High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar colony`s revolt against rule from Earth. Widely admired for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the moon, it is generally considered one of Heinlein`s major novels as well as one of the most important science fiction novels ever written.