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    The Man Who Sold the Moon
    The Man Who Sold the Moon
    The Man Who Sold the Moon
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Man Who Sold the Moon

    Written by Robert A. Heinlein

    Narrated by Buck Schirner

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    All-new Introduction by Mark Van Name. Two classic Robert A. Heinlein novels in one volume: The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky. Journeys into space, one taking humans to space by hook or by crook, the other the classic first-time tale of a generation vessel with passengers who do not realize they are in a spaceship.

    Two classic Robert A. Heinlein novels in one volume, with an all-new introduction by Mark L. Van Name, author of the Jon and Lobo military SF series.

    The Man Who Sold the Moon: D. D. Harriman is a billionaire with a dream: the dream of space for all mankind. The method? Anything that works.  Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far.  But he will give us the stars…

    Orphans of the Sky: Hugh had been taught that, according to the ancient sacred writings, the Ship was on a voyage to faraway Centaurus.  But he also understood that this must be allegory for a voyage to spiritual perfection.  After all, the real world was only metal corridors and nothing else, right?  And then Hugh begins to suspect the truth. . .

    Two all-time classics from seven-time Hugo winner and Dean of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein.

    About Robert A. Heinlein:
    “Not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world.” –Stephen King.

    “One of the grand masters of science fiction.” –Wall Street Journal

    Comprehensive Teacher's Guide available.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781480523364
    The Man Who Sold the Moon
    Author

    Robert A. Heinlein

    Robert A. Heinlein, four-time winner of the Hugo Award and recipient of three Retro Hugos, received the first Grand Master Nebula Award for lifetime achievement. His worldwide bestsellers have been translated into twenty-two languages and include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Time Enough for Love, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His long-lost first novel, For Us, the Living, was published by Scribner and Pocket Books.

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    Reviews for The Man Who Sold the Moon

    3.5/5

    377 ratings17 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I can't read Heinlein anymore. All his stories are the same. Old white misogynistic macho men sit/stand and talk to each other until the scene ends and another couple of old white men start talking. All plot moves forward exclusively through dialogue. Characters are so much similar and cartoonishly simplistic that it's a struggle to remember even the pratoganyst's name.
    • 5/5
      I’m not a fan of short stories but the author does a good job linking them so that it all takes place in the same time period and shares characters (for the most part). Not as good as his other works but good enough
    • 5/5
      The stories in this book are a bit dated (published from 1939-50), so while the ideas in them might have seemed far-fetched back when they were written, they seem quaint and strangely-described today.

      The roles of men and women, and the way they treated each other, are also old-fashioned, but I guess that's how things were back then.

      Heinlein was an engaging writer, and the ending to the titular story is pretty sweet.
    • 3/5
      Ever want to know how to fund an expedition to the moon? Read this!
    • 4/5
      As I read this book I was reminded of why I appreciate Heinlein at his best: his ability to tell a believable and interesting tale without all the drawn out technical elucidations that often flood and drag under SciFi stories. Descriptions of how a rocket is built or why a power source works aren't always necessary to advance a plot.I consider this one of this author's better short story collections.
    • 1/5
      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 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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Containing some relatively early stories, this collection feels more dated than most Heinlein works, if only because his predictions for the future were so far off, leading to the book feeling anachronistic. Some stories are truly engaging and captivating in their own way, but more are sadly lacking. Full of the usual mild Heinlein sexism, this book will likely be truly enjoyable only to the dedicated Heinlein reader.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 3/5
      Indeholder "Preface", "Introduction by John W. Campbell Jr.", "Life-Line", ""Let There be Light"", "The Roads must Roll", "Blow-ups Happen", "The Man who Sold the Moon", "Requiem"."Preface" handler om ???"Introduction by John W. Campbell Jr." handler om ???"Life-Line" handler om Doktor Pinero, der har lavet en maskine, der kan måle længden af en persons totale levealder, dvs forudsige hvornår man skal dø. Det har store konsekvenser og ender med at koste ham selv livet, helt som han havde forudset men uden at kunne gøre noget ved det.""Let There be Light"" handler om ???"The Roads must Roll" handler om hvad der sker når et trafiksystem med rullende vejbaner og masser af arbejdere til at vedligeholde systemet møder fagforeninger og strejker."Blowups Happen" handler om ingeniører, der bryder sammen, fordi de arbejder på eksplosionsfarlige a-kraftværker. Da en af dem opdager at Månen engang har været beboelig og at nogle af de store kratere passer med en eksploderende kraftværk tvinges de til at finde en bedre løsning og det gør de så. De regner også på hvordan man får en organisation til at acceptere en ændring - i stil med Asimovs Stiftelse."The Man who Sold the Moon" handler om ???"Requiem" handler om ???
    • 4/5
      "The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." - Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon Heinlein's monumental "Future History" series continues. Two scientists develop cheap solar power-and threaten the industrial status quo. The nation's cities are linked by a system of moving roads-and a strike can bring the entire country to a halt. Workers in an experimental atomic plant crack under the mental strain. And the space frontier is opened by an unlikely hero-D. D. Harriman, a billionaire with a dream: the dream of Space for All Mankind. The method? Anything that works. Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far. But he will give us the stars. . .This compilation of short stories includes the classic "The Roads Must Roll" (Included in the SFWA Hall of Fame collection). It also includes "The Man Who Sold the Moon". This is part of Heinlein's Future History and prequel to "Requiem". It covers events around a fictional first Moon landing, in 1978, and the schemes of Delos D. Harriman, a businessman who is determined to personally reach and control the Moon.
    • 5/5
      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. 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.
    • 3/5
      An older book about the way space travel was expected to develop and where we are supposed to be today. A good read.
    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      A Collection of the first of Heinlein's future history collection. This collection of short stories deals with the beginning of space flight, the invention of solar panels, the development of moving roads as well as the pioneers of extra terrestrial living. Heinlein, as always, mixes amazing technological foresight and scientific knowledge with well-crafted characters and how humans deal with the trials that are thrown at them.
    • 4/5
      I rate this book a little higher than it technically deserves for one reason: "Requiem". That short-story is among Heinlein's finest work, sensitive and nearly lyrical. For the most part, its prequil, "The Man Who Sold the Moon," does not measure up. It is classic Heinlein, fun but unpolished. These two are the best in the collection. The other two stories, "Let there Be Light," and "The Roads Must Roll" are much more dated in the 1940s culture in which they were written, with similar political and social concerns and gender attitudes. The science, which is necessary on some level, is a bit over-whelming and under-likely. Although Heinlein successfully imagines solar panels, he is characteristically optimistic about their power and cheapness. The book is essential for the inclusion of this story, since it is not in the definitive Future History anthology The Past through Tomorrow.But Heinlein is not a prophet, as he says in his preface. He is merely an accomplished "what-ifer". The Preface is a valuable insight into the Future History stories at the heart of much of his writing.Read it for the flow of the stories (if not all the continuity). Read it for "Requiem". Read it, but don't expect as much as you get from Heinlein at his height.
    • 4/5
      A collection of short stories. Some are quite good, some are just OK.
    • 3/5
      My favourite story was the one about the roads. I enjoyed this story collection, but I found it in need of a bit of touching up, the grammar is tangled at points and the story hard to entangle. I suspect that this is because these are earlier writings of his. The writing was much better in one of his novels which I read 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'.