Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

In my early teens I read science fiction by the truckload, and while I remember many of the "classics" fairly well, I remember the plot, the characters and the pivotal moments of "Have Space Suit Will Travel" in some detail.

That's testament to how much fun this "Young Adult" novel from Heinlein stuck with me. I'd recommend it to any kid, though I'd have to read it again to see if it's aged in the interim. ( )

One of my favourite Heinlein novels. The story is engaging, interesting, amusing, intelligent, and "sweet". A highly intelligent and technically talented young man, Kip Russell, restores a space suit he won in a contest.

Wearing the suit (a test walk) he is kidnapped by an even younger girl (who is even smarter than he is), flying a "flying saucer", which she stole from a group of bad, advanced aliens, who are hiding on the Moon, who wish to invade the Earth, and had kidnapped her, whom she had escaped from. They are both re-captured by these aliens (or at least their human lackeys), returned to the Moon, and then on to Pluto.

The two youngsters manage to escape again, with the help of a good, advanced alien (the mother thing), who then transports them to a planet orbiting Vega, then to the Small Magellanic Cloud (!!!). Here both the bad aliens and then humans are put on trial. The bad guys are exterminated (Heinlein), but humanity is given a C pass, to be examined again to determine if that are a threat. From here out young heroes return to the Earth.

A fantastical story, made real by Heinlein's superb writing ability, and his talent for making a story come to life. I recall the first time I read the novel, I could picture myself on that long, hard, march across the Luna surface. Great stuff. ( )

Clifford "Kip" Russell wanted nothing more than to go to the moon. Winning a used space suit in Skyway Soap's slogan contest only encouraged his dream. With a head for mathematics and engineering, Kip repaired and enhanced his space suit, nicknamed "Oscar". While taking Oscar for a field test, Kip talks to himself over the radio that he had installed in the helmet. He is shocked when another voice answers!

Soon, Kip finds himself guiding a space ship to a tumultuous landing almost directly on top of him. Immediately after, another similar vessel lands beside it. From the first ship, a strange alien creature emerges followed by a small space-suited human. The alien quickly tumbles to the ground. When Kip runs to its aid, he is struck from behind and knocked unconscious.

Later, he awakens aboard one of the vessels on its way to the moon. He finds himself imprisoned with a 10-year-old girl named Patricia aka Peewee. She is a prodigy, but emotionally immature and sometimes frustrating. Her best friend is a rag doll named Madame Pompadour. Kip learns that they've been captured by a beastly alien criminal who, during an interrogation, Kip comes to call Wormface. The criminal and his human henchmen have also kidnapped a benevolent alien that Peewee had come to know as the Mother Thing. This was the creature that Kip had tried to help before being assaulted.

In a series of adventures that spans the galaxy--from Earth to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and back--Kip, Peewee and the Mother Thing explore the surface of the moon and narrowly escape Wormface's secret base on Pluto, nearly at the cost of Kip's life. On Delta Vega, Mother Thing's home planet, Kip is nursed back to health just in time for a trip to Lanador, a planet located in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. There, Wormface and others of his race will be put on trial, but there is something else that Mother Thing cannot reveal.

On Lanador, Kip and Peewee meet two other human "prisoners", a cave-man and a Roman soldier named Iunio. The following day, all four are brought to a vast courtroom of the "Three Galaxies". The Wormface aliens are tried for their crimes...and then the human race itself comes under the microscope with Kip, Pewee, and Iunio as representatives for Earth. The decision: allow the human race to progress or destroy them immediately?

Have Spacesuit—Will Travel is counted among "the Heinlein juveniles", one of a number of books that Heinlein wrote between 1939 and 1958. Heinlein had been rather successful in expressing advanced and enlightened ideas not often found in adolescent stories of the time. I enjoyed Have Spacesuit—Will Travel immensely. It contained a wonderful mix of fast-paced storytelling, fun characters and scientific facts. The science fiction is just that, of course, but the human characters of the story engage in detailed exercises of astronomical calculations and practical engineering that, in modern novels, might be stultifying, but I enjoyed a dose of old-fashioned SF. ( )

""
You see, I had this space suit.
How it happened was this way:
“Dad,” I said, “I want to go to the Moon.”
“Certainly,” he answered and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, which he must know by heart.
I said, “Dad, please! I’m serious.”
This time he closed the book on a finger and said gently, “I said it was all right. Go ahead.”
“Yes ... but how?”
“Eh?” He looked mildly surprised. “Why, that’s your problem, Clifford."
""

This is what got me hooked - well this and the fact that I hadn't read any Heinlein. This is perhaps not the best book to judge him by, considering it is part of his books written for a younger audience, but I liked it and I shall be reading more by him in the future.
It reads like the dream of a young kid coming true - which it is - and more than that, it's worded and described as seen through his eyes. This tone is a perfect fit as he goes through some incredible adventures that might sound like the work of a youngster's crazy imagination. And credit to Heinlein, he does a good job at that, considering he was 50ish when he wrote it in 1958. Here and there it shows its age and the science is a bit iffy, but it quickly goes so far into the "future" that it doesn't really matter anymore.
I liked the characters, they had a lot of personality (even if they fall into somewhat predictable categories) and the whole book was a funny, action packed and very entertaining romp. ( )

This is one of Heinlein's "juveniles"--books written for and about teen boys. In this one Kip Russell is trying out a space suit in his back yard when a flying saucer lands--and he gets kidnapped. I like Kip, Peewee, the eleven year old girl genius, and the "Mother Thing" alien they encounter in their adventures. Despite it's inclusion by David Pringle in his list of 100 Best Science Fiction Novels, not one of Heinlein's more remarkable tales. It doesn't have one of the more imaginative premise featured in his books and doesn't heft any philosophical weight like his adult novels. I do find amusing the parallels between the tribunal at the end of the book and Q's trial of humanity in the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot though. This is basically a fun romp, an entertaining and very readable book. ( )