Nicholas Bruner

I’ve been wanting to read Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness for years, but somehow had never gotten around to it until now, as the latest selection in the book club at my work. Thanks be to the book club! Anyway, I quite enjoyed this book, although it’s not without its flaws, so let’s get to it.

I’ve actually reviewed Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress before, but I read it again for a book club at my work, so I’ll give it a fresh review. I thought it might be interesting to write this new review without reading what I wrote before, and then go back and compare.

TMIAHM is narrated by Manny, an inhabitant of Luna City on the moon, in 2075. The moon was first settled as a penal colony, and Manny is descended from some of the original penal transportees. Even after decades, despite now having four million citizens spread across several cities, the moon is still run by an Earth-based Lunar Authority that operates the place as a colony. The Lunar Authority requires the Loonies (as the moon’s citizens call themselves) to provide wheat for an overpopulated Earth–using their own precious and limited water resources (melted from lunar polar ice)–at unfair prices the Authority sets, and ruthlessly quashes any hint of agitation for self-government among the Loonies. It even charges Loonies a monthly fee for the air they breathe under the domes of each city.

Now this is a great science fiction novel, and simultaneously an illustration of the limits of genre fiction. The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, succeeds at every level as an SF story. The primary character in a very large cast is Captain Blaine of the Imperial Space Navy, who leads an expedition to the Mote, a remote corner of the galaxy where humans, whose empire spans hundreds of worlds, have detected the first intelligence alien species they’ve ever encountered.