Apr 10th, 2009
Have Space Suit–Will Travel
While Robert Heinlen’s Have Space Suit–Will Travel, is definitely not my usual style of reading material, I did get a few laughs out of it. The language is dated but still enjoyable. Kip is the main character; he’s obsessed with space travel. Putting this into perspective is the fact that the story is written in 1958. In the book, people apparently have traveled to various planets, and there’s some sort of base on the moon. Kip’s goal in life is to attend MIT, but because his father shows him how lacking his high school education is, Kip begins studying advanced science on his own (really believable, right?). Kip really does get a space suit; he enters a soap contest hoping to win a trip to outer space, when in fact he wins runner up, and the prize is an old space suit. The suit is in disrepair, but with his scientic and mechanical knowledge, he fixes it up in a jiffy. Much of the description in the book is very technical, so it’s definitely not a fast read. After the suit is repaired, Kip decides to trade it into the soap company for the cash value instead. He takes the suit out for one last go, and finds himself beamed onto a space ship… wherein the adventure part of the sci-fi takes place. I would recommend this book to heavy sci-fi readers, or readers interested in early science fiction.
