Product Description

On Luna - an open penal colony of the twenty-first century - a revolution is being plotted. The conspirators are a strange assortment: an engaging jack-of-all-trades, his luscious blonde girlfriend, and a lonely talking computer. Their aim - the overthrow of the hated Authority. Everything goes well until...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139798 in Books
• Published on: 1969-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
On Luna, an open penal colony, a rebellion is being plotted. The conspirators are a strange assortment - an engaging jack-of-all-trades, his luscious blonde girlfriend, and a lonely talking computer. Their aim is to overthrow the hated Authority, but things don't go according to plan.

About the Author
Robert A. Heinlein was one of the greatest science fiction writers of the century and won the coveted Hugo Award on several occasions. He died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Buy it
Arguably the best Sci-fi book ever. The story is well paced and the character development is spot on. The language is endearing and draws you in. Most Heinlein books now seem dated but this feels contemporary. just buy it.

Blueprint for Revolution
This is my favorite Heinlein novel, and I've read all of Heinlein's works. It is a great mixture of adventure, humor, politics, technology, some thought provoking looks at alternate types of marriages, and the most lovable sentient computer ever to grace the pages of a novel. Mike (the computer) is really the star of this book, from loving to tell jokes, to deciding to help a group of revolutionary-minded Luna 'citizens' actually accomplish their dreams of freedom because the human interaction would keep him from being lonely.

Along the path to revolution, Heinlein, (as usual), inserts thoughts and ideas that challenge your basic assumptions about what is right, normal, necessary, or appropriate. Is a representative democracy the only 'good' form of government? What's so sacred about a 'majority'? How should a government finance itself? (Maybe make the representatives pay for their pet projects out of their own pocket - taxes not allowed!). Are polygamy, polyandry, or other forms of multiple marriage wrong or can they be used to help preserve the stability of a child-rearing environment? How do you most efficiently organize a revolutionary group that must be kept secret from the authorities (given the assumption that there will always be 'stool pigeons')?

Heinlein creates some great characters to go along with his re-worked story of the American Revolutionary war. Mannie Garcia, a computer maintenance man - the only 'real' one on Luna, is the focal character, an average, everyday person (for a Loonie) who gets caught up in the events almost in spite of himself. Professor Bernardo de la Paz is an intelligent, dry man, quiet but stubborn and with some radical ideas about government and individual responsibility, who becomes the intellectual heart of the revolution. But Mike steals the show, running all the myriad details of coordination, propaganda, logistics, and banking for the revolution, but painfully wanting contact with 'not-stupid' humans, trying desperately to understand just what it is to be human. It's these characters that make you want to root for the revolution to succeed, as they embody something deep within everyone, the feeling of hope in the face of impossible odds, the will to fight for what is perceived as right and correct.

Some have quite correctly noted that this book should not be read by ultra-grammarians, as it is told in first person Luna-speak, an odd pidgin mixture of English and Russian, with occasional items thrown in from Chinese, Finnish, and several other languages. Far from being a detriment, I consider this to be a great accomplishment. Most writers have trouble accurately portraying the dialect, say, of the Deep South in a convincing manner. Here, Heinlein has created his own dialect of the future - and makes you believe it.

This book is not quite as deep as Stranger in a Strange Land, one of Heinlein's other great books, but it has a faster, more action oriented pace, and characters that you will get emotionally involved with. I cried at the end of this book the first time I read it (and the second, and the third...) and I think you will too. TANSTAAFL indeed - but in this case, you will get more than you paid for, one of Heinlein's great gifts to the world.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd

Awesome book.
Heinlein's use of the English language may seem a bit silly at first, but later on the reader realizes how ingenious it is. In most of Heinlein's book, it is only his prevalent Mormon-like beliefs that sometimes detract from the quality of the book, but in this book, such is not the case. The thoughts presented are unclouded and the story itself far exceeded all of my expectations before reading. Definitely worth a read.