The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein, 1966)

(388 pages)

This ended up being an enjoyable read.

Residents of the Moon (called "Luna") mostly arrive via transport (think England -> Australia) or are descended from transportees; they work to supply grain to Earth; many freedoms as a practical matter but things are controlled by a Warden.  Lots of discussion of the way family structures evolved on the Moon.

Protagonist (Mannie) is a computer technician who services the main computer on the Moon; he decides to start "talking" to this computer ("Mike") and it turns out they strike up a friendship.  Mannie kind of accidentally gets tied up in a revolutionary plot (with Wyoming and the Professor), he successfully enlists Mike to help.

Some of this is interesting from the perspective of current AI discussions - how far can a computer go, how to set it up to perform this level of functionality, etc.

The revolution part was kind of annoying in that it sounds pretty much Leninist - the masses of the Moon's population viewed as not slightly interested in a revolt, they needed to be coaxed into action by better-knowing elites who manipulated them in the direction desired by the elites, constantly lying, propaganda etc. The justification for revolution is that the Moon's resources will be exhausted in a few decades under the system imposed from Earth. So that makes the actions of the elite revolutionaries feel less evil.

And fortunately in this case the revolutionary elites were made up of just a few folks who could have been philosopher-kings.

Story construction is pretty interesting throughout; the things the revolutionaries accomplish seem implausible but that's fine in service of a story; and they had Mike!

I liked the finish, how things ended up with Mike.