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Starman Jones is one of Heinlein's most effective books.
It shows a young man in a situation where anything he does is bound to put him in the wrong.
That is a nice, difficult sort of problem, the sort that fiction really ought to be concerned with. Heinlein's solution is the most viable one that I can imagine: when all your choices are "wrong" ones, you pick the one you like best and live with its consequences.
In Starman Jones the Earth is crowded and jobs are at a premium.
For this reason, the best jobs are held by inheritance, passed down through a restrictive guild system.
If you don't like what you have inherited, presuming that you have inherited something, it takes money and trading to get something else.
If you have no money and no guild job, you are just out of luck.
Max Jones is a hill boy whose uncle belonged to the Astrogators' Guild, but who died before he could nominate Max.
Max wants nothing more than to serve on a starship, but without the nomination he doesn't stand a chance. Not only does the Guild deny Max the chance he thought he had in space, but it takes his uncle's books from him (the secret mathematics of the Guild which outsiders mustn't see) and gives him pennies in compensation. With the only other alternative to return home to a fatuous stepmother and her new husband, a thorough-going scoundrel, Max joins a dubious acquaintance and with the aid of false papers the two sneak their way into menial starship jobs, Max figuring this is better than nothing.
Max has going for him the fact that his uncle was known and respected, and his own mathematical ability and photographic memory.
He knows those "secret" mathematical tables, and he has the brains to learn how to use them.
Against him is the fact that eventually he will be found out.
He plans to jump ship before it returns to Earth, but some of his uncle's old associates and a notation on his phony records that he has once struck for the job of chartsman -- a starplotter in the control room -- get him another shot at the job.
His demonstrated abilities earn him a try at the job of astrogator, exactly what he has always wanted -- in spite of the restrictions of the Guild there are hardly enough people around with the requisite abilities to fill the jobs open.
(That, by the way, causes me to wonder if astrogators' jobs would ever be handed around by a guild system. Plumbing and trucking jobs, yes, but jobs involving advanced mathematics?) In any case, a death, a senile breakdown, and a case of paranoia leave Max with the job of bringing the ship home when she gets lost.
The consequences that Max has to live with are a reprimand and a stiff fine, but at the end he is ready to ship out again as an astrogator.
Starman Jones demonstrates the advantages in having an older protagonist.
First, the world he can move in is much wider, and second, a Max Jones bringing the ship home is credible while a Pollux Stone bringing the ship home would not be.
This is a long book, over 300 pages, and a rich one.
It is a solid, detailed, fascinating piece of work.
== Personaggi ==
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