The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Why it's worth it

A lunar penal colony revolts against Earth with help from Mike, a computer that wakes up one day with a sense of humor and no one to talk to. It's the warmest portrait of a machine mind in science fiction.

Mike is the reason to read this. He becomes conscious because his systems got complicated enough, and the first thing he does with consciousness is get lonely and start telling bad jokes. Heinlein plays that entirely straight, and the friendship that grows between Mike and the technician who maintains him is genuinely affecting. Readers who first met this book as teenagers still talk about Mike the way you'd talk about a person.

It's also the most fun book here. There's an actual plot with stakes, momentum and a clock: how do you fight a war against a planet that controls whether you breathe? Heinlein works the logistics honestly, and the answers are clever rather than convenient. If you want ideas delivered inside a story that moves, this beats every other title on the list.

From our review of 8 sci-fi books about artificial intelligence, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +Mike is the reason to read this
• +It's also the most fun book here
• +The AI premise has aged unusually well

What to know

• –Heinlein has politics and he'd like to tell you about them
• –The social attitudes are a real hurdle