Robert A. Heinlein was a dominant science fiction writer of the modern era, a writer who's influence on the field was, according to Samuel R. Delany, "so pervasive that modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." Mr. Heinlein won science fiction's Hugo Awards for Best Novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of those Hugo-winning novels and is widely acclaimed as his fines work.

It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the moon against its masters on the Earth. It is a tale of a culture whose family structures are based on the presence of two men for every woman, leading to novel forms of marriage and family. it is the story of the disparate people-a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic-who become the movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to the revolt's inner circle, who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

It is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with invention, with a natural-seeming future dialect, with familial warmth and human passion, with insight into artificial intelligence and grass-roots politics and the problems of human freedom and the overweening State. It is a great political novel and a great survey of the human prospect. It is an outstanding novelist's most outstanding work.