Tag: Lunar revolution

A libertarian lunar revolution in the making in James Bacon’s novel Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three.


By Michael Grossberg

Imagine human colonies on the moon, restless and on the precipice of a revolution against increasingly intrusive Earth authorities.

Robert Heinlein famously imagined such a scenario in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of his four Hugo Awardwinning novels and one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

So did Travis Corcoran, the only author to win back-to-back Prometheus awards for Best Novel for The Powers of the Earth (in 2018) and its sequel Causes of Separation (in 2019.)

Yet, the lunar-revolution scenario mentioned above also describes Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three, James Bacon’s 2022 SF novel.

Continue reading A libertarian lunar revolution in the making in James Bacon’s novel Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three.


Rational anarchism & TANSTAAFL: An Appreciation of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a 1983 Prometheus Hall of Fame co-winner for Best Classic Fiction

Here is our Appreciation of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein’s 1966 Hugo-winning novel and a bestseller that popularized the libertarian slogan TANSTAAFL (“There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch”) as a rallying cry in a story imagining an American-Revolution-style revolt for liberty on the moon.

By William H. Stoddard

Science fiction writers have been exploring ideas that we now call “libertarian” since before the genre was named. Rudyard Kipling, E.E. Smith, Robert Heinlein, C.M. Kornbluth, Eric Frank Russell, Poul Anderson, Edgar Pangborn, and others presented such ideas – along with other, unlibertarian ideas such as Smith’s portrayal of a literal War on Drugs.

But it was Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress that established libertarian science fiction as a distinct genre. Nothing could have been more fitting than its being one of the first two books elected to the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Continue reading Rational anarchism & TANSTAAFL: An Appreciation of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a 1983 Prometheus Hall of Fame co-winner for Best Classic Fiction