Starman Jones

Did You Know?

• Heinlein authorized Douglas L. Lieberman to stage Starman Jones at the Goodman Children's Theater in Chicago.
• The two-act play ran for 25 performances in 1972, with Charles Fleischer in the title role.
• Avon Books published the script in 1974 as part of the anthology Contemporary Children's Theater edited by Betty Jean Lifton.

Plot summary

Max Jones is a farm boy from the Ozarks. After his father dies and his stepmother weds a man he cannot stand, he flees home, grabbing his late uncle's astrogation manuals. Jobs are controlled by guilds that pass membership down through families. Because his uncle belonged to the Astrogators' Guild and had no kids, Max hopes he was named the heir. He heads to Earthport to check. On the road, he meets a drifter named Sam Anderson, who hints he deserted the Imperial Marines. Sam gives Max food and advice but later swipes the manuals. At the guild office, Max finds out he was not named heir, though he gets back his uncle's big security deposit for the books. Sam had returned the manuals and tried to collect the deposit himself. Max bumps into a sorry Sam, and with Max's cash, Sam uses fake service records to get them both jobs on a starship. Max becomes a steward's mate third class and memorizes the Stewards' Guild manual thanks to his eidetic memory. He bonds with a passenger's alien spider puppy and meets Eldreth "Ellie" Coburn, who asks him to play three-dimensional chess. Thanks to Ellie's scheming, the ship's officers learn Max knows astrogation, and he moves up to the command deck. Max confesses his record is fake, and Hendrix puts off the issue. After Hendrix dies, the astrogation crew is too small. Max spots a big mistake in the real-time calculations for a jump, but the captain and Assistant Astrogator Simes ignore him, and the ship gets lost.

Reception

Groff Conklin, writing in 1954, called Starman Jones a richly textured and thoroughly mature story, ranking it as the best among Heinlein's seven juvenile novels then available. Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas highlighted its strong character development, exciting adventure, and inventive alien lifeforms. P. Schuyler Miller placed it near the top of mainstream science fiction. For the New York Times, Villiers Gerson praised it as superior science fiction, carefully plotted and beautifully written. Jack Williamson saw it as a classic bildungsroman with bold symbolism and universal appeal, despite some coincidences and melodrama. Damon Knight argued that Heinlein was not just writing a story but preparing an entire generation for the coming Space Age.