Have Space Suit -- Will Travel

[marycatelli]

Have Space Suit -- Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

I am certain I read this when I was a teenager.  I'm not certain I've read it since.  It has a certain degree of retro-charm:  our story opens with our hero peeved that a person can just put down money and go to the Moon, but Kip still uses a slide-rule.

But he tries to win a contest where the grand prize is a trip to the Moon, and as a consolation prize, he gets a space suit, which he brings up to spec, dubbing it Oscar.  The night before he goes to sell it back to the company for his first year of college's tuition, he goes for a walk with it.  And is hailed on the radio, which results in a flying saucer nearly landing on him.  Well, not quite a saucer -- more sphere-ish.  Shortly thereafter, he's abducted, along with Peewee, a little girl who was on that ship, and Mother Thing, an alien different from the one that abducted all three of them.

That is where the adventure begins.  It involves two treks across barren surfaces, of which the much shorter one is the more difficult -- though neither one is easy -- a rope that shatters, a language like birdsong, a doll that a little girl can't go to sleep without, prolonged conversations with Oscar, two human traitors, doing math without slide rules, and many discoveries.

Still interesting in many ways.

Comments

[twasadark.livejournal.com]

That was the first sci fi book I ever read. I remember it fondly!

[marycatelli]

I certainly remembered it well. In parts.