Full Description
The stars were closed to Max Jones. To get into space you either needed
connections, a membership in the arcane Guild, or a whole lot more money than
Max, the son of a widowed, poor mother, was every going to have. What Max
does have going for him are his uncle's prized astrogation manuals
— books on star navigation that Max literally commits to memory, word for
word, equation for equation. When Max's mother decides to remarry a bullying
oaf, Max takes to the road, only to discover that his uncle Chet's manuals, and
Max's near complete memorization of them, is a ticket to the stars!
From the First Golden Age of Heinlein, this is the so-called juvenile
(written, Heinlein always claims, just as much for adults) that started them all
and made Heinlein a legend for multiple generations of
readers.
