Visions of the Future, Courtesy of Heinlein

It's hard to know what to talk about in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress because there's so much good stuff in it. From the organization of the resistance to TANSTAAFL the whole book is full of topics that could fill this blog, so I'll just touch on a few.
First, I was fascinated by the description of family life Heinlein provided. From Wyoming's triad to Mannie's line marriage. It made a lot of sense, I thought. In a place where women are scarce, naturally they'd be protected more than they would on Earth in this time or ours. Everyone is taught at a young age the value of everyone else so jealousies within the multiple couple groupings would be minimized. Women are valued so that rape isn't a problem, and only is an issue when the off-worlders, so to speak, don't abide by the rules of Luna. It is the rape and murder of a woman that sets the revolution in motion and unites the fractured people of Luna.
Second, how could I not touch on Mike? A super computer that achieves sentience and without whom the "Loonies" would have gotten nowhere. We never do figure out why Mike is willing to help out, perhaps due to loyalty to Mannie and to the people Mannie introduces to him. Perhaps he was interested to see how the Loonies would accomplish their goals, maybe it was just a joke to him, like inflating the check at the beginning of the book (13). It must have been fun for him, in any case. From creating the look of Adam Selene to participating in the resistance through managing the phones. I also wonder what happened to him at the end. Is he hiding somewhere within his programming? Or was the shock of the attack too much for his system, like he's in a coma?
Third, it wasn't until near the end that I truly understood that the book was written from Mannie's point of view in that he himself was writing it, as a proper history of the time before, during, and after the revolution. I had wondered at the narrative style, with the dropped words, at the beginning of the book but figured it was just to match up with Mannie's speaking style. But no, Mannie is the author of the book, which makes sense. So I suppose this comment is about Mannie's style. Words like "dinkum thinkum" (12) and in the inclusion of Russian words like "nyet" (171) and "gospazha" (111), blending like the cultures and ethnicities did on the moon after they were basically dropped there. It makes sense that the ethnic groups blended together until only a Loonie culture emerged, since they could never get back to Earth due to body changes there would be no reason to stick to loyalty to the mother country.
Lastly, for this post, I was very impressed by the skill of the Professor. Between coordination with Mike and his use of history to tailor their revolution to America's and using the American Revolution blueprint to win sympathy with North America he was as important as Mike in the revolution. Also having Mannie play different countries off against each other in constructing a catapult was diplomatic genius, in my opinion.
I did like this book better than last week's, perhaps because there was so much more to it, more of a world to explore. A more complete picture of a possibility than Wells could provide.