Be Nice or Be Eliminated

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. What an apt title. Robert Heinlein conceives of a future in which the moon, or Luna as it comes to be known, has become a prison in which the people of the earth, or Terra, can dump convicts. “A planet full ex-convicts” you think, “sounds like a hell-hole.” Surprisingly, it’s not. Instead, it appears to be the friendliest place in the galaxy, at least at first glance.

Luna is “the only open prison in history. No bars, no guards, no rules – and no need for them” (23). Once a convict stays longer than a certain time in Luna, he turns into a Loonie (person of Luna), and his body and mind become unfit for Terra. He is trapped on Luna, with no hope of return. Prisoners have nowhere to run, no place to which they can escape. So they have to learn how to cope with each other instead, resulting in an incredibly civilized society, on the surface. As Manuel O’Kelly describes Luna, “Tourists often remark on how polite everybody is in Luna – with unstated comment that ex-prison shouldn’t be so civilized…But useless to tell them that we are what we are because bad actors don’t live long – in Luna” (25). On Luna, the people “who lived were nice people. Not tame, not soft, Luna is not for them. But well-behaved” (28). Loonies do not have to be angels, but they have to be nice or they will be eliminated.

As nice as Luna seems to be, it reminds me of the society in “Gattaca”. In the movie “Gattaca”, society has become “perfect” as a result of tampering with DNA to create “perfect” human beings. On the flip side, however, people who do not have perfect DNA codes and are thus flawed, Invalids, are outcasts. They are not thought to be part of society, and instead are kept separate from society so as not to contaminate its perfection. Is that not what the same as what the Loonies do? Except in Luna, they do not even bother letting people who do no conform live, they instead “eliminate”, or get rid of, them.

The term eliminate is tossed around by Loonies all the time. At the protest meeting Manuel attends at the beginning of the book, the chairman says, “if you don’t know him and nobody you know can vouch for him, throw him out!” (26). One person responds by saying that they should not just throw him out, they should eliminate him. Manuel is asked to judge a case involving the tourist, Stuart LaJoie. Because Stuart violated one of Luna’s customs by making a pass at a girl, the girl’s friends want to hold trial to eliminate him. Granted as the trial proceeds they lose their desire to eliminate him, but the term is still tossed around loosely. Manuel says that elimination is not a joke rather it is a serious matter. In fact, there are not many eliminations. But just as often as people toss the term eliminate around, do there seem to be “accidents” – eliminations made to look like accidents. Later on Manuel says that he does not oppose eliminating people “peremptorily”, as he “could see no better way to improve breed. Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people” (202). Eliminating people who violate the customs of Luna in order to “improve [the] breed”, seems to me just as horrific as segregating the Invalids so they cannot contaminate the rest of society. Agreed that in both cases the result is a picture perfect society, but is that society worth the cost of human lives?