Have Spacesuit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein: #tbt review

Kip’s dream of going to the moon turns into a nightmare when evil aliens kidnap him and a little girl and take them there. How will he escape—and moreover, how will he justify humanity’s existence when it’s put on trial?

One of the golden-age Master of Science Fiction’s many “juveniles,” Have Space Suit—Will Travel has stood the test of time better than most. Kip is a high school senior who dreams of traveling to the Moon. He makes it there, but by a surprising route: he’s kidnapped, along with a little girl named Peewee and an alien he calls the Mother Thing, by a malignantly aggressive species Kip calls Wormfaces. Eventually the three work together and escape, but that’s not the end of the story: now the fate of all humanity is on Kip and Peewee’s shoulders as their species is put on trial before an interplanetary court.

As with the protagonists in Heinlein's other juveniles, the teens in this story will seem oddly young in some ways to modern readers, and their characters too good to be true. This is partly a function of the era in which the book was written—things really were different then—and of what was considered appropriate material for young adults to read at the time. But that also makes this book a fascinating glimpse into the culture of the 1950s.

A ripping yarn. Read!