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price:
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title:
$2.50
Heinlein, Robert A.
HAVE SPACE SUIT - WILL TRAVEL
book-date: 1958
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GRADING:
Ace
1971?
1st
Paperback
Steele Savage
.95
VG to VG+

Ace circa 1971 paperback (#31800- probable 1st paperback; no date given in credits; copyright 1958.) Cover by Steele Savage, 255 pages, 95 cent cover price. Condition is VG to VG+: tight and almost square; spine has a line down middle and a little wear to bottom; faint line next to spine; age tanning is very mild and uniform. No stamps, marks or writing - a clean copy.

Have Space Suit- Will Travel: serialized in The Magazine of F&SF August to October 1958. "You see, I had this space suit." Heinlein was the best ever at starting with a punchy first line that grabbed you and pulled you right into the book. Kip Russell is space mad, and makes a systematic effort at winning a contest where the 1st prize is "a trip to the Moon!" He doesn't win, but gets a spacesuit instead - a real one that had logged 800 hours during construction of the 2nd space station. He enjoys the challenge of putting it back in working order, until it was "like a fine car, its helmet like a Swiss watch."

While taking a final stroll in it before college, testing an echo-repeat radio rig, he is surprised to get an answer to his broadcast. The next he knew, a flying saucer lands almost on top of him, an alien tumbles out, and then he is kidnapped and on the way to the Moon! He achieved his wish of going to the Moon, but he never would have dreamed of a forced march on the surface. Things get complicated after that, and the stakes keep getting higher. This is marvelous fun - another of my favorites.

A side note: you may have seen the quote "Heinlein wears imagination as though it were his private suit of clothes." It was from a New York Times review of this book, and that review is reprinted as the first page blurb.