| Have Space Suit — Will Travel | |
|---|---|
First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Robert A. Heinlein |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Heinlein juveniles |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Scribner's |
| Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | Citizen of the Galaxy |
Have Space Suit—Will Travel is a science fiction novel for young readers by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (August, September, October 1958) and published by Scribner's in hardcover in 1958 as the last of the Heinlein juveniles.
Heinlein made use of his engineering expertise to bring a sense of realism to the story; for a time during World War II, he was a civilian aeronautics engineer working at a laboratory where pressure suits were being developed for use at high altitudes.
Have Space Suit—Will Travel was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1959.[1]
Contents |
Clifford "Kip" Russell, a bright high school senior with an eccentric father, enters an advertising jingle writing contest for Skyway Soap, hoping to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Moon. He instead gets an obsolete, but genuine, used space suit. Though a few make fun of him, with the help of sympathetic townspeople, and using his own ingenuity and determination, Kip puts the suit (which he dubs "Oscar") back into working condition.
Kip wants to go into space; he reluctantly decides to return his space suit for a cash prize to help pay for college, but puts it on for one last walk. As he idly broadcasts on his radio, someone identifying herself as "Peewee" answers with a Mayday signal. He helps her home in on his location, and is shocked when a flying saucer lands practically on top of him. A young girl and an alien being (later identified as the "Mother Thing") debark, but all three are quickly captured and taken to the Moon.
Their alien kidnapper is nicknamed "Wormface" by Kip, who refers to the species as "Wormfaces". They are horrible-looking, vaguely anthropomorphic creatures who contemptuously refer to all others as "animals". Wormface has two human flunkies who assisted him in initially capturing the Mother Thing and Peewee, a preteen genius and the daughter of an eminent scientist. The Mother Thing speaks in what sounds to Kip like birdsong, with a few musical notations in the text giving a flavor of her language. However, Kip and Peewee have no trouble understanding her.
Kip, Peewee, and the Mother Thing try to escape to the human lunar base by hiking cross-country, but they are recaptured and taken to a more remote base on Pluto. Kip is thrown into a cell, later to be joined by the two human traitors, who have apparently outlived their usefulness. Before they later disappear, one mentions to Kip that his former employers eat humans.
The Mother Thing, meanwhile, makes herself useful to their captors by constructing advanced devices for them. In the process, she manages to steal enough parts to assemble a bomb and a transmitter. The bomb takes care of the most of the Wormfaces, but the Mother Thing freezes solid when she tries to set up the transmitter outside without a spacesuit. Kip nearly freezes to death himself while retrieving her body and activating the distress beacon, but help arrives almost instantly. It turns out that the Mother Thing is far hardier than Kip had suspected. She was not in danger; her body "would not permit" her cells to rupture. Kip, however, having suffered frostbite which would have required quadruple amputation if he were treated on Earth, requires some months of cryopreservation while the Mother Thing's people figure out to treat his injuries.
Kip and Peewee are transported to Vega 5, the Mother Thing's home planet. While Kip recuperates, "Prof Joe", a "professor thing", learns about Earth from Peewee and Kip. Once Kip is well, he, Peewee, and the Mother Thing travel to a planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, to face an intergalactic tribunal, composed of many species which have banded together, which decides whether new races pose a danger to its members.
The Wormfaces are put on trial first. They promise to annihilate all other species, and are judged to be dangerous. Their planet is rotated out of three-dimensional space without their star, most likely to freeze—though the authorities do not bar them from finding a way to survive.
Then it is humanity's turn, as represented by Peewee, Kip, Iunio (a Roman centurion of the Legio VI Victrix), and a Neanderthal man. The tribunal decides that the Neanderthal is from another species, but only three samples are required. Iunio proves belligerent but brave in offering to fight in his own self-defense. Peewee's and Kip's secretly recorded remarks are then admitted into evidence. In humanity's defense, Kip makes a stirring speech, quoting from Shakespeare's The Tempest and citing the Parthenon as a work of art. The Mother Thing and a representative of another race argue that the short-lived species are essentially children who should be granted more time to learn and grow. The judge decides to postpone judgment, with a re-evaluation to be done in "a dozen" half-lives of radium.
Kip and Peewee are returned to Earth with devices and equations provided by the Vegans. Kip passes the information along to Professor Reisfeld, Peewee's father and a world-renowned synthesist (a generalist who makes sense of what more specialized scientists discover). After listening to Kip and Peewee's story, Reisfeld arranges a full scholarship for Kip at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Kip wants to study engineering and spacesuit design.
Like Heinlein's other juveniles, Have Space Suit—Will Travel is a well-constructed adventure story, but compared to many of them, it takes a more philosophical approach, examining what is noble and ignoble about the human race through a varied cast of characters that includes humans, aliens, and even a cave-man. The "What is man?" theme is also explored in another of his juveniles, The Star Beast, but there the tone is more comic and ironic, whereas Have Space Suit—Will Travel is heroic, and sometimes even tragic.
A further theme, familiar in many Heinlein novels and directed to the age group the novel targets, is the notion that vast journeys begin with but a single step. Kip wants to go to the Moon "right now", but he is taught that while luck may happen, laying the groundwork and being prepared is better.
The story is very much a coming-of-age story, and coincides with Kip's social maturity. At the start of the novel, Kip is a loner, with few apparent close friends—no one helps him with Oscar, and the only named contemporary is an antagonist. By the end of the novel, Kip has not only identified with, and advocated for, the human race, but has the gumption to stand up to a bully and throw a milkshake in his face.
As in a number of other Heinlein novels, Spacesuit winds up in a Deus ex Machina ending in which a vastly superior Being, or race of beings, appears to set everything right, and save the protagonist and humanity from certain death and seemingly inescapable threat. Interestingly, there is a suggestion in the novel that humanity itself is a lost offshoot of what are called the Old Race, a main contributor to the collected galactic civilization which saves humanity from the aliens.
An amateur radio satellite, dubbed SuitSat, was launched from the International Space Station in February 2006. This was an obsolete space suit with a ham radio transmitter inside it. Since the advent of ham satellites in 1969, each has always been known as Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio – OSCAR.
In 2010 it was announced that Star Trek writer Harry Kloor had written a script for a potential film adaptation and optioned rights to a potential film. The film is expected to come out in 2013.[2][3]
The cover for one of the French editions (Presses Pocket, 1978) is by notable science fiction illustrator Jean-Claude Mézières