Hard Science Fiction Master

Robert Heinlein

Today is the birthday of  one of the founding fathers of the hard SF tradition which sees both story and society as merely a matter of effective engineering. Robert Heinlein started writing for pulp magazines, especially Astounding, in 1939 and was a dominant influence on the field for the next forty years. His early stories--The Man who Sold the Moon (see below) and The Green Hills of Earth--are set in a "Future History" in which American society goes through radical changes and it is private enterprise that settles in space. Heinlein wrote a number of influential young adult SF books--Starman Jones, and Podakayne of Mars--which are generally freer in their handling of scientific themes than his books for adults. The right wing strain in his thinking produced a classic of McCarthyite paranoid fiction The Puppet Masters, in which the unwary are possessed by alien slugs. He achieved his major fame, not to say notoriety, with two books of the early 1960s--Starship Troopers, which started a whole sub-genre of militarist SF, while Stranger in a Strange Land featured free love and imaginary religions.  Perhaps the best book of his later phase is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (see below), one of SF's more intelligent retreads of 1776 in space; the best of his earlier books is Double Star, a flip tale of impersonation and political intrigue on Mars.


The Man who Sold the Moon


"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak."  - Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon

 Heinlein's monumental "Future History" series continues. Two scientists develop cheap solar power-and threaten the industrial status quo. The nation's cities are linked by a system of moving roads-and a strike can bring the entire country to a halt. Workers in an experimental atomic plant crack under the mental strain. And the space frontier is opened by an unlikely hero-D. D. Harriman, a billionaire with a dream: the dream of Space for All Mankind. The method? Anything that works. Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far. But he will give us the stars. . .
This compilation of short stories includes the classic "The Roads Must Roll" (Included in the SFWA Hall of Fame collection).  It also includes "The Man Who Sold the Moon".  This is part of  Heinlein's Future History and prequel to "Requiem".  It covers events around a fictional first Moon landing, in 1978, and the schemes of Delos D. Harriman, a businessman who is determined to personally reach and control the Moon.
The story provides interesting contrast in content and style to the work of Smith.  Both of these great SF authors keep me coming back to this genre of literature.


The Moon is a Harsh Mistress


“From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, 'Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.' He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle.”  ― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

 Heinlein's gripping tale of revolution on the moon in 2076, where "Loonies" are kept poor and oppressed by an Earth-based Authority that turns huge profits at their expense. Luna is an open penal colony and the regime is a harsh one. Not surprisingly, revolution against the hated authority is planned. But the key figures in the revolt are an unlikely crew: Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, an engaging jack of all trades, the beautiful Wyoming Knott - and Mike, a lonely computer who likes to make up jokes....