The Star Beast
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 First Edition cover for The Star Beast |
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Scribner's |
| Released | 1954 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | Starman Jones |
| Followed by | Tunnel in the Sky |
The Star Beast is a 1954 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a high school senior who discovers that his late father's extra-terrestrial pet is more than it appears to be. The novel, somewhat abridged, was originally serialised in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (May, June, July 1954) as "Star Lummox" and then published in hardcover as part of the Scribner's Heinlein juveniles.
[edit] Plot summary
One of the ancestors of John Thomas Stuart XI had brought Lummox, the title character (presumably) home from an interstellar voyage. The pet he inherited has grown to gargantuan proportions; it ate a used Buick and (still worse) destroyed a neighbor's flowers. The situation came to a head when Lummox escaped from the back yard and wrought havoc across the city of Westville (ostensibly a future Colorado Springs). His mother wants him to get rid of it, and a court orders it destroyed.
Johnny's only alternative to seeing his pet destroyed is to sell his pet to a zoo. He intially agrees to do so, but quickly changes his mind. So early one morning, he runs away, riding on his talking pet's back. His girlfriend (a legal orphan, having divorced her parents) joins him and suggests bringing the beast back into town; they could hide it in a neighbor's greenhouse.
The rest of the novel deals with the discovery of the alien pet's true identity, and the diplomatic repercussions thereof. An awesomely powerful, heretofore unknown alien race appears and demands the return of a lost child of theirs. At first, no one associates Lummox, by now larger than an elephant and who talks at an elementary level, with these all-powerful strangers; but it turns out that Stuart's pet is the strangers' lost "princess". A deliciously ironic twist in the story is that from the perspective of the humans, the various John Stuarts had a long-lived pet, whom they took care of, but from the viewpoint of Lummox, she had raised generations of John Stuarts as a hobby — and had no intention of stopping. Raising John Stuarts was her primary interest, and she fully intended to keep doing so. This gives the human diplomats leverage to prevent the destruction of the Earth.
Heinlein's ability to show that appearance is sometimes not congruent with reality was never better than in this novel, and its ending makes it one of his better works. For supposedly juvenile fiction, it also manages a good touch on the cost of love and loyalty.
While Lummox is presumably the title character, it could just as easily be John Thomas--from Lummox's perspective.
[edit] Editions
All paperbacks and the SFBC edition omit page 148 of Chapter VIII, "The Sensible Thing to Do", in the original edition. (This omitted page also appears in the magazine serialisation.) In this chapter, Johnnie's rereads the entries in his great-grandfather's diary of how Lummox was found. Of significance on the omitted page is that
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- The diary skipped a couple of days; the Trail Blazer had made an emergency raise-ship and Assistant Powerman J. T. Stuart had been too busy to write. John Thomas knew why ... the negotiations opened so hopefully with the dominant race had failed ... no one knew why.
The rest of the page summarizes Johnnie's grandfather's family history, discussing the first John Thomas Stuart, who had retired as a sea captain. The history, as reprinted in the paperback and SFBC editions, then resumes with John Thomas Stuart, Junior.
[edit] External link
- The Star Beast publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
