The Man Who Sold the Moon

While this story is part of a larger collection, it can actually be read by itself and appreciated for what it is as its own story instead of as just a part of a collection. It's really clever, and the story about Dee Dee Harriman and how he would affect the history of the Moon is a great read. (Fifth story in the Future History timeline)

Merged review:

A nice short story of the little guys vs the Man when a big conglomerate tries to quash a scientific invention that would benefit many but not the top 1%. Wonder what the author would say if he could see the state of science vs politics today.

Es ven com una novel·la de ciència-ficció, però no ho és. És economia-ficció, o política-ficció, o societat-ficció... En tot cas, els amants de la ciència-ficció en quedaran decebuts. I la traducció d'Helena Valentí no és horrible, però no mereix un qualificatiu gaire millor.

Robert A. Heinlein was in his thirties when he first took up writing. That relatively advanced age for a beginning science fiction writer may account for the power of his work, its feeling of authenticity. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Heinlein wasn't just interested in science and technology. He also had a knowledge and appreciation of how the worlds of business, law, and politics worked and how they intersected with the world of the lab.

The stories in this collection represent the beginnings of Heinlein's Future History series. Events since their publication in the 30s and 40s have dated them, but most still entertain.

"Life-Line" and '"Let There Be Light"' have dated the least, and both concern supression of new technologies. show more The former concerns a scientist who earns the murderous ire of insurance companies because he can predict the date of a person's death. The latter concerns development of a very efficient capture method for solar energy.

The extrapolation around the dated, but still enjoyable, "The Roads Must Roll" probably seemed quite reasonable at the time of its writing. America's increasing use of cars, resultant urban sprawl and expense, coupled with increased fuel cost and "super-highways", would lead to giant, high-speed conveyor belts carrying people and products between cities. Some of the engineers who tend the road decide to bring it to a stop unless their demands are met. Their political philosophy of "functionalism" sounds modern and plausible though it's really an old idea found in the Bible and Roman history.

"Blowups Happen" is one of those atomic power stories from the forties. Like "The Roads Must Roll", Heinlein is as interested in the men maintaining the machines as the machines themselves. Here the technicians who tend a giant nuclear pile in Arizona frequently crack under the stress of knowing what disaster a mistake could bring.

Heinlein the social animal is on full display in "The Man Who Sold the Moon". Less concerned with scientific and technical details than with political, legal, and business intrigues, it tells the story of how one Delos Harriman gets man to the moon. He's the first in a new line of robber barons and, perhaps, the founder of a new imperialism that will show up later in the Future History series. Harriman's real goal, though, is denied him. He isn't interested in putting just anyone on the moon. He wants to go there.

Heinlein's famous "Requiem" is both prequel and sequel to "The Man Who Sold the Moon". In it, we get the details of Harriman's lunar obsession and the realization of his dream. Unusual for Heinlein, it's a very emotional story full of poignancy Anyone interested in classic science fiction, the beginnings of Heinlein's influential career, or just how the future looked in the forties should enjoy this collection. show less

This novella tells the story of Delos Harriman’s creation of a corporation to build a rocket and land a man on the moon. He wants to be the first man to land on the moon and an important element of his scheme is to gain ownership of the moon.

Financing the project is the primary focus of the story. Harriman engages in numerous plots to raise money. Many of these are quasi-legal and all are deceptive. The exaggerated emphasis on deception and avarice stand as a quasi-humorous condemnation the business practices of major corporations and politicians.

The book is male-centric and sexist by contemporary standards, as evidenced in the following passages.
“Charlotte liked the house and it gave her something to do.”
“If Charlotte liked show more to play house in a castle, Harriman did not mind.”
“Being ‘up to something’ was the unnameable and unforgivable crime for which any America male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath.
“half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed schoolboy in front of a stern teacher.

The plot moves forward via dialogue. The passive characters either sit or stand, and their comments merely serve as a basis that allows Harriman to expound on his most recent strategy. Once the thesis is established “The Man Who Sold The Moon” becomes tedious. The individual plots are mildly interesting at first, but one followed another ad infinitum and I found myself becoming bored. show less

Typical Heinlein. Old white misogynistic macho men sit around smoking cigars and talk to each other. Every story follows the same pattern with the same protagonist archetype. The plot progresses exclusively through dialog. There is no description of the events or physical world at all. The characters are so similar and simplistic that it's a struggle to tell them from each other.
The second star is because of some genuinely original ideas.

Even though I like reading science fiction, I somehow passed Robert Heinlein by. I'd read Tunnel in the Sky a few years back and that was about it. To rectify that I picked up this collection of some of his very earliest stories The Man Who Sold the Moon. These stories make up part of his 'Future History'. Though any of the stories can stand on its own, they all take place in the same universe. Discoveries made in one story might be mentioned in another.

I'm no Heinlein expert, but in most of these stories he reminds me an awful lot of Ayn Rand. His 'stories' tend to take the form of dialogues, with two (or more) characters debating, one of them giving the very strong impression that it is the voice of the author/level-headed show more Libertarian. I must say though that even though this isn't my type of sci-fi, Heinlein is MUCH more entertaining than Ayn Rand ever was.

This was the style used for '"Let There Be Light"' and 'The Roads Must Roll', both of which were stories with interesting enough ideas, but dull pacing and wooden characters. '"Let There Be Light"' is the worst story of the book. Aside from the endless debate and flat characters, the story also uses wildly unbelievable plot twists. I can see why in the 'Future History' omnibus volume The Past Through Tomorrow this story is omitted.

'The Roads Must Roll' is a much more interesting story, though still shows signs of being an early work.

'The Man Who Sold the Moon', about tycoon D.D. Harriman risking his fortune and reputation on sending people to the moon to establish a colony, also suffers from these problems, but there was enough forward momentum in the story to keep me interested. Towards the end I found myself rooting for Harriman and was moved by the bittersweet ending.

'Requiem', a direct sequel to 'The Man Who Sold the Moon' is far and away the best story in the book. It breaks the 'lecturing character' pattern (for the most part) and focuses on the twilight years of Harriman, still obsessed with Luna. This story alone makes the book worth reading. Heinlein has grown by leaps and bounds with this one.

The next two stories 'Life-Line' and 'Blowups Happen' were throwbacks to the earliest stories in the book. Being placed immediately after 'Requiem' made reading them worse. 'Life-Line' in particular is a dumb story with a ridiculous premise. I understand including it because it was Heinlein's first published story, but it probably should have been the first or second story in the book.

Overall, this book really wasn't my bag. It won't put me off from reading more Heinlein, since I understand this was his earliest stuff and even then 'Requiem' showed he has a lot of promise. show less

Published in 1950 this a collection of early Heinlein short stories, the earliest of these: Lifeline was published in 1939 and was his first published short story in Astounding magazine. They are all pretty much earth bound yarns with only the title story from 1950 venturing as far as the moon and that is for the final denouement.

“Let There be Light” from 1940 deals with a scientific breakthrough that leads to the ability to tap power from the sun and hinges on who owns the rights to the relatively cheap process. ‘The Roads Must Roll’ is also from 1940 and this is a far more satisfying story with Heinlein able to introduce some psychology into the mix. Like all the stories it is set in the near future when moving roads keep the show more transport moving with varying traction speeds. A fundamentalist group working inside the transport industry aims to stop the roads moving to gain an advantage for their own programme. Chaos threatens and an armed intervention is needed to flush out the revolutionaries. This is the first of Heinlein’s stories that creates a futuristic scenario which is well thought out and provides a decent storyline with a satisfying conclusion: its probably the best story. ‘The Man Who sold the Moon’ is the longest story and is centred around the energy and enterprise of D D Harriman in his bid to own the rights to the moon. Heinlein imagines a situation where governments have ceased trying to land on the moon and it is left to entrepreneurship to carry the torch for future space travel. The story just about gets off the ground. ‘Blowups Happen’ is from 1940 and it imagines a situation where atomic power is being used for industrial purposes but scientists are fighting a losing battle in keeping the fusion process under control: this is a good story with some tension, which raises issues which could have happened and might still happen. Lifeline is the earliest story and it concerns a man from outside the scientific establishment who has invented a machine which gives an accurate forecast of the life span of individuals.

The writing achieves a reasonable standard for the genre and in ‘The Roads Must Roll’ and ‘Blowups Happen’ there is enough science, enough characterisation and enough scene setting to mark these two stories as well worth reading. Unfortunately the longest story is not the best and so I would rate this collection as 3 stars. show less