Starman Jones

Starman Jones is a 1953 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein about a farm boy with an eidetic memory.

• June 1, 1953, Atheneum, library binding, ISBN 0684134675
• January 12, 1975, Ballantine Books, paperback, ISBN 0345243544
• January 12, 1978, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345275950
• September 12, 1981, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345301048
• June 12, 1985, Del Rey, paperback reissue edition, 256 pages, ISBN 0345328116
• October 12, 1986, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345345096
• January 1, 1999, Yestermorrow Inc, hardcover, ISBN 1567231578

Plot summary

After his father dies and his stepmother remarries, Max Jones runs away from the family farm. Following the ring road to a hobo camp, he finds a friendly face in Sam Anderson, a former Imperial Marine. Most occupations are controlled by guilds, and many are only open to hereditary membership. One of these is the Astrogator's Guild, and his uncle had been a member. Max hopes that before he died, his uncle had nominated him for hereditary membership, since his uncle had no children. He makes his way to Earthport in the hopes of becoming a starship astrogator, hitching a ride with a friendly trucker. Once there he is disappointed to find that his uncle never nominated him, but that his uncle's astrogation books could be returned to the guild for a refund of the large deposit his uncle had made to obtain them. (The friendly trucker who gives rides to down-and-out hitchhikers is a recurring theme in Heinlein's books.)

With the money from his books, Max and Sam (who had stolen the books and tried to turn them in first!) get together and scheme to join the crew of a starship. Sam becomes a master-at-arms, and Max becomes a steward's mate third class (drawing on his hasty memorization of a borrowed book) after having his appearance aged somewhat by a cold-fingered matron in the back of a bar where beautiful young ladies serve colored water.

On board the starship, Max is assigned by accident to work he understands: cleaning up after animals on the bottom deck, including feeding passengers' pets. Eldreth Coburn, owner of a spider monkey Max had befriended, discovers that Max can play 3-D chess and challenges him to a game (she lets him win, but we don't discover that until much later). Impressed with his ability, and perhaps somewhat romantically interested in him, she arranges for him to get a promotion to the ship's control room, where under the stern tutelage of Chief Astrogator Hendricks and the warmer but equally tough training of computerman Kelly, he becomes an Assistant Astrogator.

In a confrontation with Hendricks, Max sheepishly admits to faking his record to get into space and is told off (but, to his surprise, not exposed or punished) by Hendricks. "It's worse than wrong, it's undignified!"

When the aging captain sides with assistant astrogator Simes against Max (who found an error in the programming) and the ship turns up in uncharted space, the ship must land on a nearby planet. Admittedly lost, the ship is all but decommissioned and most of the crew help the passengers colonize their lovely new planet. But watch out for the centaurs and their throwing ropes!

Discussion

This book is notable among the Heinlein juveniles in being the first to be set outside the solar system, but more significantly for its attempt to fold in, in a subtle way, the political commentary and social speculation that had suffused his earlier pulp fiction. Labor unions, which had been treated negatively in The Roads Must Roll, are here subjected to even more severe and categorical criticism, the entire plot of the book revolving around Max's attempts to enter the closed guild system of the spacelines' officers and crew. This is constantly contrasted against the virtuous and free life of the mythologized yeoman farmer: Max starts out as a farm boy, intends to jump ship along with Sam to find freedom as a farmer on a freshly colonized planet, and near the end of the book is part of an abortive attempt to settle a previously undiscovered planet.

As in much of the popular fiction that Heinlein would have been familiar with in his youth (e.g., Tarzan and The Virginian), the theme is that the wilderness acts as a magnifying glass to amplify the inherent differences between the best and the worst of the human race. Max triumphs not just because of his noble character but because of his genetically determined freak memory. The same theme is seen to a lesser extent in the other characters, some of whom reveal their flaws (Simes, the captain), and some of whom rise to the occasion (Sam; minor characters such as the rich Daiglers; and Ellie, who turns out to have been hiding her genius-level intelligence).

The book has a strong feeling of versimilitude because so much of it is based on Heinlein's real-life experiences. Heinlein, who intended as a young man to become an astronomer, describes Max as a boy who can tell time by looking at the position of the stars in the sky, and who becomes an astrogator. Heinlein had also been a naval officer.