or how AI was envisioned back when Heinlein wrote it in 1966). Interesting characters drive events forward until they snowball into a riveting military logistics thriller.

This story can teach us valuable lessons about the politics of human nature. As a writer, I’m also…

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Book cover of Minds in Transit

Minds in Transit by Joan Slonczewski,

What kind of minds get to vote? Microbial aliens, or a world-sized AI?

In Minds in Transit, Chrysoberyl is an artist whose brain hosts a million microbial minds. Chrysoberyl’s microbes design fantastic buildings and a whole new city for her AI patron. But her design blows up with a…

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