Have Space Suit Will Travel by Robert Heinlein

I "read" this one this weekend on my way to and from the Twin Cities for a yoga workshop. I'm really enjoying these books on tape, what a great way to do something while driving!

I’ve started and erased this review a couple of times now. I just couldn’t think of what I wanted to say about Have Space Suit. I finally decided I needed to break it into two parts - one, the story itself and two, Heinlein’s tirade against society.

Have Space Suit Will Travel is set in the 1950's and is one of his juvenile pieces of literature. Kip Russell dreams of going to the stars, and when Skyway Soap has a contest for best lingo with the prize being a trip to the Moon, Kip collects and submits 5000 entries. He doesn’t win the trip to the moon, but a space suit instead. If he returns the space suit to Goodyear by September, he will receive $500. But Kip upgrades and fixes said suit over the summer and when out on a walk on night (in the suit) is abducted by aliens.

Kip fins himself on one heck of a space adventure involving “wormfaces”, the Mother-Thing, and his genius side-kick, 10 year old PeeWee. He finds himself on the Moon, Pluto and eventually beyond the Milky Way Galaxy in front of a galactic court to defend the human race. It was this part of the story that was fun and adventurous. I didn’t perceive this as a “coming of age” book that is so common in scifi and fantasy, but just a light space opera aimed at young adults.

Where the book became annoying was Heinlein’s tirades against the states educational system. He denigrates the public education system (one of his common themes in his books), and Kip is smart enough to teach himself advanced mathematics, geometry and physics but yet must “settle” for going to the local state (read - inadequate) college because he isn’t good enough to get into MIT. I do get tired of Heinlein’s diatribes against the ills of 1950's society (Starship Troopers is another fine example - great book, hidden agenda). But if it really bothered me, I wouldn’t be reading Heinlein.

The other issue I had with the story were the long, and I do mean long, graphic descriptions of how a space suit works, or Kip describing in mathematical terms how he is going to escape (again, part of Heinlein’s soapbox), and so on. Perhaps I’ve become rather shallow and jaded, but if I were a young adult, this book would probably bore the heck out of me. As an adult, I could appreciate (I didn't say 'like') his social commentary and what he was trying to get across.