The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

In the middle of the twenty-second century, over three million people live in underground cities below the moon’s surface. One city-state, the Society of Cousins, is a matriarchy, where men are supported in any career choice, but no right to vote—and tensions are beginning to flare as outside political intrigues increase.

After participating in a rebellion that caused his mother’s death, Erno has been exiled from the Society of Cousins. Now, he is living in the Society’s rival colony, Persepolis, when he meets Amestris, the defiant daughter of the richest man on the moon.

Mira, a rebellious loner in the Society, creates graffiti videos that challenge the Society’s political domination. She is hopelessly in love with Carey, the exemplar of male privilege. An Olympic champion in low-gravity martial arts and known as the most popular bedmate in the Society, Carey’s more suited to being a boyfriend than a parent, even as he tries to gain custody of his teenage son.

When the Organization of Lunar States sends a team to investigate the condition of men in the Society, Erno sees an opportunity to get rich, Amestris senses an opportunity to escape from her family, Mira has a chance for social change, and Carey can finally become independent of the matriarchy that considers him a perpetual adolescent. But when Society secrets are revealed, the first moon war erupts, and everyone must decide what is truly worth fighting for.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia, Fantasy, Audiobook, LGBT

608 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 4, 2017

About the author

John (Joseph Vincent) Kessel co-directs the creative writing program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A winner of the Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Tiptree Awards, his books include Good News From Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories. His story collection Meeting in Infinity was a New York Times Notable Book. Most recently, with James Patrick Kelly he has edited the anthologies Feeling Very Strange, Rewired, The Secret History of Science Fiction and Kafkaesque. Born in Buffalo, NY, Kessel has a PhD in American Literature, has been an NEA Fellow, and for twenty years has been one of the organizers of the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

12/28/2017
I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and drop an RTC on y’all. I read this novel back in August and between then and now I just haven’t been able to collect my thoughts on it in any coherent way. I will say that it is my favorite SF novel of the 2017 calendar year – you should get it and read it now. I’ll explain why soon enough, I promise.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Moon!

This is an awesome epic, but let me clarify this. This isn't Ian McDonald novel, but it *IS* as deep and complex in its interpersonal explorations, its social experiments, and more for its thought-experiment.

I'm honestly astonished by this man's writing. It's like reading a mix between John Varley and Ian McDonald, only we focus on how a planned matriarchal city on the Moon might look like from within and from without. Domed cities, flight in the open air, scientific exploration... all of this is here, but all of it is subservient to the real story.

This a novel about men and women. All kinds, all orientations. It's a matriarchal society, but there's nothing simple about it or surface about it. Kessel has managed to go deep into the ramifications in such a way that I'm frankly amazed.

The depth of the characterizations and the complexities of the questions raised make this a truly fantastic novel. It is more than equal with any traditional treatment of the subject, whether historical fiction, modern thoughts on feminism, being gay, or what it means to change the meaning of being a Man. I got lost in these pages.

More than that, I was delighted by the amazing amount of world-building, social exploration, and especially about the vast amounts of love, idealism, protest, regret, greed, and tragedy.

These kinds of thoughtful, complex, socially-focused novels come along only once in a blue moon. There's nothing trite or unambiguous about it. It's real people caught in the web of a future history.

Do NOT expect it to have a ton of action, murders, or intrigue. It's not that kind of thing.

The novel is about trying to change things. For good or ill, it's about how men and women get along with themselves or the Other. For this, I give it all the stars in the world.

[Silvana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has the making of a true classic. Just like my friend Rachel said, it is unfathomable that the book is not among the nominees of Hugo Awards this year. It is thought-provoking and should be up there with giants like Brave New World since it presents one brave, new world. Set in not-too-distant-future, as in 2149, The Moon and the Other takes a look at a lunar society full of social experiments. We are introduced to the Society of Cousins, a matriarchal community where men are encouraged and facilitated to pursue their dream jobs and given sexual freedom, but are barred from voting or holding political office, unless they’re part of the work force. The community knows no violence (including rape), excel in science and discovery, which makes the other colonies, patriarchal - a bunch of arseholes as they are - very much in envy, suspicious, and could think of nothing else than to destroy this peaceful group, under the disguise of 'external investigation'. From the start, I could not help myself from imagining, what if I was a member of the Society. It looks Utopian to me.

We have four different characters, three come from the Society (two of them are men - which makes it very interesting to read) and one women from the richest patriarchal colony. I have to say I did not like each and every one of the POVs but I really enjoyed the character growth of at least two.

The world building is fantastic - Kessel's writing incorporates many intricate details on living on the moon, inside the protection of the dome and outside. I think it is even more elaborate that New Moon - which is also a fantastic (yet more plot-driven) book about moon societies.

I think the real rating should be 4.5. I am not particularly fond of the ending but the book will stay in my mind for a really, really long time.

[J. Kessel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please excuse my giving my own book five stars.

I just want to thank all of you who have read the book and taken the time to comment. Whether you ended up liking it or not, a lot of you have engaged with my story and characters and the ideas I was exploring, and that's what a writer wants.

If you are interested, I have published four "prequel" stories to THE MOON AND THE OTHER, featuring many of the characters of that book--Erno, Mira, Eva, Carey, and Roz, among others. All of these stories are in my collection THE BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, under the title "A Lunar Quartet."

And I hope you'll try some of my other books. A new novel, PRIDE AND PROMETHEUS, crossing he stories and characters of FRANKENSTEIN and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, was published in February.

Best wishes,
John Kessel

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

People whose opinions I trust found this book to be problematic in ways I believe that 2018 Sarah would have missed. So I'm leaving my rating up as a reflection of my enjoyment of the book at that time- but I'm removing the review. I don't think I'll ever re-read (it was too hard to get my hands on a copy the first time and I'm just not a big re-reader in the first place).

[Allison Hurd · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. Yikes. Wowza etc. So, this is the story of a matriarchy a la second wave feminism in which the feminine should be elevated above the masculine but with none of the takeaways.

CONTENT WARNING: misogyny, hatred of men, slavery, loss of a loved one, body horror (hands)

Things that weren't pedantic as fuck:

-Carey's arc. A child prodigy become father asking for full rights as a father is interesting



Everything else:

-Who asked you? So, this starts as the examination of a "matriarchy" that denies people with penises the right to vote unless they undergo castration, as compared to a "libertarian" society that allows violence as long as it's compensated, and a society with, essentially, Sharia law. Respectfully, fuck you, sir, for choosing these three instances of politics as opposed to each other, when clearly they are all patriarchal.

-Gender and sex. I don't know any more if the author thinks these are interchangeable or just willfully missed the goddamn point. I was trying to think of a woman in this story about women that existed outside of a relationship to men, and I cannot haha! That's actually pretty funny.

-Punching out of its weight. It cannot compete with Le Guin or Tepper, or any of the others who speculated on societies made distinct by their tolerance of the limited masculine. It's so far out of its league as to feel that it is mansplaining the gender continuum, and it gets it so, so wrong, on both a biological level and psychological one. In brief, if you think a vulva means something about your place in society, to the exclusion of all other criteria, please stay away from me.

-Plot. Utter shrill nonsense. Maybe I was so upset at the hot take on feminism I missed what it was trying to say about dogs bombing people, but I think it's more likely the author finds the "masculine" urge towards violence more substantive than the human need for self actualization that he found the events that kicked off the finale to line up to make sense without further explanation, and I say, to the whole premise, bollocks.

A sincere note to my trans friends, this is some of the shittiest media on gender I've ever read, avoid.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immediately upon finishing John Kessel's political sci-fi novel The Moon and the Other, my husband handed it to me saying "You've got to read this next, you're really going to love it." That said, I was quite surprised how very long it took me to get into it and complete it. I've devoured books this length (ca. 600 pages) in a few evenings, when suitably riveted. This one took more than two weeks. Why so long? I think because what this novel-length (and then some!) adaptation and stitching together of four of Kessel's previously published stories set on the Moon most needed was the attention of a really good editor. Specifically, it needed to be tightened up, unnecessary scenes or sidebars needed to be surgically removed, with the result that it could have been shortened by at least 150-200 pages. Simply put, the action needed to move quicker and we needed to get to the last 100 pages much, much sooner.

The story's action bounces among a handful of the twenty-something nation states of human societies that have come to occupy the Moon--some below the surface and some in combinations of subterranean and domed cities. Most strongly foregrounded is the juxtaposition of the matriarchal Society of Cousins and what are broadly referred to as the Patriarchies. The societies we meet are occupied by an assortment of gendered humans, so-called "uplifted" animals (most notably embodied in the form of an uplifted Doberman named Sirius), and unlifted animals that serve as pets, service animals, beasts of burden and, presumably, food. While predominantly assuming the form of third-person exposition, the novel has intermittent snippets from video archives, assorted committee reports, government documents, etc. and allows just enough bouncing forward and backward in time, to bring home the powerful "and how will this all be documented and interpreted for and by the public?" issues that are increasingly of concern to the Erno, Mira, Carey, Roz, Eva, Val, Sirius, and the other characters at the novel's heart.

I was initially very worried that the book was going to be little more than some sort of inverted Handmaid's Tale in which women held all the power, men were denied the right to vote, hold public office, or enjoy custody of the offspring they father. (OMG, if we had to go looking for Val one more time I was going to throw the book across the room. There, I've said it.) Thankfully, the worlds were a good bit more complicated than that, particularly with overlapping stories of inter-societal industrial espionage, political intrigue, interspecies rivalry, inter-generational misunderstanding, greed, self-promotion, the pros and cons of non-violent vs. violence as a form of social protest that will drive meaningful change, and the inability to learn from mistakes made in the not too distant past, etc. In other words, this futuristic world and its societies will be all too familiar to early twenty first century readers.

In my estimation, the most interesting subplot was that of the Integrated Quantum Scanner Array (IQSA) and the associated ethical concerns, and certainly the potential for vast personal and political abuse. The points of intersection between those directly and indirectly affected by its application were quite powerful and thought-provoking. To my mind, this was the most interesting part of the book--particularly when juxtaposed against the lack of similar considerations when "uplifting" (or not) animals such as the increasingly embittered (and thumbless) media star Sirius.

All told, while an interesting story I thought The Moon and the Other begged for a very, very heavy edit. In one instance there was an entire scene ("I mean, is there going to be a forest? Your trees are dying") that first appeared on p. 238 and then inexplicably was repeated seven pages later on p. 245. While quite possibly a cut-and-paste error, this should have been caught and most definitely contributed to reader fatigue when still well shy of the halfway mark. I also wanted to know what had led humans to leave Earth--an act for which an explanation is never provided. I'll close with one of Erno Pamelasson's best lines: "When preserving the status quo becomes the whole raison d'etre of a society, then change becomes treason." Hopefully it won't take the Board of Matrons, the gerrymandering of membership of the SCOCOM and human rights groups, a host of dome disasters, or the fading simulacra of once-vibrant captains of industry to bring this fact home in a meaningful way. This was a really great book that got lost in trying to achieve too much. Both Kessel and his readers deserved a much better editor. Saga Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., please get right on that!

[Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very little gets my eyes rolling quite as quickly as discrimination-but-with-the-roles-reversed science-fiction. There's something incredibly condescending about the idea that the privileged can't understand or at least empathize with the oppressed without a very little "WHAT IF IT HAPPENED TO YOU!?" story to help them along. I was convinced that The Moon and The Other - set largely in a moon colony where women hold most of the political and social power and where men are largely treated like pets - was going to be yet another fictionalized version of Jane Elliot's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment (but with lasers). Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find an ambitious, but focused story about the nature of political change; How it can be hastened and slowed, genuinely embraced or co-opted and finally how it can be used as a weapon by competing nations.

The novel doesn't dwell on the discrimination faced by the male cast, instead it lets the moral shortcomings of the seemingly utopian society speak for themselves, while the characters largely come to realize that the neighboring colonies, a majority-Muslim society and a free-market, libertarian nightmare land where people can openly buy passes to commit crime, are perhaps worse. It quickly becomes apparent that these colonies are using their concern for "equal rights" as a smokescreen to further their own political ends. This is further complicated by accusations that the female-lead society is harboring illegal bio-weapons.

So yeah, as far as political analogies go, it's far from subtle, but it's tied together with some great character work, a few more conventional mysteries (including a cool-as-fuck, mysterious robotic hand one of the characters stumbles upon) and last minute dips into more outlandish Sci-fi concepts to keep the story going. Of particular note is how Kessel uses different perspectives to flesh out his characters. Carey, the books emotional linchpin and most conventional hero, is initially introduced as a hedonistic idiot, a pretty face and trophy boyfriend, simply because the character observing him can't imagine him as anything else. How people see each other, the value they put on them as people, is a theme of the book and it's reflected in the prose.

It also has talking dogs.

[Mary's Bookshelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Kessel has been writing science fiction for awhile. This is the first book by him that I have read. At 594 pages, it is an ambitious work. The story is set in the mid-22nd century on the moon. The moon was colonized in the middle of the 21st century, spurred by unnamed problems on Earth. There are several colonies with different styles of governing, from a laissez-faire libertarian state which is free-wheeling and chaotic to a mostly Middle-Eastern colony that is a powerhouse for trade. The main thrust of the story is set in the Society of Cousins, a female-dominated, semi-closed society. In this colony, men have limited rights to participate as citizens, but are encouraged to pursue goals in sports, entertainment, and science. The Matrons control the government, and pursue policies designed to restrict and contain violence, especially testosterone-fueled wars. The Cousins are viewed with great alarm by the other colonies, which suspect that they might be harboring a secret weapon of some sort.
The story revolves around a few characters--Carey, a cosseted athlete who is the son of one of the matrons; Mira, a prickly student who feels resentment for the way the Cousins control society; Erno, an exile from the Cousins for a prank gone wrong; and Amestris, the bored, bitter daughter of Cyrus, the wealthiest man in Persepolis, the Islamic colony. As their stories are woven together, the stakes rise. A commission is sent to investigate the Cousins. When one disaster strikes, and then another, the crisis both feared and yearned for changes the balance of power.
Kessel is a master at world-building. He takes care to give each colony a distinct character. His characters are also fleshed out. I found the middle of the book to be rather slow moving and I almost set it aside. The last third of the book moves into gear, setting the scene for the disastrous climax. The epilogue, set thirty years in the future, is less than satisfactory. The fates of the various characters are given, but it is rather vague what kinds of changes thirty years brought to the colonies.
If you like speculative sci-fi with a strong element of politics, I recommend "The Moon and the Other".

[Geoff Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting to compare this to Ian McDonald's Luna series: both deal with tensions among rival moon colonies, both explore sexual and gender issues, both feature a moon that feels complete and has depth.

While McDonald's plot has more action, Kessel is more reflective. Kessel is less about the set piece action and more about the sudden twist. McDonald seems to want to explore several ideas, while Kessel wants to focus on patriarchy and masculinity, with a side trip on natives, immigrants, and exiles.

This book is thoughtful and deep. I may need to re read it, because there's much I think I missed. It was an engrossing experience, even if it didn't always feel fun.

[Sudeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a masterpiece.

And it doesn't even have 200 ratings on goodreads. But if the people who read it manages to spread it, this book definitely has a chance to become a future classic.

I will not say anything about this book except for one thing. I urge everyone who comes across the book to read it. Not today or tomorrow or even this month, but someday this book should be read by everyone. You might not love it( like I do) or you might not end up liking it, but you will not regret picking up this book.

Finally, I have read a lot of books this year and I loved a lot of them, but this book will definitely stand in the top three of 2017's best.

[Sean Rubbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a great time with this one. Its very Heinlein-esque and I thought Kessel pulled it off brilliantly, while not copying. If you like any of Heinlein's stuff, this one is a must read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a sense, it's unfortunate that The Moon and the Other wears its intellectual heritage on its sleeve: The Dispossessed, Red Mars, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are all clear forebears. As a work of political science fiction, The Moon and the Other has a very different project. I've been thinking about Kessel's novel since I finished it, and I'm seriously considering calling it the best of the four.

In the small, intimate societies Kessel imagines on the moon, the personal and the political are always entwined, and no decision is ever purely one or the other. But despite its setting in a utopian societal experiment, the matriarchal Society of Cousins, the novel resists both utopianism and cynicism. This is a story about people engaging in politics, not a political screed. Ultimately, it's deeply sympathetic to the compromises, sacrifices, and mistakes that politically-engaged people make, and encourages thinking about political movements as complex, cyclical, and multifaceted. If Moon has a unifying idea, it's about how individuals move through alienation and reconnection — mediated in some, but not all, cases by their engagement in politics.

Many science fiction novels, to a greater or lesser extent, orient themselves around the nature and consequences of a single counterfactual. Sometimes this means wrapping the entire novel around a theorized technology: Poul Anderson's Tau Zero is really a paean to the Bussard ramjet spacecraft at its core. In others, the organizing principle is less foregrounded but no less singular, as the dichotomous political structure of Annares and Urras drives The Dispossessed.

The Moon and the Other strikes me as particularly unusual in drawing upon a grab bag of such counterfactuals without allowing them to dominate. 'Uplifted' — genetically enhanced — animals play numerous parts in the story, but this is not a story about uplifted animals. Quantum scanning technology is an object of pursuit for Erno and Cyrus, but this is not a story about quantum scanning technology. The lunar societies possess advanced genetic engineering, real AI, something rather close to telepathy, and half a dozen other structural and technological features that could easily be the focus of a different novel. Here, they're part of the world, but they're not at all the point.

The only slight I'd lay against Kessel is that he has a occasional tendency to be overly cute. Most of the novel is quite serious, granting the characters humor, but not the authorial voice. Kessel's decisions to, for example, give a misogynist revolutionary the nom de guerre "Tyler Durden" and call a synthetic virus targeting women "GROSS" in a shout-out to Calvin and Hobbes are jarring and out of place. Similarly, the uplifted dog newscaster Sirius feels like a refugee from a Roger Zelazny or Philip K. Dick novel.

I really enjoyed The Moon and the Other, and I'm eager for more of John Kessel. I expect to continue thinking about this book for a while.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the moon world he created and over all the story was fine. The societies and the male vs female discussions seemed like a lot of old Earth stereotypes that I hope are gone/evolved by that far into the future. The Cousins Society seemed very much what a "traditional man's" idea of a female-created-world would be like.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 43%. Wholly uninteresting take on gender politics with a focus on men's rights. Occasionally made me question whether the inaccuracies about sex and gender represented in the book were intentional deviances meant as a thought experiment but in the end I didn't care. This wasn't smart. It was a slog.

Buddy read with Allison.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have various feelings. I need to ponder awhile
Still surprised this has not garnered more award-type attention

[Fraser Simons · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure how far I made it into this, but put it down because the matriarchal society it envisioned was deeply unconvincing after the first few chapters. Very cookie-cutter, let’s just reverse some of the socialization of women but also keep our dated notions around how men are socialized in a patriarchy, justifying it as some kind of biological incentive. How sexualization is abruptly and sustainably cringe-worthy as well.

For all that, I liked the prose work and would have read on, if not for issues that undermined every aspect introduced so far.

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you start reading a book, and can immediately tell how much attention was put into its craft. Usually, this occurs with authors who have been writing for some time. The Moon and the Other is one of those technically beautiful books.

Presented as an extended meditation on gender politics, it avoids the trap of simply inverting the status quo to create a misandrist reenaction of The Handmaid's Tale, and instead presents a lunar future in which colonies are social experiments in their own right. The cooperative, matriarchal Society of Cousins stands in opposition to the libertarian philosophies of the colonies around it, and this tension is used to criticize both.

"Women are no more able to make a just society. They simply fail differently."
-Afroza

As the book goes on, it becomes clear that the driving theme is less about men vs. women, and more about the politics of power. What action does a person owe their principles? Is it enough to settle for the best (or least-bad) in a sea of flawed options? How do yesterday's radicals and reformers become tomorrow's traditionalists? Where is the line between reform and revolution? When do external forces have the right to interfere?

"When preserving the status quo becomes the whole raison d'etre of a society, then change becomes treason."
-Erno

Kessel builds a surprisingly-believable world filled with living characters to serve as his cast and stage for these questions. It's not often that I've seen a world so fleshed-out as this, and it makes it easy to forgive some of the less-elegant moments.

I do have serious criticisms (under the spoiler tag for good reason), but after sitting on it for a couple of days I think they're mostly me-problems, and not book-problems.

1. The subplots weren't always well-handled (the whole thing with Val, for example.) The epilogue didn't actually help with this.
2. The epilogue... *sigh* ...I can see what it was trying to do, but it really didn't pull it off. So, the ending kind of stinks.
3. I had a lot of trouble with Mira. Although there are many female characters in this book, she's the only one we get to know from her own PoV and she's really not likable. On the other hand, she is consistent, so YMMV.
4. Sometimes the science doesn't quite work, but Kessel's good at handwaving what needs to be handwaved, instead of trying to explain it and failing.
5. The quantum scanner is fine, revealing that one of our primary PoV characters is actually a quantum duplicate 150 pages before the end is not, and duplicating him again for the epilogue is infuriating.
6. Sirius the uplifted-doberman. While there are comparisons to be drawn between uplifted animals and the aforementioned scanner/duplicate's ethical issues, Sirius' role in this book could largely have been replaced by a human, and I found the side-exposition necessary for his inclusion distracting.

For all that, though, this is probably some of the best and most attentive science-fiction writing I've read in a while, and I'm going to round it up to five-stars for scope and execution. Kessel seems to have bit off a bit more than he could chew, but only just, and the end result it well worth reading.

[Maed Between the Pages · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Audiobook.

Wowowow I hated this book. The beginning started out okay, if exceedingly info-dumpy, and the concepts this book promised to explore had me really interested: matriarchal and patriarchal societies co-existing as independent entities, hyper-intelligent dogs, polyamorous relationships, detailed political maneuverings, and advanced technology that allows humans to live on the moon.

Sounds so interesting right? Wrong. This read like an extremely dry textbook.
There were so many characters that I would often confuse them for one another and there was this very frustrating habit of having a character who was off-handedly mentioned earlier in the book suddenly entering the picture as if we are supposed to remember who they were. The character work itself was also extremely flat. I didn't care about any of them and their motivations seemed to flip-flop all over the place or change on a whim so I could never get a grasp on what their actual goals were. The characters were also really terrible to each other and backstabbed each other all the time so the friendships seems fake even when the author was trying to tell me they were genuine.

The technological aspects of this book were such cool concepts, but I felt like NONE of them were explored in an interesting way. It was basically info-dump after info-dump with almost no showing. Just telling. The beginning of the book opened with the main character actually using some of the technology for his job and having the readers experience it first hand...that was great! But that style of world-building is almost never used again. We're simply told everything after that. It was so disappointing.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was the way anything sexual was handled in this book. I liked how the author made it clear that sexual relations would be handled differently under a matriarchal society, but I didn't like the exploration of that concept. I was initially thrown off when the main female characters are all introduced to us for the first time in a sexual situation whereas none of the main male characters were. It just felt...icky. I also found the moments of intimacy to come at extremely awkward times where the two characters have no business doing the nasty ("Oh hey I haven't seen you in 20 years and I kind of hate you but...guess we should bang for no reason.") Also there was a scene where dead bodies are strewn everywhere and the narrator thought it was necessary to describe MULTIPLE dead bodies as having erections. Why. Why the fuck did I need to know that?

Anyway, I'm going to cut myself off here. I save 1 star reviews for books that make me angry, but I gave this book an extra 0.5 stars because there were a few moments where the political machinations or technological ideas were interesting.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the longest audiobook I’ve listened to thus far and selected by length, because why spend an audible credit on a short book where you can get one that lasts for walk after walk after walk…But really I didn’t just choose the book for its length. The main attraction was a premise, I love the sort of thinking person science fiction that relies heavily on world building and sociopolitical structure interplay as oppose to wham bam shoot ‘em up in space sort of thing. And on that account The Moon and The Other delivered gloriously. In fact, it featured some of the most elaborate not just world, but society building in recent literature I’ve read. The author’s version of the 22nd century Moon is spectacularly detailed, meticulously thought out and planned out and complex and just…complete in every way. And Society of Cousins, the Lunar Matriarchy on the brink of collapse, is in every way as authentic and well crafted of an attempted utopia as they come. And of course, like every utopia, it can’t last. In fact the internecine clashes are tearing at the seams from many directions from both male and female members of the society. So that’s what the book’s basically about, all the intrigues and machinations and characters and their motivations and actions, it’s all very elaborate and accordingly bulky and yet, it’s all mostly muscle with lo to no fat. There’s simply a lot going on and it requires the page count. This was somewhat different from my usual audio selections, it required a lot more attention for one thing, but it was very enjoyable and the narrator did a very good job. Mainly I’m just blown away by the author’s creativity and imagination. Very glad to have found it, this book has entertained me on many walks and bike rides. Science fiction fans with patience for 600 page novels would love this one. Recommended.

[Te · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was painful. I picked it up because of the excellent reviews it received, but while it has a lot of great ideas within it? The execution is terrible.

First and foremost is the fact that Kessel is yet another male writer who hasn't figured out how to craft female characters so they read like people, as opposed to two-dimensional signboards pointing readers helpfully to the plot-points the author desperately wants us to follow.

Beyond that is the fact that the humor almost universally falls flat -- at least for my tastes; it tends to be the sort of satire which asks the reader to laugh at political straw-men, as opposed to actual targets.

Beyond *that* is the fact that the male characters are just so *terribly* misunderstood by the women in their lives, and they've had it *so* hard, and won't anyone feel for them? Won't anyone *please*?

This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself if the women in question were *people*, but, again, they were walking tropes rather than anything with any *life* to it.

Skip this.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably 3.5-4 stars. This book was favorably compared to The Dispossessed and The Handmaids Tale. For me it definitely wasn't in the same territory as The Dispossessed, which I thought was amazing, but it is a solid book with a setting that reminded me of Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. The world-building and the characters were all strong in this book. The various conflicts and their resolutions were a bit lacking for me. The book just kinda ended, which is primarily what dropped my overall rating for the book.

I love the title and the cover art, which is why I even picked this book up and bought it at the book store, never having heard of it nor the author.

[Readersaurus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book 130 pages, but the writing style and I just did not find a way to make friends. Great setting, great concept, boring, boring, boring.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

In John Kessel’s new novel, the Moon of 2149 hosts twenty-seven different colonies that support 3.2 million people. Each colony is principled on different political and social values, but bound to the whole through complex economic trade and scientific interdependencies. AIs are commonplace, as is genetic engineering, potent anti-aging tech, nano-solutions to a variety of problems, and even, though frowned upon in some quarters, uplifted animals, such as dogs and monkeys. And of course, all of the engineering and sustainability innovations that make long-term existence within Moon domes possible.

In this tale of two colonies, Persepolis and the Society of Cousins, we follow the complex and subtly interwoven stories of four main characters: Erno, Mira, Carey and Amestris. For long stretches of the book, these four threads resolve into two, with the four characters above entangled in romantic relationships, but we remain privy to four distinct points of view throughout, which makes for fascinating reading. The plots are propelled forward by the protagonists’ various ambitions: seeking economic improvement, assuming parental responsibility for a teenaged boy, rebelling against a wealthy patriarch, atoning for past sins, and so on and so forth. Persepolis, the Moon’s largest, most populous colony, where status rises with depth, is also its richest; founded by utopians harkening back to a pre-Islam Iran, it is organized around a secular government and boasts immense luxury as well as painful socio-economic stratification. Meanwhile, Fowler’s Society of Cousins is a more radical experiment in matriarchal empowerment, adhering to a completely different set of mores wherein status and comfort flow from assumed gender roles rather than purchasing power. But within each of these colonies various sub-factions work to interrogate and test the stability of their adopted models. The Society of Cousins, in particular, is subjected to great stress at the hands of Persepolis and a greater coalition, and the possibilities of terrorism and revolution loom ever-near. Kessel has discussed how the Society of Cousins is modeled after the social protocols of bonobos, where sex is common coin and females band together to prevent male domination, while Persepolis is modeled after the more familiar society of chimps. The clash between these two systems is inherently compelling, but Kessel skillfully delves beyond the obvious and explores nuances of all sorts. By concretely illustrating the challenges and deviations from their ideals, Kessel makes his colonies fully believable.

The book is rich with incident, but even richer in sophisticated characterization, sumptuous literary allusion, political discourse, and an almost invisible but consistent grounding in scientific plausibility (with one significant leap towards the story’s explosive denouement). Kessel’s scientific extrapolations permeate the novel’s backdrop with exquisitely sustained thoughtfulness and rigor. Yet in many ways, this is a novel of manners, and part of its beauty is the way it artfully balances both sides of any given equation. One of the novel’s main themes is that of finding one’s place and attempting to understand the Other. Gender questions contribute significantly. What are masculinity and manliness in a post-feminist world? “The idea that gender is entirely a construction was demolished a century ago,” says one character. “No matter how it expresses, it’s in our genes. To deny the reality of the billions who devoted their lives to being ‘male’ or ‘female’ is inhumane. Are men and women myths?” Another asks: “What is a man? Is a man just a woman who can’t bear children? I think our answers to these questions have been impoverished.” No matter what side you fall on, gender relations will always be tricky, because, as we’re told early on, “Difference means persecution. Always true, anywhere you go.” The Other also manifests in the truly non-human intelligences of those uplifted animals I mentioned before. One of them, a canine reporter named Sirius, plays a central role. Time and again caution is heeded regarding assumptions: “The more Erno had gotten to know the dog, the less he understood him.”

Another major theme, closely connected to the first, is communication. When the novel kicks off with Erno in exile, he reflects on the importance of language: “Each shift enlarged his hoard of workplace idioms, of terms necessary to carry on a political conversation, of pickup lines—even of ways to express his feelings.” Later, he muses that, “Poetry was all he had.” Balancing this, the limitations of conventional narrative are addressed in at least two ways: by using non-traditional narrative means (such as poetry fragments, song lyrics, report extracts, forum board messages, and video interviews) to convey information to the reader, and by explicitly addressing the distortions of fiction in the novel’s wistful closing chapter. Connected to all this is the way the media generally exploits its audience: “The news lives on feeding viewers’ paranoia.” We also get compelling debate around the importance of transparency pertaining to scientific research, another fundamental way of communicating. And of course the novel’s erotic interludes and sexual escapades are fundamentally about attempting to connect (or manipulate) someone else, and are never simplified for our benefit (e.g. “It took a topologist to keep track of the ever-changing romantic geometry of her inner circle”).

The weight of the past, and the appeal and dangers of reinventing oneself, comprise a third significant thematic strand. For example, when Erno discovers that Amestris had once been a pianist, he reflects: “It made him sad. She had never said one word to him about this hidden career. There was no piano in their apartment, hardly any music at all.” Later, a different character chastises himself for not realizing that part of his history “would not remain hidden in his past, yet its resurfacing infuriated him.” Perhaps the most succinct statement of this idea may be: “Every present moment was colored by the years that had come before.” The outer surface of the Moon, with its “dust pitted by a billion years of micrometeorite impacts,” is a perfect environment to explore the notion of an uncannily preserved past, and its almost asphyxiating effect on the future.

“You know that we can never avoid the status games,” observes Hypatia Camillesdaughter. Indeed, and John Kessel’s phenomenal novelistic achievement, informed by years of lunar, anthropological, and historical research, contains as much of the “wit, ingenuity in concealing motives, and complex status games” as Erno attributes to Persian poetry in the novel’s opening chapter. The Moon and the Other is at times slow paced, but even then it glides gracefully through a “ta’arof dance of question and answer, compliment and self-deprecation,” irresistibly appealing to our intelligence and visionary capacity as readers to delve into perennial questions of self and existential meaning. I think it’s one of the best science fiction novels of the last twenty years.

[Deidra (ShadeTreeReads) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 of 5 stars because it had potential.
Whew. I really did end up forcing myself to finish this book. I started out only reading it physically. Was hybrid reading it for 40-60% and then I finished by listening to the audiobook. We are thankful for audiobooks, mmkay!? There's no way I would have been able to finish it otherwise.

First of all, it started out great! Kessel introduced us to life on the Moon and Persepolis along with some social commentary and I thought I needed to buckle up for the ride. But no. I kept going through a cycle of "this is an intriguing topic that I hope is discussed further" to "why am I still reading this?" to "who is this character?" to "oh there's mention of the topic again...maybe we'll get more" allllll through 500+ pages and over 10 hours of an audiobook. The portion(s) I actually liked was when botany in zero-gravity and biomedical engineering were brought up. But we definitely didn't get enough of that. Also, there was a talking dog for some reason? Uplifted animals were a thing but the one we met wasn't happy with his position/situation in life on the Moon so what even was the point? That ending was soooo on the front row of the Hot Mess Express. Also...why was it the way it was? Why were erections noted when the shit was hitting the actual fan and dead bodies were everywhere?! I want my time back at this point.

Overall, I won't recommend this book. It had a ton of potential but the execution irked my nerves to the core.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally compelling and the characters were very real. Their obstacles and missteps were gut-wrenching rather than cathartic (always a sign I've bought in to their personhood). The societies were complex and challenging and appealing and delightful and delightfully awful. A bit reminiscent of both KSR and John Brunner, not derivative, more of a family resemblance. Overall, A+, would read again.

I was uncomfortable around some of the stuff about trans people in the book (fairly meta/nitpicking stuff, not the one more-than-scenery trans character, Cleo, who was pretty great, nor the general political situation, which was part of the world-building and mostly made sense). However, I'm not sure if the particular things that bothered me were deliberately grating and uncomfortable, and the author "gets it" and is figuring out some stuff - this would make sense considering how much of the book was grating and uncomfortable in ways that clearly *were* well-informed, and thus powerful - or accidentally so due to not entirely getting it (perhaps because the roots of this story go back to the 90s) and being oblivious to how grating it was. I sort of suspect the latter because a) it seems unlikely that all the stressful gender stuff to do with male and female and masculinity and femininity would be so well-done through my eyes, but not this part, if this part was on purpose too, and b) I am usually totally down for different social constructions of gender in my sf and get seriously cranky when people misread (IMO) such challenging constructions as transphobic. It could also be in the middle of those two scenarios, and most likely is? Whichever, the reason it bothered me is because it took me out of the story whenever I got bugged, and into wondering about John Kessel and whether a conversation with him about the frustrating stuff would leave me happier with the stuff and more appreciative of the author, or super-frustrated with his blinders in ways that I often run into as a trans and genderfluid person, even among people who are otherwise generally fabulous. Point being, I just don't like being dropped out of my suspension of disbelief like that! Especially when it's such a cracking good story!!!!!!!!!! I don't want to be thinking "mm, maybe the author should've run this paragraph by a few actual trans people," instead of thinking about what's happening. And then wondering whether I'm being oversensitive or oblivious myself, or wrong-headed in my assumptions. And then etc. It's the tiresome flavor of "this book made me think hard" instead of the invigorating kind. (Overall, this book is far more full of the invigorating kind, thank goodness!)

Be that as it may, I'd so much rather see people, especially incredibly talented people, trying-with-solid-intent to make the humanity in their stories more like actual humanity, and mostly getting it right, but vexing me sometimes, than not trying at all because they're afraid of screwing up. Mostly getting it right is a joy to read even when it isn't a joy to read. You know?

Anyway, I recommend the book, it's lovely. In addition to what I've already praised, it's got lots of brilliant bits of writing and dialogue and a marvelous playfulness that keeps it from being bleak.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would say this book rates a 4.5/5. I did take a long break between the book's first and second halves, but I chalk that up more to my own distractions than any shortcoming in the book. I haven't read any of Kessel's other work, but I did hear him give a good reading of the early pages. In The Moon and the Other he does a great job of building the lunar world (and also dropping in occasional--and occasionally funny--references to Earth) that has enough of our world to feel familiar (especially the Fight Club reference) and enough new elements to feel exciting. The number of characters is notable, but not overwhelming, and the length doesn't feel saddled down with dead weight. Towards the end the narrative style shifts to provide multiple perspectives of situations, and I thought it was really effective at building tension.

There is a lot of grey in this book, with just about all of the characters not easily falling into a "good" or "bad" category. It presents a range of viewpoints on subjects like patriarchy, scientific inquiry, and personhood, and I think it would be a really great book to teach or read in a really dedicated book club. I'm not very familiar with current sci-fi, but I would venture to guess that this is a great example of it.

[Everdeen Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Moon and the Other (Saga), John Kessel has laid out his vision in an irresistibly entertaining way. Set in the 22nd century, the novel follows a man and a woman in two opposing cities on the moon. In the Society of Cousins, men give up the right to vote in exchange for an elevated and pampered status where they show off their skills as artists, athletes and lovers. The Society’s rival, Persepolis, is a city with patriarchal power structures more reflective of our own. The Society is deemed a threat by all the patriarchal cities around it, and a committee is created to investigate the status of men — and potentially reveal secret weaponry created by a female scientist. Don’t let the lofty premise dissuade you. “The Moon and the Other” is funny, sexy and charming, and its characters are nuanced and relatable. Kessel has written a book about ideologies taken to extremes, but also about how a person of character — a hero — is created.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book- the world-building is very believable, the characters are complex and interesting, and I never lost interest. It's a treat to read a book about different styles of government, especially when they involve gender, that isn't preachy or obvious.

[Odo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5.0