{"id":629,"date":"2019-03-03T09:49:40","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T15:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?p=629"},"modified":"2025-06-19T21:18:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T02:18:55","slug":"back-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/back-to-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Moon: Lunar fiction from Heinlein to McDonald, Weir and Corcoran"},"content":{"rendered":"

By William H. Stoddard<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress<\/i><\/a> is a classic of libertarian science fiction; along with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged<\/i>, it was the first winner of the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Hall of Fame award in 1983. Many science fiction fans, and not only libertarians, regard it as one of his best novels.<\/p>\n

But for nearly half a century after its original publication in 1966, it inspired no obvious imitators. Now, that’s started to change, with the appearance of multiple novels that explore the idea of a “free Luna” in the near future.<\/p>\n

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In 2015, Ian McDonald published Luna: New Moon<\/i>, followed in 2017 by Luna: Wolf Moon<\/i>; as of the time this is written, a third volume, Luna: Moon Rising<\/i> <\/a>is shortly to appear.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Travis Corcoran published the first volume of his Aristillus series, The Powers of the Earth<\/i>,<\/a> winner of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel, followed in 2018 by Causes of Separation<\/i>.<\/a><\/p>\n

Also in 2017, Andy Weir, the author of The Martian<\/i>, published Artemis<\/i>.<\/a> All three novels or series have important elements in common with each other and with Heinlein’s novel \u2014 but at the same time, they develop them in significantly different ways.
\n<\/p>\n

What did Heinlein do that these later writers have found worthy of imitation? He portrayed the lunar environment as harsh and indeed potentially lethal (his original title was The Moon Is a Harsh<\/i> Schoolmistress<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Despite this, he showed it as having potentially permanent human communities of some size, including Lunar-born inhabitants. He envisioned these communities as multiethnic and culturally hybridized. He imagined them as supported by a largely unregulated economy. His storyline focused on a lunar struggle for political autonomy against Earth’s much larger states and population. A further element was the presence of a fully self-aware computer that became involved in the human struggles.<\/p>\n

Heinlein’s lunar environment was potentially threatened by vacuum, and offenders against its customary law were likely to be thrown out an airlock without a space suit; but his characters were much more hindered by having adapted to low gravity, to the point where returning to Earth left them disabled and at risk of death.<\/p>\n

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McDonald picked up on this point in a major way, with visitors from Earth carefully monitoring how long it would be before they couldn’t return. But he also makes a point of confrontation with vacuum, both in a brilliant early scene where lunar teenagers show their bravery by walking on the surface without vacuum gear, and in a later one where two young lunar inhabitants make a desperate journey with the air in their suits running out\u2014one that recalls another Heinlein novel, Have Space Suit\u2014Will Travel<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Corcoran also emphasizes vacuum in multiple scenes, starting with a tourist from Earth taking foolish risks in exploring the lunar surface. And Weir’s dramatic climax involves both a journey on the Moon’s surface and a threat to the lunar air supply.<\/p>\n

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Only Corcoran picks up on Heinlein’s having a self-aware computer as a character. His character Gamma carries forward Heinlein’s effort to show how such a being’s mentality might differ from a human one, with the benefit of decades of advances in both artificial intelligence and cognitive science to inform his portrayal. He also provides a vehicle for Corcoran to acknowledge Heinlein’s work \u2014 and argue with it \u2014 because Gamma has read Heinlein and has opinions about why some of his ideas wouldn’t work; the scene where he explains to Max, an uplifted dog, that “throwing rocks” will only make the situation worse is both well reasoned and hilarious.<\/p>\n

Heinlein’s Luna was a prison colony for the major nations of Earth, and thus multiethnic, with such cities as Novy Leningrad and Hong Kong Luna, and his viewpoint character’s descent was racially mixed: white American, Hispanic American, black South African, and Tatar. One minor incident has him jailed in North American because he’s revealed that his Lunar marriage includes spouses of diverse races \u2014 Heinlein wrote only two years before\u00a0Loving v Virginia<\/em>\u00a0did away with American miscegenation laws, and assumed they would still be in force a century later.<\/p>\n

Corcoran shows major American, Chinese, and American populations, and one of his best drawn characters is a preadolescent Nigerian girl. McDonald goes even further, with the five corporations that dominate the Moon’s economy being Australian, Brazilian, Chinese, Ghanaian, and Russian. Artemis<\/em> has a viewpoint character of Arabian descent, a colonial administration established by Kenya, and the air supply controlled by a Brazilian firm. None of these authors envisions a purely American future in space!<\/p>\n

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However, all of them portray a relatively unregulated economy that reflects libertarian ideas about free markets; and most of them also envision stateless legal systems\u2014The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress<\/em> was one of the main inspirations for the anarchocapitalism of David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom<\/em>. (The exception is Artemis<\/em>, in which there’s an appointed “city administrator,” an arrangement somewhat like Hong Kong under British rule.)<\/p>\n

Heinlein’s Loonies are left free largely because of the general indifference of the Lunar Authority to most of what they do, and their arrangements tend to be small-scale and informal. McDonald’s lunar society is governed entirely by contract law, having no criminal law and no government capable of imposing it; it reads like an attempt to envision the kind of society Friedman wrote about in anthropological terms \u2014 in many ways it’s the most alien of the various fictional worlds \u2014 with an emphasis not on ethical principles but on the grungy realities of how markets actually work. Even so, he portrays a society that has both freedom and opportunity, as well as hardship and conflict.<\/p>\n

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Corcoran’s Aristillus series is more focused on ethical and legal principles in its portrayal of a society founded by a libertarian visionary; however, he doesn’t hesitate to explore its failure modes, from difficulties in establishing clear title to real property to the challenge of funding collective goods such as military defense. Taken all together, these four authors thoroughly explore the idea of a free lunar society \u2014and the challenges of defending it.<\/p>\n

\\<\/p>\n

One of the appeals of science fiction, for many decades, has been its character as an ongoing dialogue about ideas. After a long gap, we are now seeing The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress<\/em> inspire such a dialogue \u2014 explicitly for Corcoran, implicitly for the other two.<\/p>\n

Happily, Heinlein has found worthy successors: All of these books were worth reading. Having them all come out close together was a fortunate coincidence \u2014or, possibly, a reflection of a new hope of establishing a human presence in space.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch <\/strong>videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt),Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us! <\/em><\/strong>To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights, individuality and human dignity.<\/p>\n

Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, end slavery, reduce the threat of war, repeal or constrain other abuses of coercive power and achieve universal liberty, respect for human rights and a better world (perhaps ultimately, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By William H. Stoddard Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a classic of libertarian science fiction; along with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it was the first winner of the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Hall of Fame award in 1983. Many science fiction fans, and not only libertarians, regard it as one of his … Continue reading Back to the Moon: Lunar fiction from Heinlein to McDonald, Weir and Corcoran<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2353,9,8,1860,35,2664],"tags":[84,86,87,21,85,83,42],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-essay","category-review","category-robert-heinlein","category-selected-book-reviews","category-travis-corcoran","tag-andy-weir","tag-artemis","tag-ian-mcdonald","tag-robert-heinlein","tag-the-martian","tag-the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress","tag-travis-corcoran"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-a9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9432,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/9432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}