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What are you reading/listening to this week? (January 17th, 2023) (literature.cafe)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I am reading “The moon is a harsh mistress” by Heinlein. It’s the first time i read him in the original language, and it’s glorious! He talks about a moon uprising against the earth government. The book reads a bit like a battle diary, at times quite dry. The part I love the most is how he plays with so many political and ethical concepts, like completely supporting prostitution. His extreme left tendencies are not hidden in this book. I’m enjoying it a lot!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's a great book but Heinlein is generally considered right wing not left I thought ?

According to wiki while he started off leftish he was quite conservative/libertarian by the time of "moon is a harsh mistress"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein

"yet Heinlein became a hero to libertarians: Milton Friedman praised Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which chronicled an anti-statist rebellion on a lunar colony, as a "wonderful" book and commended Heinlein "

https://gizmodo.com/how-robert-heinlein-went-from-socialist-to-libertarian-1588357827

Edit to add

Having read the gizmodo article again it seems a more complicated shift than a simplistic left youth, right in middle age and for most of his books. Seems to have a complex view point although "starship troopers" is certainly a right wing oriented novel.

Thanks for triggering further investigation. Interesting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the extra info. In the meantime I finished the book, so I have a better outlook. At the beginning, the push is towards a revolution against the authoritarian regime, with some sprinkles of “workers unite”, so I expected to go more towards socialism. Then it becomes more clear that he is against all a d any government, even while accepting that it can’t work. Quite interesting overall!