Obviously, then, that is not what this story is about.
Heinlein’s juveniles are about young adults having to become adults. They are voyages of discovery not of alien planets, but of self.
Had RAH tried to write nonfiction books to that effect, of maturing and developing, it’s almost certain they’d have wound up in the 5-cent bin and not even be a footnote today. If set as contemporary fiction, they might have done well, for a time. There are a few Newbery books that remain popular.
However, all of RAH’s juveniles remain in, or return to print, year after year, to the tune of millions of total copies, and usually without the boost from being required reading in some high school English class. People don’t read about Max because they have to, they read about him because they want to.
This is the sneaky approach to classic status: Be good.
So why is it good?
What hooked me in the 70s, about the time the Shuttle was launching with a much more sophisticated (for the time) computer system, was the breadth of the story, the vista. We live in a world almost bereft of frontiers to explore and challenge us, so we must create our own. Heinlein created some for us, on distant worlds. The worlds in Starman Jones are a bit on the dark side. An impoverished rural region not much different from a half-century ago, or today, is eminently believable, and something we can still manage to empathize with. Most of us have been out of place in some fashion. Many of us have, when suddenly at a cultural event that is foreign to us.
Fortunately, few of us have been stranded on a planet of uncommunicative alien centauroids who tie people to trees to keep them out of the way, while enslaving humanoids as muscle power.
But, where does that line from the familiar to the alien lie? At what point was it not just believable, yet gripping? We accept the MacGuffin of Max’s eidetic memory. As a veteran, I was even able to accept Sam doing a ten-mile sneak and peek, and exfiltration, with just a pistol. I’d at least have wanted some medical supplies, an MRE and a Camelbak (which by the way, bears a striking resemblance to something Heinlein described in Tunnel in the Sky, four decades before it was “invented.”) A starship can feel like a cruise ship, something we’re familiar with in concept. The star drive is something our physicists say is likely impossible, or maybe not. The ship’s tech is a combination of laughably antiquated—its computers and navigation—and unbelievably advanced—its star drive and power—by modern standards. The planet they discover is conceivable but completely unprovable. There are numerous lines blurring the comfortably normal and the outrageous throughout the book. That gives us enough foothold. We can accept the outrageous while standing on known ground.
The key, as I’ve said, is the human story. Max is most definitely believable. He has an adolescence marred by all the usual issues, as well as a single-parent family a scheming step-father-to-be. That’s more than most teens have, thankfully, but it dramatically makes the case. Once out in the world with little more than the clothes on his back, he is immediately in a world of politics and castes, evolved specifically to keep people like him in his place. In this, Heinlein prophetically foresaw the modern BMV, or perhaps the juggling act between “overqualified” and “no degree.” Sophisticated societies can sometimes be more ritual-laden than the most primitive. In this story, the Guilds have their rules, the crew their customs, the officers their regulations, the wealthy passengers their expectations of wants being met, each planet its own culture . . .
If written as a contemporary today, many writers would want to toss Max into the sex trade, or at least make some statement about the Evils of Capitalism that created these Guilds . . . whoops, the Guilds sound too union. Better make them HR departments at some huge industrial concern contributing to global warming. Such a story would greatly annoy two categories of readers: those who disagreed with the politics, and those who agreed with the politics. Said book might sell within the space of a few months to the latter group, but wouldn’t age well. It might inspire those who agreed to try to do something vague and meaningful, also to be forgotten as ephemera of a decade. Such a book might even be a bestseller, but would anyone care in 60 years? Unlikely.
The message in this book isn’t about any particular time or place or cause. It’s about courage, determination, self-exploration. It’s about a young man becoming a man proper (or a young woman a woman, in some of Heinlein’s works). Max has to pretend to be an adult, and then act like one. When offered a chance to pursue his dream, he accepts the challenge, even though it leaves him standing on the edge of an emotional cliff. There is a big difference between knowing about a subject and actually knowing the subject. His elders understand this, and encourage him along.
Before long, he’s at a cusp where he must take charge of himself, and shortly thereafter, an entire ship. Nor is it really a choice. His only alternative is to fail, either physically or emotionally. He can pretend not to have vital knowledge locked in his mind that might—only might—save everyone, or he can curl up into a ball and twitch. He must step up and be a man, nervous and unsure. Once there, though, once he is sure, he accepts the transition and we leave him as he runs the ship competently.
I can’t speak as much for the civilian world, but every veteran I know has been at that juncture. Even when you know you’re capable, it is sobering, possibly terrifying. It’s that way the first time, and frequently many times, because you really don’t have a choice.
This story tells the reader that its okay to be in that position, to be alone, nervous and self-doubting. That when you reach that point, you have to take a breath and proceed. The outcome is unsure. However, the outcome for not proceeding is guaranteed failure. Had Max declined the challenge, he and his shipmates would die of old age, lost and forgotten, at worst having fought it out with the centaurs and eventually succumbing to numbers.
Starman Jones also tells us it’s a big, wide universe. Heck, it’s a big world. The number of places I personally want to visit increases faster than I can possibly manage to schedule the trips, much less afford them. The number of places I’d rather not visit grows too, though I didn’t exactly have a choice on some of them. Nor does Max. This is something else young adults need to learn in every generation. You can’t, and won’t always get what you want, and there are penalties tangible and intangible for trying to do so. Violating the rules or the law might have you end up fined or in jail. Some other violations might get you killed.
Max is a farm boy, from a farm outdated even in 1953, though quite a few still existed then. A very few still do, but only as rare anachronisms. Despite that, it sets the contrast nicely between the haves and have-nots. The background is of a culture with a clear division between them, and little chance to rise from one class to the other. Max’s challenge is to do so, while learning how to navigate, not a ship, but cultures and personalities.
Ellie serves as a temptation for Max, though not sexually. We found out at the end that had Max pursued that concept (which would have violated a lot of publishing standards of the time), he’d have wound up in even worse straits. That’s a very good lesson about the heat of young eagerness, and still fitting in our instant gratification world. Ellie doesn’t grasp the difference in their cultural rules herself, and her status as a daughter of the ruling class means she doesn’t need to. With a word, she could give Max lots of advantages, none of which would last beyond the voyage, and would in fact destroy any chance of a future for him. The lesson there is that we have to earn things. Anything given for free is worth only what you pay for it.
That’s not all, though. There are simpler messages, too. Max doesn’t quite know how to do a tactical analysis of a place—the locals, the culture, the environment. It’s not like it was back in Arkansas. That’s important, too. Gross insults in one culture can be compliments in another. In Arabic for example, the difference between a greeting to a lady and a sexual crudity is the accent on a single letter. For the Haicyon natives, praising someone’s potential as lunch is a compliment. R
obert A. Heinlein the sailor is telling the reader, “By the way, kid, when you get off the ship here, it ain’t Arkansas.”
As for resolving the current Problem Facing Mankind That Must Be Solved Now Or Our Precious Bodily Fluids Are At Stake du jour, Heinlein took the long view. This could be that the world was still unwrapping from Korea and WWII. He certainly tackled the big issue of the nuclear threat in other books. Instead, for this book he put it all in perspective.
“Someday, he’d be senior enough to do a little politicking on that point.” Not every problem has to be solved right this moment, nor even within a given book or series, or in forty-two minutes plus commercials on the idiot box. Some issues are too large for an individual, and it really isn’t kind to whip up that kind of hope in a fragile youth, only to toss them into the depths or jadedness or despair too soon, when they realize it’s just not that easy in the real world. The first thing any juvenile has to do is grow up. That of itself is a massive undertaking in any society. One can’t conquer the world until one has conquered oneself. Nuclear wars and oil crises and ice ages and global warming and pollution and overfishing and creeping socialism and growing oligarchic capitalism and fluoridated water can wait. First, just become the type of person you should be. That’s what the world needs most of all.
That message is timeless. It’s also important. And most of all, it’s a message that young people of every age really want, and need, to hear.
That’s why this book worked in 1953, for me in 1979, for my daughter in 2011, and will probably still work for many future generations.
Table of Contents
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
1 THE TOMAHAWK
2 GOOD SAMARITAN
3 EARTHPORT
4 THE ASTROGATORS’ GUILD
5 “. . . YOUR MONEY AND MY KNOW-HOW . . .”
6 “SPACEMAN” JONES
7 ELDRETH
8 THREE WAYS TO GET AHEAD
9 CHARTSMAN JONES
10 GARSON’S PLANET
11 “THROUGH THE CARGO HATCH”
12 HALCYON
13 TRANSITION
14 ANYWHERE
15 “THIS ISN’T A PICNIC”
16 “—OVER A HUNDRED YEARS—”
17 CHARITY
18 CIVILIZATION
19 A FRIEND IN NEED
20 “—A SHIP IS NOT JUST STEEL—”
21 THE CAPTAIN OF THE ASGARD
22 THE TOMAHAWK
AFTERWORD
Starman Jones Page 25