Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132455 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Heinlein's most inspirational juvenile novel
Citizen of the Galaxy is probably Heinlein's most mature juvenile novel and is certainly one of his most inspirational. It contains a sweeping indictment of slavery and provides a stirring message about citizenship and civic responsibility. Thorby is a slave; the only memories he has are a tangled morass of mistreatment spread among faceless men on nameless worlds; all he brings with him to Sargon are a filthy piece of clothing and an ugly assortment of scars and sores. On the block, no one values him enough to even bid on him, all except for the beggar Baslim. He takes him home (a hole beneath the abandoned amphitheatre) and raises him as a son rather than a slave. Thorby learns the art of begging from his new Pop and enjoys the happiest years of his life with him. Then Baslim, whom Thorby eventually learned was much more than a simple beggar, is arrested as a spy. Thorby satisfies his Pop's wishes by evading capture himself and taking a message to a certain ship's captain. Captain Krausa adopts Thorby as his own son and makes him a member of the Free Trader family on the ship Sisu. Here Thorby learns the complexities of Free Trader family life, makes real friends, and assumes a pivotal job protecting the huge spacecraft from raiders. Then Thorby is displaced once again, as Krausa takes him to the first ship of the Hegemonic Empire he comes in contact with. While Thorby hates to leave his new family, he does it to satisfy Baslim's ultimate wish for him to find his true family. Thorby soon learns that wealth does not make you rich as he strives to fight slavery in the galaxy and become the son his birth parents wanted him to be

Heinlein gives us three strikingly different looks at family life. While Thorby is happy as a part of the immensely complicated Free Trader family on Sisu, he looks back at his days with the beggar Baslim as the happiest of his life. On the ship, one is barely acknowledged as existing if he/she is not a part of the family. The only person who talks to Thorby at first is an anthropologist, and she gives a poignant explanation of this type of society. The family is free, yet each individual in that family is in some way a slave; Thorby is told what to do and when and where to do it. The ultimate lesson is learned on Terra, where the prescripts of Baslim continue to guide Thorby's actions. He is determined to fight against the slave trade, which is something most Terrans don't even believe exists because it is taking place far, far away. For Thorby, it is personal and he devotes his life to fighting against it. The ultimate responsibility he learns is to fully devote himself to the noble cause, to be willing to give us his own freedom, even to become a beggar as Baslim did, in order to work for the freedom of others. The story is as much fantasy as science fiction, but the message it contains and the moral lessons it teaches make it one of Heinlein's most important and enjoyable novels.

The first and best science fiction book I ever read
This book has so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin which is probably why I must have read it over twenty times in the last 15 years. It follows the life of Thorby, an orphan and a slave, on his quest to find the family he was kidnapped from in his babyhood. The characterisations of the central character and those he comes into contact are completely believeable and we can all recognise someone we know in them from time to time. It is a story about good triumphing over evil and learning right from wrong, a crusade against the inter-galactic slave trade, a children's adventure story, a study of future cultures, an essay on anthropology and, finally, a jolly good read. Everyone old or young will be gripped by the story. It is the best Heinlein I have ever read and the rest are brilliant too. Every time I read it I see something new. Happy reading. This one is unmissable!

The story of a slave-boy's search for identity
I have not read this book for twenty-five years, but its influence on the nine-year old I was when I first read it was profound, and my memory of it is vivid - if not necessarily wholly accurate. Suffice it to say, my copy of the paperback had disintegrated beyond repair by the time I reached my teens...

Citizen of the Galaxy is the story of a young boy, Thorby, and his search for identity. He begins his journey as a slave on a distant planet, is bought by a beggar who is more than he might seem, is adopted into a spacefaring family, becomes a space cadet [or something of the sort] and finally, as a young adult, rediscovers his natural family on planet Earth and becomes involved in corporate conflict. In each of these contrasting social environments Thorby remains to some extent an outsider, and if the novel does not explicitly deal with alienation, social determinism and the nature of freedom, then it certainly raised questions about them in my young mind...

As a nine year old, I was able to identify with Thorby, partly because things seemed to just "happen" to him (which is how I saw my own life at the time) and partly because in many respects he is an empty persona, waiting for the reader to project their own personality onto him.

For me, the novel that in childhood moved me to tears and left me feeling inspired is beyond my powers analysis - perhaps it was foolish of me even to try...