Als die böse Mutter und der neue Stiefvater die Farm verkaufen, haut Max ab. Er will unbedingt Raumfahrer werden, doch eigentlich hat er keine Chance...

Ich war noch nie ein großer Heinlein-Fan.
Dies ist ein früher Jugendroman. Dafür ist er nicht so schlecht, aber es macht halt einfach keinen Spass. Die völlig veraltete Zukunftstechnik kann man als ulkig ansehen, aber es half mir nicht, das Buch zu genießen.
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_Starman Jones_ by Robert A. Heinlein receives two stars from me. I realize that is one of his juvenile series, but even so, it lacks elements his other novels have.

This was a recorded book read by Paul Michael Garcia. I felt that his voice was good for the most part. I didn't enjoy his voicing of the females, but I'm unsure if it is his voicing or the text that is really at fault. The text is more than likely. I would buy a book read by Garcia in the future. He's good.

On to the text. What to say? What does this novel lack in my opinion. I didn't find the plot engaging or interesting. It moves from one little issue to the next, like a normal plot, it was just that those issues weren't very interesting to me. I don't feel that characters are complex (max, yes, sam, sure but the others? no). The women in the novel are superficial sidekicks to the man's world. I found that annoying. I know that Heinlein lived during a different time, but sometimes I wish he had more vision of equality for the future.

Which brings me to the would I recommend this book for a young person to read? I don't think so. If a student of mine wanted to read it, I'd have to guide them through that this is not how women are, and we'd have to have discussions about why Heinlein wrote women as he did. If a female wanted to read it, I'd suggest another book where the females are stronger.

recommended: not really.

Another great novel in Heinlein's juvenile series. I can't help but repeating my thought that all have these have felt almost like a "Tom Sawyer in Space". I wish that I had these in my repertoire when I was growing up as they would have, doubtless, piqued my imagination, but better late than never.

In contrast with Heinlein's adult novels, these never deal with matters of sexuality and rarely delve opaquely into deep philosophical matters, as his adult novels are wont to do. Here are adventures. This one in particular is fun because it tells the story of a boy who longs for the stars but has almost no hope of achieving them, but through a course of events, some sad, some serendipitous, he finds himself among the stars in ways he never thought possible. Along the way we get to explore a theory of interstellar travel that both boggles the mind and seems strangely plausible, see some overarching structures in the societal scene of the time, explore new planets, and meet strange creatures and new friends along the way.

I look forward to reading more on this loosely associated series and can't wait until my son is old enough to read these with me! (the subject matter and content is well within appropriate levels for children but the hard sci fi aspects of the book require a little more understanding than he currently has at five years old)

I found that I remembered less about Starman Jones than any of Heinlein's other works than I read years ago. It's a rather standard Horatio Alger-ish story of pluck and determination and good character winning through against unfair circumstances and churlish opposition. The scientific aspects seem more dated here than in most of his other works, I'm afraid, and I didn't much care for the ending; he decides astrogators shouldn't marry, so he abandons the girl and returns to space, much as a cowboy would kiss his horse on the nose and ride off into the sunset in a 1930's oat-opera movie. Still, it's good Heinlein, with a dash of comedic romance and interesting philosophy of duty and honor.

Well, I've completely changed my tune on Heinlein! I read some of his worst, later, bloated works when I was in my teens. I did like Starship Troopers. And I liked the term "grok", but did not otherwise enjoy Stranger. Otherwise, I thought he was just terrible.

Now that I've been scouring the literary universe for SF I can read to my kids, I've been absolutely delighted with Heinlein's "juvenile" SF novels. They're at just the right level, they're fun and exciting, and they're appropriate for kids. This is golden content as far as I'm concerned. Yes, it's clearly aimed at male audiences, but that doesn't seem to bother my daughter. There are smart female characters and often cute animals, so the required elements are there. :-)

I thought I had read this one back when I was pulling library edition hard copies of sci-fi novels from the local branch in middle school. Happily, this was a first time read for me. I cut my sci-fi teeth on Heinlein juveniles so this was just a fun fun read.

An Illinois farm boy with a photographic memory, Max Jones runs away from home after his widowed mother marries the town loser, whose only goal is to sell the Jones farm for quick cash.

Max decides to head for Earthport on the hope that his late Uncle Chet, a career astrogator, had nominated Max as a future member of the Astrogator’s Guild as he had promised before his death. Along the way, Max encounters a congenial homeless man named Sam who ends up stealing Max’s government ID card and a set of astrogation books given to him by his uncle.

At Earthport, Max is further disappointed to learn that Uncle Chet never registered him for membership in the Guild. Shortly after, Max meets Sam in the street just outside the Guild Hall. After a brief confrontation, Sam decides to take Max under his wing and together, they stow away aboard the space cruiser Asgard using forged identifications.

Aboard the Asgard, Max finds himself in familiar territory. As Steward’s Mate, he is assigned to the care and feeding of pets and livestock being transported from Earth to an off world colony. It isn’t long before Max befriends a precocious and brash young lady named Ellie and her talking spider puppy, Mr. Chips.

During the voyage, a series of circumstances permits Max to be promoted to an Apprentice Chartsman and then to Astrogation, where his photographic memory allows him to make computations with inhuman speed based on charts and tables he long ago memorized from his uncle’s books. However, Max’s rapid rise through the ranks pits him against a resentful senior officer who makes his life difficult at every opportunity.

After an astrogation mishap sends the Asgard leaping to a completely unfamiliar part of space, the captain orders the ship to set down on a serene Earth-like world that the passengers eventually christen “Charity”—a compliment that turns out to be a deadly misnomer. Will Max and the bridge crew calculate the proper path back to known space or will they and the passengers be doomed to wander this strange area of the galaxy in search of a new home?

Published in 1953, Starman Jones is counted among Robert A. Heinlein’s twelve “juvenile” SF novels—what is known today as “young adult." I haven’t read a Heinlein juvenile novel yet that failed to entertain. They’re an absolute trove of fun and imaginative space adventures. Character development, pacing, and plot are all masterfully crafted. As renowned SF anthologist Groff Conklin once said, “Nobody but nobody can beat Heinlein in the writing of teen-age science fiction.”

I completely agree.

review of
Robert A. Heinlein's Starman Jones
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 28, 2016

I might as well add Heinlein to my pantheon of favorite SF writers even though I feel like I 'left him behind' around 46 yrs ago. Starman Jones is another great example of Heinlein's promotion of the idea that people of 'humble' 'unpromising' origins can develop their latent extraordinary abilities & succeed under highly challenging circumstances.

Max Jones starts off as a farmer living in straightened conditions. His father's dead, his stepmother's not particularly caring.

"Max liked this time of day, this time of year. With the crops in, he could finish his evening chores early and be lazy. When he had slopped the hogs and fed the chickens, instead of getting supper he followed a path to a rise west of the barn and lay down on the grass, unmindful of chiggers. He had a book with him that he had drawn from the county library last Saturday, Bonforte's Sky Beasts: A Guide to Exotic Zoology, but he tucked it under his head as a pillow." - p 9

Already Max is presented as potentially a working-class intellectual - something that few people seem to accept as a possibility. He's knowledgeable enuf to be able to tell time by the stars:

"Venus had set, of course, but he was surprised to see Mars still in the west. The moon had not risen. Let's see—full moon was last Wednesday. Surely . . .

"The answer he got seemed wrong, so he checked himself by taking a careful eyesight of Vega and compared it with what the Big Dipper told him. Then he whistled softly—despite everything that had happened it was only ten o'clock, give or take five minutes; the stars could not be wrong." - p 23

Heinlein's a 'realist' of sorts. Things happen just as much b/c of human idiosyncracies & dysfunctionality as they do b/c of people being 'as they shd be':

""Good. Here's the deal. The Man says we have to have two teamsters to each rig—or else break for eight hours after driving eight. I can't; I've got a penalty time to meet—and my partner washed out. The flathead got taken drunk and I had to put him down to cool. Now I've got a checkpoint to pass a hundred thirty miles down the stretch. They'll make me lay over if I can't show another driver."

""Gee! But I don't know how to drive, Red. I'm awful sorry."

"Red gestured with his cup. "You won't have to. You'll always be the off-watch driver. I wouldn't trust little Molly Malone to somebody who didn't know her ways. I'll keep myself awake with Pep pills and catch up on sleep at Earthport."" - p 34

Starman Jones was published in 1953, the yr I was born. It's interesting for me to see the ethos of the time presented:

"The library book had been burning a hole in his rucksack; at Oklahoma City he noticed a postal box at the freight depot and, on impulse, dropped the book into it. After he had mailed it he had a twinge of worry that he might have given a clue to his whereabouts which would get back to Montgomery, but he suppressed the worry—the book had to be returned. Vagrancy in the eyes of the law had not worried him, nor trespass, nor impersonating a licensed teamster—but filching a book was a sin." - p 37

Heinlein's work is never lacking in futuristic imaginings: "He found himself presently in front of Imperial House, the hotel that guaranteed to supply any combination of pressure, temperature, lighting, atmosphere, pseudogravitation, and diet favored by any known race of intelligent creatures." (p 38) A sensible & ambitious enterprise under conditions that may one day prevail.

"["]Only a member of this guild, trained, tested, sworn, and accepted, may lawfully be custodian of those manuals."

"Max's answer was barely audible. "I don't see the harm, I'm not going to get to use them, it looks like."

""You don't believe in anarchy, surely? Our whole society is founded on entrusting grave secrets only to those who are worthy.["]" - p 45

Max may or not "believe in anarchy" but he does find his way around the unfair restrictions on membership into the guild he desires to join. Aiding him is this greatly is that he's eidetic, a mnemonist:

""Well, I'll be a beat up. . . . Look, you're a page-at-a-glance reader? Is that it?"

""No, not exactly. I'm a pretty fast reader, but I do have to read it. But I don't forget. I can't forget anything."" - p 53

As it turns out, anarchy isn't given a bad rep here after all:

""That's your problem. But best of all, the place still has a comfortable looseness about it. No property taxes, outside the towns. Nobody would pay one; they'd just move on, if they didn't shoot the tax collector instead. No guilds—you can plow a furrow, saw a board, drive a truck, ir thread a pipe, all the same day and never ask permission. A man can do anything and there's no one to stop him, no one to tell him he wasn't born into the trade, or didn't start young enough, or hasn't paid his contribution. There's more work than there are men to do it and the colonists just don't care."

"Max tried to imagine such anarchy and could not, he had never experienced it." - pp 68-69

Heinlein may not be an anarchist but he's no perpetuator of class-serving myths either. In his world, a 'hayseed' can be a mathematician:

"She made a face. "But you told me that all you went to was a country high school and didn't get to finish at that. Huh?"

""Yes, but I learned from my uncle. He was a great mathematician. Well, he didn't have any theorems named after him—but a great one just the same, I think."" - p 78

Heinlein is, indeed, an exemplary SF writer. He imagines a possible planet reached by humans: "Garson's Planet appears to us to be a piece of junk left over when the universe was finished. It has a surface gravity of one-and-a-quarter, too much for comfort, it is cold as a moneylender's heart, and it has a methane atmosphere unbreathable by humans." (p 101) Such descriptions are only side details in a novel of space travel but they add alot. & Heinlein has a sense of humor:

"Their driver, Herr Eisenberg, interpreted for them. The native who sold the souvenirs kept swiveling his eyes, one after another, at Mrs. Mendoza. He twittered some remarks to the driver, who guffawed. "What does he say?" she asked.

""He was complimenting you."

""So? But how?"

""Well . . . he says you are for a slow fire and no need for seasoning; you'd cook up nicely. And he'd do it too," the colonist added, "if you stayed here after dark."

"Mrs. Mendoza gave a little scream. "You didn't tell us they were cannibals. Josie take me back!"

"Herr Eisenberg looked horrified. "Cannibals? Oh, no, lady! They don't eat each other, they just eat us—when they can get us, that is. But there hasn't been an incident in twenty years."" - p 137

In short, Heinlein combines class-consciousness, imagination, humor, & science in a way that must've been very inspiring to me as a boy even tho I barely remember my reaction to him anymore:

"A fast hyperboloid swing past both settled the matter. The bolometer showed number three to be too hot and number four to be tropical. Number four had a moon which the third did not—another advantage for four, for it permitted, by examining the satellite's period, an easy calculation of its mass; from that and its visible diameter its surface gravity was a matter of substitution in classic Newtonian formula . . . ninety-three percent of Earth-normal, comfortable and rather low in view of its over ten-thousand-mile diameter. Absorption spectra showed oxygen and several inert gases." - p 168

Yep, after having long since rejected Heinlein I'm inclined to read everything by him now that I've read Starman Jones. It's not that I think it's absolutely great, it's that it resonates w/ me so strongly that I feel deep affection for it.

Starman Jones contains too many science fiction tropes to count. I don't know how many years went by in protagonist Max's life during this course of this novel, but geez, he was wrung through every science fiction crisis there was by the end. This was written in 1953 so it was nostalgic to spend time in Heinlein's future world with luxury tourist spaceships, human astronavigators, and "advanced" computers. Some of the 1950s outdated social norms were on display as well as you would expect.

Overall, this was an OK listen so I give it two stars. It held my attention and the plot moved along at a nice pace, although I think it got too convoluted towards the end. Richard Powers' narration was really good. I would've eaten this up if I had read this in the 1970s.

My preconceived notions of a Heinlein book are as follows:

1. Sexist
2. Chauvinistic
3. Libertarian
4. Condescending

Depending on if it's an early or later Heinlein novel, I might also expect this:

5. Free love

Published in 1951, Starman Jones ticks off the first three boxes (and is one of his juvenile novels, so #5 was thankfully absent), but I was surprised to find that, for the most part, it lacks notion #4. The main character, Maximilian Jones, is a humble person, though he has an eidetic memory and enough smarts to think on his feet. He starts as a humble farmer and becomes the captain of a spaceship, and the journey there is one of self-examination, making mistakes, and learning. Considering that Heinlein's characters usually think they know everything, and won't hear anyone telling them otherwise, this was a refreshing change.

(We do have the character of Sam, though, who fulfills that role, and serves as the conduit of Heinlein's libertarianism. Luckily, he's not the primary character here.)

We still get the usual asides, though, like Max telling Ellie that she's smart, for a girl. Heinlein at least shows Ellie being insulted by the remark, but not as insulted as he shows her when Max essentially calls her ugly in the same scene.

I waffled over giving this book three or four stars, because I do find this book to be entertaining and compelling, but it's still dated and chauvinistic. At best, this is a 3.5-star book, and I think so long as readers go into the story knowing that it's going to be like that (and how would they not, unless they've never heard of Heinlein and this is their first book by the author?), they should be fine.

***Somewhat spoilery***

There are aspects of this book I enjoy; the prose, the mechanics of space travel for this culture; the counterpoint between a rural, desperate dust-bowl feeling Earth, and the polished world of space travel...but I can't get away from how painfully sexist it is.

The main male character, Max, (who was endearing and I wanted to root for early on) escapes from one world to the other, and reveals himself as a prig who routinely tells the main female character, Ellie, to quit with the "back talk," that a woman doesn't have to be smart if she's pretty, and daydreams about a woman to roast a chicken for him down on the farm.

I know I enjoyed other Heinlein works as a child (Red Planet with the weird round pet was a favorite), but now I'm hesitant to pick up another lest further experienced sexism sully my nostalgia.

Произвело впечатление немного наивной подростковой истории (коей, справедливости ради, она и является по задумке): мальчик-фермер мечтал полететь в космос и управлять кораблем, и вот, благодаря авантюрам, приключениям и добрым людям, его мечта осуществилась. Не покидало ощущение, что герою каждый раз чертовски везет, и даже когда вскрываются его обманы, его прощают за честность и за то, что признался.

Первая половина книги кажется довольно занудной, с рутинным описанием быта и обязонностей молодого космоплавателя. Зато ближе к концу начинаются приключения, из-за которых наконец стало интересно читать. Литературно это типичное произведенеие Хайнлайна, с его характерным, немного фамильярным языком, обилием тогдашнего сленга и всяческих поговорок и библейских отсылок. Как и во многих других его книгах, тут имеются и вкрапления "твердых" научных фактов и деталей из морского флота. Ну и, разумеется, главный герой, не по-детски одаренный, способный за ночь выучить наизусть целую книгу. Тем не менее, конкретно этот роман оставил особо сильное впечатление "плохо состарившейся книги": членство в космической гильдии здесь передается по наследству, а космические навигаторы должны наскоро выполнять в голове сложные вычисления без права на ошибку.

Не сказал бы, что остался прям в восторге: ИМХО, даже в юношеском цикле есть произведения посильнее. Но все еще вполне достойно прочтения.