Horatius at the Bridge in the Movie Darkest Hour

In the movie "Darkest Hour", Winston Churchill is depicted as reciting a part of the poem "Horatius at the Bridge", by Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay.  Here are the lines quoted in the movie (stanzas 217 to 224):

Then out spake brave Horatius,   
  The Captain of the gate:   
“To every man upon this earth   
  Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better   
  Than facing fearful odds   
For the ashes of his fathers   
  And the temples of his gods,

This is the spirit of heroism.

Robert

Science Fiction: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein when I was in middle-school or high school.  It won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel in 1967.  I remembered it fondly so I decided to read it this summer.   It was a good story, well paced with good action.  What many people dislike about the book is the pidgin English used by the narrator, Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician. 

Emergent Behavior
What is very timely about the book is the master computer for the lunar colony becoming sentient, self-aware.  The idea is that there were so many interconnected circuits that the massive main-frame computer became alive and conversed with the computer technician, who named it Mike.  This book came out in 1966, but emergent behavior, spontaneous order, and self-organization are contemporary topics.   The idea of computer networks becoming self-aware also appears in the works of Orson Scott Card as the character Jane, who emerged as a sentient creature from a vast communications network.  Complex communications systems today are all linked to computers, so again it is a vast computer network coming alive.  I wonder if The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the first novel to develop a sentient computer network as a character.

Game Theory
When the people of the lunar colony start talking about revolution, the Prof (their old revolutionary) mentions "... classic authorities such as Clausewitz, Guevara, Morgenstern, Machiavelli ..." (page 88). I had to look up Morgenstern.  Here is what I found:  Oskar Morgenstern, who with John von Neumann wrote Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1943.  Yes, while the entire world was at war they wrote a book on game theory.  Wow.  I did not know that.  So I bought the book and started reading it.  I say that if you do not have a mathematics degree you might stay away from this particular book.  Nevertheless, I am pleased when I read a book that broadens my mind.

Liberty Caps
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress also mentions "liberty caps."  I had to look that up as well.  This is also called a Phrygian cap.   It was a soft cap given to a Roman slave upon emancipation.  The French used it in their Revolution.  It appears in the seal of the U.S. Senate.  I bought a red liberty cap from Amazon, but a friend ridiculed me saying it looked more pink than red.  Well, I checked the color and it does look like the photo in the Amazon product page, so I will ask other friends what they think.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress did make me think about liberty and the struggle for freedom. I am very glad I read this book again.