The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress cover art

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

By: Robert A. Heinlein
Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison...

Life isn't easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV.

When humble technician Mannie O'Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities... or become friends.

And perhaps overthrow the government while they're at it.

©2014 Robert A. Heinlein (P)2025 W.F. Howes Ltd. Adventure Classics Genre Fiction Political Science Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Cat Who Walks through Walls cover art
Have Space Suit - Will Travel cover art
Glory Road cover art
The Star Beast cover art
The Number of the Beast cover art
Starman Jones cover art
I Will Fear No Evil cover art
Triplanetary cover art
To Sail Beyond the Sunset cover art
Revolt in 2100 cover art
Time for the Stars cover art
Sixth Column cover art
Red Planet cover art
Farnham's Freehold cover art
Waldo & Magic, Inc. cover art
The Stainless Steel Rat cover art
All stars
Most relevant
I read this book years ago, had a massive effect on my way of thinking, one of my favourite books of all time, Narrator is brilliant, story is very clever and thought provoking, love this.

Will listen to this over & over

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I read this many decades ago, and loved it, totally choked at the end. I expected this book to come across rather dated now but it actually holds up pretty well, with some very relevant links to current state of affairs in the real world. Well performed by the narrator. And yes, was still choked up at the end. TANSTAAFL!

One of my all time favourite novels, well performed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Some of the story is dated, but a lot of it holds up well. The narrator did the various voices and accents well, but mispronounced several words (it is not monty-video) and inserted punctuation/pauses in the wrong places ('tycho under' is a place name, not 'tycho, under..').

Wondered at one point if being narrated by modem day version of Mike.

An old classic on audio at long last

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
One of my all time favourite books let down by narration. Characters accents were inconsistent, changing from one chapter to the next. Stupid mistakes in pronunciation were made. Some are excusable (lunar place names, for example), but others mistakes more central to the subject matter (e.g. ‘neutral’ network) made it seem like the narrator had no idea what the book was about.

Great story, poor narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
When I started listening to this I was wondering what I had let myself in for, with a made up lunar accent & slang but I’m glad I persisted. It is astonishing that this is a mid 60s novel, considering AI (before it was even called that) and what it means for a computer to become “conscious”. I loved the treatment of the Moon as a penal colony with independence aspirations.

Brilliantly ahead of its time

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews