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Title: Have space suit--will travel by Robert A. Heinlein, Darrell Sweet ISBN: 0-345-26071-6 Publisher: Ballantine Pub. Date: 1977 Format: Paperback |
Average Customer Rating: 4.69 (74 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Relatively Well-Balanced
Comment: Robert A. Heinlein (author of "Starship Troopers," etc.) wrote this sci-fi novel that can be best be described as, well, well-balanced. Under its hood, the tale is basically a space opera, though it wears a hood of strong scientific reasoning. It does keep the reader hooked with its innocence and a strange sense of humor I've come to respect.
The main character is a high-school student named Clifford 'Kip' Russell, whose whimsical (read the first two pages, probably the most humorous in the book, and you'll see what I mean) and quite odd father has pushed him through his awkward education. (Footnote: The time period is strange, including obvious 50's elements -- Kip works as a soda jerk in a drug store -- but with technologically advanced portions, like moon tours and an evolved UN.) Ready to go to college, Kip instead yearns to see the moon. Entering in a soap contest, he devotes a large portion of his life to advertising Skyway Soap and receives a spacesuit. This suit leads to his kidnapping by an insidious space pirate. And so the adventure begins..
Accompanied by a bratty girl genius and a motherly Vegan (see "Barlowe's Guide to the Extraterrestrials"), the unlikely hero trudges 40 miles across the moon, gets drugged, spends a week in a dungeon, almost freezes to death and sees Vega and the place where the region's life began. I found a great deal of the story fascinating, from the lifestyle of the Vegans to the 1958 description of the moon and Pluto. The adventure comes to a close with a page-turning trial in which Kip must determine the fate of mankind and the ending is extremely weird.
The story may sound like a space fairy-tale, but plenty of science is packed in here (cosmology, mathematics, Roman history, and more about spacesuits than I'm sure you'll ever care to know -- during the Moon trek) but the way it's written (there is an unusual proliferance of the phrase, "I shut up," for example) will compel you back most of the time. One bad flaw: some pieces of the plot are never explained. How did the pirates take Tombaugh Station? Or, what exactly were the pirates' motives? Overall, though, you'll probably like this novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: A stellar novel
Comment: Have Space Suit - Will Travel, is an excellent example of Heinlein's juvenile works in his early career. The plot is deceptively simple. Clifford 'Kip' Russel is an average (but fairly bright) teenager who wins a second hand space suit in a contest. Through the influences of his father, and his own desire to visit the moon he educates himself and brings his dump-ready space suit up to operational readiness. Of course he becomes enmeshed in an interstellar plot filled with exotic life forms and intergalactic politics.
Like so many of Heinlein's novels this one draws you in with its adventure and accessible characters. As always, the plot is built upon a foundation of solid science and technology. It is a wonderful way to press knowledge on young people in a palatable format. I know it worked on me as a youngster.
One of the things I love about this book is its datedness. While it is nominally science fiction it provides a fascinating view of the life and culture of the 1950's. As is so often the case with science fiction they make drastically unrealistic leaps with their visions of the future, while society and its moral and political structures remain fixed as they were when the novel was written.
Despite its having been aimed for a pubescent audience, I find myself digging this one out to read at least once a year. I would highly recommend it to you as well.
Rating: 5
Summary: Dated SF that still works well.
Comment: Capsule Summary: Kip wants to go to the moon, but tickets are far too expensive. He enters a contest, and ALMOST wins the trip... but, instead, gets a spacesuit. His decision to keep the spacesuit and refurbish it is the catalyst that sends him on a literally Galaxy-spanning series of adventures, starting with an alien invasion and ending with the fate of the entire Earth resting in the balance!
Review: This, like Citizen of the Galaxy, is one of RAH's best "juvenile" novels. Unlike the latter, however, Have Spacesuit... retains the flavor of the era in which it was written; overall, Heinlein did not extrapolate much on the civilization of Kip's time and it is -- especially where Kip lives -- still a mirror of the 1950s, right down to the way in which television programs were promoted. This isn't really a failing of the book, as it's a useful sort of mirror to look at the past in, and other than that it isn't dated much. The prose reads smoothly, the characters are fun, and like so many other RAH juvenile heroes Kip has to THINK his way out of his problems.
This book also emphasizes one of Heinlein's favorite themes, which was that it was important for a man to get a broad AND deep education. Kip starts the book out drifting along through school -- bright as hell, but the schools he goes to aren't interested in pushing him. When he becomes obsessed with space, however, his father points out just how much he's going to have to know in order to get into any college that might possibly get him a spacegoing job, and Kip starts learning on his own. As it turns out, the wide-ranging subjects he learns -- ranging from pharmacy to Latin to orbital mechanics -- have essential application in his adventures across the Galaxy.
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Title: Tunnel in the Sky by ROBERT A. HEINLEIN ISBN: 0345353730 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 October, 1987 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein ISBN: 0345340396 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 June, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein ISBN: 0345342445 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 June, 1987 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein ISBN: 0345328116 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 June, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein ISBN: 0345324382 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 February, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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