Mayday! Mayday! (Have Spacesuit Will Travel - Robert A. Heinlein)

Member Name: shroud

Product:	Have Spacesuit Will Travel - Robert A. Heinlein
Date:	10/01/08 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great read, good quality space opera in the pulp tradition. Easily obtained secondhand due to reprin

Disadvantages: in and out of print. Currently OUT, so second hand only at the moment

Written in 1958, this book was another of Robert Heinlein's books for the youth market, and sadly his last. Rather fascinatingly, Heinlein once more makes use of his engineering background, this time with pressurised suits, to add scientific realism to the book in a very informatively entertaining manner. The story revolves around a teenaged boy in his last year of high school. He lives in a small town and is being raised by his father, who is regarded by the locals to somewhat of an eccentric for his tinkering and philosophical ways. Kip desires nothing more than to get his chance to go into space, and pins his hope on a jingle he writes for a contest for Skyway Soap. Instead of the prize he hoped to win, a trip into space, he is instead awarded an obsolete, used model of spacesuit. Disappointed, he is encouraged and aided by several people in the town into restoring the suit into usable condition. Deciding his best chance to get into space is to go to university and study hard towards a space related career, he nonetheless decides to put the suit on one last time and go for a "space walk" in his back garden. One moment he is a teenaged boy larking about, surprised to hear a young girl's voice over his radio, and the next he is knocked out cold, awakening to discover he is the victim of an alien abduction by vicious alien space pirates. he is not alone, however, and his adventure, and learning about life, has only begun.

Heinlein once more delved into the genre of rip roaring space opera, and so provides the reader with alien "monsters" as well as benevolent aliens, each reflecting a characteristic of a cross piece of human behaviours and attitudes. More than just an adventure story with science thrown in, once more Heinlein gently forces the reader to consider what it is to be human, and humane, and to consider the impression we as a species may make someday should we ever encounter peoples from beyond our own system. Kip is a very likable fellow, and this work was very popular back in the day. It's influence was such that Kip's nickname for his spacesuit and his use of its radio, inspired the acronym for ham radio satellites.....Oscars (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), as well as inspiring the name of the Amateur radio satellite launched from the US Space station in 2006.....SuitSat. At times yearning, other times tragic, but always heroic and full of positive values, this book remains one of the best sci fi reads for the young adult market around. This is yet another book I passed a copy of to my own teenaged sons, and they have read it absolutely dog eared (I am just glad I did not give them the old original paperback I bought years ago at a secondhand shop!). Though written for the youth market, it is also still a good romp of a read for the adult pulp sci fi fan and a fascinating peek into our own near past.

Summary: Young Kip wins a old spacesuit in a contest, repairs it, and gets kidnapped by aliens