Robert Heinlein Experience: ‘Have Space Suit – Will Travel’

The Story: Clifford “Kip” Russell is your average, rural-born American teenage boy with aspirations for something more in life. What, exactly, is that “magis”? Why, a trip to the Moon. He craves it, dreams about it, wishes upon magical stars for it. The kid is the definition of a Space Cadet, head perpetually in the clouds with thoughts of space stations, space ships, and space women.

Thus, when a local Soap Company hosts a contest to see who can develop their next big marketing slogan, with the grand prize being a round trip to the Lunar Base (because in the future, Dove and Irish Spring will replace Virgin Galactic as the bat-shit crazy entrepreneurs of space flight), Kip mails off over five thousand entries in hopes of becoming the first person to prove the way to fix the current postal service is the proper application of spam filters. Alas, dear Clifford only wins the consolation prize: Oscar, a decommissioned military space suit. Kip, ever the eager beaver, rebuilds Oscar into working order, which is a good thing considering he’s about to be abducted by aliens.

Suddenly, Kip’s evening backyard walk within Oscar becomes a race across the stars with a remarkably smart 10 year old girl named Peewee, a small lemur like creature dubbed Mother Thing, and the evil Wormface, with the very future of humanity at stake. Other races have become quite concerned with humanity’s rapid growth despite their barbaric behavior, and it’s up to Kip, Peewee, Mother Thing, a Roman Legionnaire, and a cave man to save Earth from being rotated OUT OF THIS PLANE OF EXISTENCE. How’s that for overreacting?

Loudest Heinlein-ism(s): Coming of Age, DONE RIGHT.

This is something I’ve only recently started to pick up on in Heinlein’s earlier “juvenile novels.” As seen in “Rocket Ship Galileo,” “Podkayne of Mars,” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” Heinlein has a very pronounced method of developing his teens into to adults. They all crave knowledge, have peculiarly supportive parents, are quite hands-on and resourceful, and almost always struggle early on with societal interactions. Kip is a loner who spends most of his days in his tool shed monkeying around with some new gizmo, or studying textbooks of increasing difficulty given to him by his “not-all-that-he-seems” father. He struggles to find the proper way to deal with the neighborhood bully, and has his mind filled with the unsure thoughts of his future.

Then, out of the blue, he finds himself forced to play verbal judo with a kid genius a decade his junior and become her guardian. Finally, by the end of the novel, he is tasked with saving the entirety of Earth from certain destruction. Kip takes all of this in stride, quickly accepting and adapting to the situation at hand, no matter how ridiculous it is. When an emergency beacon needs to be placed on the freezing surface of Pluto, Kip swallows hard, slaps on Oscar’s helmet, and gets to work. When Peewee runs out of oxygen well short of any renewable source, Kip calmly goes McGyver on his own suit and pumps oxygen over to his bite-sized companion. Heck, when the kid is slammed face-to-face with a way out of his time and element disgruntled Roman named Iunio, Kip reaches deep down for his Latin training and tries to befriend the man without stopping too long to consider why the heck the Roman was there in the first place. Thus, Heinlein takes his unsure, brilliant teen and makes him a man ready to command his future.

The Verdict: I’ve done fairly well at avoiding immediate “quality” comparisons to other novels in the “Heinlein Experience.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t help myself on this one. While “Have Space Suit – Will Travel” is a fun book, I feel like I’ve read this story before. Peewee is a younger, less confident version of Podkayne Fries, while Kip’s character is divided among the three boys in “Rocket Ship Galileo,” right down to the sense of civic duty all four boys feel towards their families and fellow Earthlings. More importantly, those books’ characters are more interesting.

Additionally, there are just some weird things going on in this book. The book takes a wild turn at Albequerque for the final fifty pages, nonchalantly lobbing a Legionnaire into the plot and declaring that humans are not the direct descendants of cave men with little pomp and circumstance. Also, Kip’s got a strange relationship with his space suit, often talking to Oscar and answering in Oscar’s voice. While other characters notice this, there isn’t much concern for Kip’s mental well-being nor is this bizarre tendency addressed again.

Lastly, there’s the aliens. Mother Thing, Wormface, and the slew of minor aliens thrown into one room in the final chapter just feel one dimensional. Compare these to the Martians of “Double Star” or the Venerians of “Podkayne of Mars” and you see a dynamic difference. I blame this largely on Heinlein’s different descriptive approaches. In the other two novels, Heinlein is very direct and succinct with his descriptions, whereas here Heinlein is deliberately vague, attempting to convey the broader notion of difficulties found in inter-specie relations (he refers directly to man’s understanding ignorance of a dog’s communication efforts and visa versa).

Nevertheless, “Have Space Suit – Will Travel” is a good “coming of age” novel. I don’t think anyone over the age of 14 will fall in love with it, but it contains enough of Heinlein’s magic to please fans of science fiction adventure pieces.

7 of 10 Peanuts