Many New Wave (around 1964-1983) sc-fi stories are special. Very often the focus not so much on the technical innovations or new concepts. They rather transpose real human circumstances into the future to amplify them or observe them under cleaner conditions like a microscope does.

The Dispossessed (a later new wave age novel, that I also reviewed recently) is very much like that. But the all time classic "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is even more so. The whole story is not so much about the moon or living on the moon, this is just a side effect. The main theme is revolution and libertarian ideas.

Heinlein describes the mechanics of revolutionary movements very precisely. You could never observe it in such detail in real life, but the mechanics become much clearer this way. Therefore the book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how revolutions work.

This novel as an early representative of the New Wave might be one of the prototypes for such social topics. Others followed. Some with more or less of a mic between present time social topics and future tech. Examples that come to my mind that surely picked up the theme are Asimovs Robot series (using robots to get behind the essence of humanity) or Philip K. Dicks Man in the High Castle (using an alternative history to explore the mechanics of fascism).

But on the other hand, probably the pure tech stories just didn't age so well and thus got more and more removed from the reading lists. Heinlen's technical parts for example are partly very up to date (he describes the concept of AI very precisely) and outdated (looking at the communication and data transfer technology). Thus in some ways, we live in a future much more phantastic than the NEw Wave authors could imagine.