Starman Jones
Encyclopedia
Starman Jones is a 1953 science fiction
novel by Robert A. Heinlein
about a farm boy who wants to go to the stars. It was first published by Charles Scribner's Sons
as part of the Heinlein juveniles
series.
manuals.
Most occupations are tightly controlled by guild
s, most with hereditary memberships. One such is the Astrogators Guild. Since his uncle had been a member and had no children, Max hopes that before he died, his uncle had named him his heir. He begins hitchhiking towards Earthport to find out. Along the way, he finds a friendly face in hobo Sam Anderson, who later alludes to being a deserter from the Imperial Marines. Sam feeds Max and offers advice, though he later departs with Max's valuable manuals.
At the guild's headquarters, Max is disappointed to find that he had not been named as an heir, but he is returned his uncle's substantial security deposit for his manuals. Max learns that Sam had tried to claim the deposit for himself.
By chance, he runs into an apologetic Sam. With Max's money, Sam is able to finagle them a one way job/trip aboard a starship using forged papers. Max signs on as a steward's mate third class, and then he absorbs the contents of the Stewards' Guild manual using his eidetic memory
. Among his duties is caring for several animals, including passengers' pets—work with which he is comfortable. When passenger Eldreth "Ellie" Coburn visits her pet, an alien, semi-intelligent "spider puppy" that Max has befriended, she learns that he can play three-dimensional chess, and she challenges him to a game. A champion player, she diplomatically lets him win. Meanwhile, Sam manages to rise to the position of master-at-arms
.
When, through Ellie's machinations, the ship's officers discover that Max had learned astrogation from his uncle, Max is promoted to the command deck. Under the tutelage of Chief Astrogator Hendrix and Chief Computerman Kelly, he becomes a probationary apprentice chartsman, then a probationary astrogator. In a meeting with Hendrix, Max reluctantly admits to faking his record to get into space. Hendrix defers the matter until their return to Earth. The Asgard then departs for Halcyon, a human colony planet orbiting Nu Pegasi.
When Hendrix dies, the astrogation department is left dangerously shorthanded. The aging captain tries to take his place, but is not up to the task. When Max detects an error in his real-time calculations leading up to a "transition", neither the captain nor Assistant Astrogator Simes believe him, and the ship winds up lost.
They locate a habitable world, and the passengers become colonists. Meanwhile, the crew continues to try to figure out where they are, and if they can get back to the Earth. Unfortunately, it turns out the planet is already inhabited by intelligent centaur
s. Max and Ellie are captured, but Ellie's pet is able to guide Sam and a rescue party to them. They escape, though Sam is killed covering their retreat.
Upon his return, Max is informed that the captain has died. Simes tried to illegally take command and was killed by Sam, leaving Max as the only remaining astrogator. To make matters worse, Simes hid or destroyed the astrogation manuals.
Vastly outnumbered by the hostile natives, the humans are forced to attempt a perilous return to known space by reversing the erroneous transition. Max must not only pilot the ship, he must supply the missing astrogation tables from his eidetic memory
. To add to his burdens, the remaining officers inform Max that he must take charge, as only an astrogator can be the captain. The pressure is immense, but Max succeeds and the ship returns to known space.
Max pays heavy fines for breaking guild regulations, but he becomes a member of the Astrogators Guild. However, he loses any chance for a relationship with Eldreth: she returns home to marry her boyfriend. Max accepts this with mixed feelings, but looks forward to his new career.
found the novel to be "a richly textured and thoroughly mature tale." Boucher
and McComas
praised it for its "good character-development, rousing adventure-telling, and brilliant creation of several forms of extra-Terrestrial life." P. Schuyler Miller
ranked it "close to the best in mainline science fiction."
New York Times reviewer Villiers Gerson declared Starman Jones to be "superior science-fiction. . . . carefully plotted, lucidly and beautifully written."
Surveying Heinlein's juvenile novels, Jack Williamson
described Starman Jones as "a classic example of the bildungsroman
pattern" and noted that "with its bold symbolism, the book makes a universal appeal." Despite "unlike coincidence and occasional melodrama" in the plotting, Williamson concluded that "the novel is a fine juvenile [which] reflects hopes and fears we all have known."
", are here subjected to even more severe and categorical criticism, where a significant portion of the plot revolves 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 mainly because of his noble character. 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 proves not only highly intelligent, but resourceful and fiercely independent).
Max's eidetic memory
does save the day at the end of the book, but earlier in the book, Hendrix explicitly tells Max that his unusual memory was much less important than careful hard work at astrogation. Max ends the book having learned valuable lessons about life. While he gains from having broken guild rules, he also accepts the consequences of his actions.
Heinlein makes a special distincion in the book between Max's eidetic memory
, and the perhaps more well-known photographic memory. He has Max explain that he cannot simple glance at something and have it memorized; as in the case of the astrogation
and Stewards' Guild manuals, he must actually read them as would anyone else, but then the knowledge is perfectly retained in his memory.
The book has a strong feeling of verisimilitude 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 U.S. naval officer.
Another outstanding quality of the book is its superior architecture. A common criticism of Heinlein's novels commonly is that they are episodic, or have weak or rushed endings. Starman Jones has a smooth and logical progression as we watch Max grow from a hillbilly farmer through many stages to a mature young man. The storyline is genre bildungsroman
.
The technology of the story reflects the era in which it was written. The book depicts a civilization that travels between star systems with the aid of electronic computers, but they have to be "programmed" on the spot, and elementary computing operations (which modern computers are actually at their best at), such as calculating trigonometric functions and logarithms, and converting between decimal and binary numbers, must be done by looking up values in books of tables. The binary numbers are input using switches, with the results showing as binary values using lights. Heinlein, writing in the days when computers were big, clunky, and rare, did not fully explore their potential in this story, which he did in later stories.
The "transitions" that transport a ship from one star system to another are effected by holding the ship at just under light speed until it reaches precisely the right location and then accelerating it over, causing it to reappear at a "congruent" location that may be hundreds of light years away in ordinary space. The idea of "congruence," nicely explained by Max using a folded scarf, is sound mathematics (though it is not known physics).
's Gulliver's Travels
.
In the original, Gulliver is stranded in a country dominated by civilised horses, the Houyhnhnms, finds them much superior to humans, and identifies European humans with the degenerate "Yahoo
s" which the Houyhnhnms in his view justifiably dominate. The experience leaves Gulliver permanently misanthopic, even on his return to England feeling a yearning for the civilised Houyhnhnms and having nothing but contempt and loathing for the uncouth "yahoos" around him (including himself).
Heinlein, to the contrary, has little good to say of the cruel "centaurs", who not only butcher and eat their "yahoos" (and would like to add the Earth variety to their menu) but also practice systematic euthanasia
towards old and weak members of their own species. While the planet's local humans are just as degenerate and subservient as Swift's yahoos, which they strongly resemble, Max and his fellow Earth humans are brave and resourceful, at their best in fighting the centaurs.
Clearly, Swift's idea of having another species domesticate mankind was anathema to Heinlein (who did not hesitate to point out weaknesses of both human and alien characters in his works), and this part of the book expresses his vociferous rebuttal.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel by Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
about a farm boy who wants to go to the stars. It was first published by Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
as part of the Heinlein juveniles
Heinlein juveniles
"Heinlein juveniles" are the 12 novels written by Robert A. Heinlein and published by Scribner's between 1947 and 1958. The intended readership was teenage boys, but the books have been enjoyed by a wide range of readers...
series.
Plot summary
Max Jones works the family farm in the Ozark Mountains. With his father dead and his stepmother remarrying a man he detests, Max runs away from home, taking his uncle's astrogationAstrogation
Astrogation is the planning of a route through space and the actual navigation of spacecraft, either in interplanetary travel or in interstellar travel...
manuals.
Most occupations are tightly controlled by guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
s, most with hereditary memberships. One such is the Astrogators Guild. Since his uncle had been a member and had no children, Max hopes that before he died, his uncle had named him his heir. He begins hitchhiking towards Earthport to find out. Along the way, he finds a friendly face in hobo Sam Anderson, who later alludes to being a deserter from the Imperial Marines. Sam feeds Max and offers advice, though he later departs with Max's valuable manuals.
At the guild's headquarters, Max is disappointed to find that he had not been named as an heir, but he is returned his uncle's substantial security deposit for his manuals. Max learns that Sam had tried to claim the deposit for himself.
By chance, he runs into an apologetic Sam. With Max's money, Sam is able to finagle them a one way job/trip aboard a starship using forged papers. Max signs on as a steward's mate third class, and then he absorbs the contents of the Stewards' Guild manual using his eidetic memory
Eidetic memory
Eidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...
. Among his duties is caring for several animals, including passengers' pets—work with which he is comfortable. When passenger Eldreth "Ellie" Coburn visits her pet, an alien, semi-intelligent "spider puppy" that Max has befriended, she learns that he can play three-dimensional chess, and she challenges him to a game. A champion player, she diplomatically lets him win. Meanwhile, Sam manages to rise to the position of master-at-arms
Master-at-arms
A master-at-arms may be a naval rating responsible for discipline and law enforcement, an army officer responsible for physical training, or a member of the crew of a merchant ship responsible for security and law enforcement.-Royal Navy:The master-at-arms is a ship's senior rating, comparable in...
.
When, through Ellie's machinations, the ship's officers discover that Max had learned astrogation from his uncle, Max is promoted to the command deck. Under the tutelage of Chief Astrogator Hendrix and Chief Computerman Kelly, he becomes a probationary apprentice chartsman, then a probationary astrogator. In a meeting with Hendrix, Max reluctantly admits to faking his record to get into space. Hendrix defers the matter until their return to Earth. The Asgard then departs for Halcyon, a human colony planet orbiting Nu Pegasi.
When Hendrix dies, the astrogation department is left dangerously shorthanded. The aging captain tries to take his place, but is not up to the task. When Max detects an error in his real-time calculations leading up to a "transition", neither the captain nor Assistant Astrogator Simes believe him, and the ship winds up lost.
They locate a habitable world, and the passengers become colonists. Meanwhile, the crew continues to try to figure out where they are, and if they can get back to the Earth. Unfortunately, it turns out the planet is already inhabited by intelligent centaur
Centaur
In Greek mythology, a centaur or hippocentaur is a member of a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse...
s. Max and Ellie are captured, but Ellie's pet is able to guide Sam and a rescue party to them. They escape, though Sam is killed covering their retreat.
Upon his return, Max is informed that the captain has died. Simes tried to illegally take command and was killed by Sam, leaving Max as the only remaining astrogator. To make matters worse, Simes hid or destroyed the astrogation manuals.
Vastly outnumbered by the hostile natives, the humans are forced to attempt a perilous return to known space by reversing the erroneous transition. Max must not only pilot the ship, he must supply the missing astrogation tables from his eidetic memory
Eidetic memory
Eidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...
. To add to his burdens, the remaining officers inform Max that he must take charge, as only an astrogator can be the captain. The pressure is immense, but Max succeeds and the ship returns to known space.
Max pays heavy fines for breaking guild regulations, but he becomes a member of the Astrogators Guild. However, he loses any chance for a relationship with Eldreth: she returns home to marry her boyfriend. Max accepts this with mixed feelings, but looks forward to his new career.
Reception
Groff ConklinGroff Conklin
Edward Groff Conklin was a leading science fiction anthologist. He edited 40 anthologies of science fiction, one of mystery stories , wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects as well as a published poet...
found the novel to be "a richly textured and thoroughly mature tale." Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
and McComas
J. Francis McComas
Jesse Francis McComas was an American science fiction editor. McComas wrote several stories on his own in the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe....
praised it for its "good character-development, rousing adventure-telling, and brilliant creation of several forms of extra-Terrestrial life." P. Schuyler Miller
P. Schuyler Miller
Peter Schuyler Miller was an American science fiction writer and critic.-Life:Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley, which led to a life-long interest in the Iroquois Indians. He pursued this as an amateur archaeologist and a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.He...
ranked it "close to the best in mainline science fiction."
New York Times reviewer Villiers Gerson declared Starman Jones to be "superior science-fiction. . . . carefully plotted, lucidly and beautifully written."
Surveying Heinlein's juvenile novels, Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson
John Stewart Williamson , who wrote as Jack Williamson was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction" following the death in 1988 of Robert A...
described Starman Jones as "a classic example of the bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
pattern" and noted that "with its bold symbolism, the book makes a universal appeal." Despite "unlike coincidence and occasional melodrama" in the plotting, Williamson concluded that "the novel is a fine juvenile [which] reflects hopes and fears we all have known."
Literary significance and criticism
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 RollThe Roads Must Roll
"The Roads Must Roll" is a 1940 science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. In the late 1960s, it was awarded a retrospective Nebula Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America and published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 in 1970.The story is set in the near...
", are here subjected to even more severe and categorical criticism, where a significant portion of the plot revolves 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
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
and The Virginian
The Virginian (novel)
This page is about the novel, for other uses see The Virginian .The Virginian is a pioneering 1902 novel set in the Wild West by the American author Owen Wister...
), 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 mainly because of his noble character. 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 proves not only highly intelligent, but resourceful and fiercely independent).
Max's eidetic memory
Eidetic memory
Eidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...
does save the day at the end of the book, but earlier in the book, Hendrix explicitly tells Max that his unusual memory was much less important than careful hard work at astrogation. Max ends the book having learned valuable lessons about life. While he gains from having broken guild rules, he also accepts the consequences of his actions.
Heinlein makes a special distincion in the book between Max's eidetic memory
Eidetic memory
Eidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...
, and the perhaps more well-known photographic memory. He has Max explain that he cannot simple glance at something and have it memorized; as in the case of the astrogation
Astrogation
Astrogation is the planning of a route through space and the actual navigation of spacecraft, either in interplanetary travel or in interstellar travel...
and Stewards' Guild manuals, he must actually read them as would anyone else, but then the knowledge is perfectly retained in his memory.
The book has a strong feeling of verisimilitude 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 U.S. naval officer.
Another outstanding quality of the book is its superior architecture. A common criticism of Heinlein's novels commonly is that they are episodic, or have weak or rushed endings. Starman Jones has a smooth and logical progression as we watch Max grow from a hillbilly farmer through many stages to a mature young man. The storyline is genre bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
.
The technology of the story reflects the era in which it was written. The book depicts a civilization that travels between star systems with the aid of electronic computers, but they have to be "programmed" on the spot, and elementary computing operations (which modern computers are actually at their best at), such as calculating trigonometric functions and logarithms, and converting between decimal and binary numbers, must be done by looking up values in books of tables. The binary numbers are input using switches, with the results showing as binary values using lights. Heinlein, writing in the days when computers were big, clunky, and rare, did not fully explore their potential in this story, which he did in later stories.
The "transitions" that transport a ship from one star system to another are effected by holding the ship at just under light speed until it reaches precisely the right location and then accelerating it over, causing it to reappear at a "congruent" location that may be hundreds of light years away in ordinary space. The idea of "congruence," nicely explained by Max using a folded scarf, is sound mathematics (though it is not known physics).
Adaptation to other media
Although Heinlein rarely permitted dramatic adaptations of his work, he authorized Douglas L Lieberman to stage Starman Jones at the Goodman Children's Theater in Chicago. Written and directed by Lieberman, the 2-act play ran for 25 performances in 1972. The title role was played by Charles Fleischer, who later performed the voice of Roger Rabbit in Hollywood. In 1974, Avon Books published the script as part of the anthology Contemporary Children's Theater edited by Betty Jean Lifton.Heinlein's reply to Gulliver's Travels
The later part, taking place on the planet of the "centaurs"—intelligent, horselike carnivores who dominate all other fauna on the planet including deformed human-like creatures—is evidently intended as Heinlein's commentary on and antithesis to the fourth part of Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
's Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
.
In the original, Gulliver is stranded in a country dominated by civilised horses, the Houyhnhnms, finds them much superior to humans, and identifies European humans with the degenerate "Yahoo
Yahoo (literature)
A Yahoo is a legendary being in the novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.Swift describes the Yahoos as vile and savage creatures, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society...
s" which the Houyhnhnms in his view justifiably dominate. The experience leaves Gulliver permanently misanthopic, even on his return to England feeling a yearning for the civilised Houyhnhnms and having nothing but contempt and loathing for the uncouth "yahoos" around him (including himself).
Heinlein, to the contrary, has little good to say of the cruel "centaurs", who not only butcher and eat their "yahoos" (and would like to add the Earth variety to their menu) but also practice systematic euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
towards old and weak members of their own species. While the planet's local humans are just as degenerate and subservient as Swift's yahoos, which they strongly resemble, Max and his fellow Earth humans are brave and resourceful, at their best in fighting the centaurs.
Clearly, Swift's idea of having another species domesticate mankind was anathema to Heinlein (who did not hesitate to point out weaknesses of both human and alien characters in his works), and this part of the book expresses his vociferous rebuttal.
External links
- Review of Starman Jones by Jo WaltonJo WaltonJo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004. Her novel Ha'penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award...
- Scale model depicting the ring train from STARMAN JONES