Citizen Of The Galaxy, by Robert A. Heinlein

Photo by Wil C. Fry. Cover by Davis Meltzer.

★★ (of 5)

Full Title: Citizen Of The Galaxy
Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Year: 1957 (mine was 1971 paperback)
Pages: 253
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Ace Books
ISBN (N/A)
Wikipedia page
Author’s Wikipedia page

By some coincidence, this was the next Heinlein book in my stack after I finished two slavery related books — Never Caught and Kindred — and it too deals with slavery, which is evident from the opening line:

“Lot ninety-seven,” the auctioneer announced. “A boy.”

Except instead of 1800s-era slaves of African origin in the United States, this book concerns distant future slavery. One military officer late in the book opines in place of the author, calling slavery “the most vicious habit humans fall into”, discussing how “it gets rooted in the economic systems and laws, in men’s habits and attitudes”. The same officer concludes: “You can’t reason with them [the enslavers]; you can kill them but you can’t change their minds.” Later, another character seems aware of some of the right-wingers I’ve seen on Twitter when he says: “Then some smarmy well-dressed character will venture the opinion that slavery — when it existed — was not so bad, because a large part of the population is really happier if they don’t have the responsibilities of a free man.” (As just one example: remember when Bill O’Reilly made the “well-fed” remark about the slaves who built the White House?)

The story focuses on Thorby, the “boy” from the first line. He is bought by Baslim, a beggar, and trained in the art of mendication. Thorby quickly realizes Baslim isn’t exactly a beggar — he secretly keeps track of certain starships that arrive and depart from the Jubbulpore spaceport and lives in a surprisingly well-furnished apartment hidden underneath the ruins of an old ampitheater. Baslim home schools Thorby, teaches him multiple languages and advanced mathematics, and uses hypnosis to ensure the boy memorizes several versions of lengthy secret message, to be delivered upon Baslim’s death.

When Baslim dies (is killed by the Sargon’s secret police), Thorby delivers the memorized message to a starship captain and is taken aboard the Free Trader ship Sisu, where he adopted into the “family” (each trading ship’s crew is comprised of a large extended family). Thorby eventually learns the Traders had owed Baslim a huge debt and taking him in was repayment. In the Sisu, Thorby becomes a competent firecontrolman (gunner). Just as he begins to feel at home in the ship, he is turned over the Guard — which is what Baslim’s secret message to the captain had insisted. A Guard starship captain remembers Baslim and reveals that Baslim was a secret agent working to uncover the secrets of the slave trade in order to abolish it. Thorby enlists while an automatic search begins to find out his origins.

Eventually it is discovered that Thorby is the heir to one of Earth’s largest fortunes, that of the Rudbek family, and he is returned to an Earth and family he doesn’t remember. Sensing that something is amiss, he learns that the people running his family company are unscrupulous, so Thorby schemes to oust them and take over the board, just as he begins to suspect his own family’s company is secretly funding or supplying the distant slave trade.

The book wasn’t as good as I remembered it being, despite many highlights. For one thing, the story is all over the place. About seventy pages concern Thorby’s life with Baslim on Jubbul, then there are 100+ pages of life in the Sisu as a Free Trader, then fewer than 15 pages cover his stint as an enlisted Guardman, and the final 60-70 pages cover his experiences as a wealthy scion back on Earth. Each bit felt like it belonged in a different book, held together only due to each one being about Thorby.

For another, there isn’t the conclusion that Heinlein readers have come to expect. The book ends with Thorby in charge of his own massive company, but no closer to solving the slavery dilemma than when he began. (Both the above issues, “structural problems and a weak ending”, were noted in a 1957 New York Times review in 1957.)

Additionally, though Heinlein does fight against some anti-woman tropes of his day in a few places — for example, the Free Traders are a matriarchal clan with women in charge of nearly everything, and on page 140 Thorby learns that the girl to whom he’s been explaining multi-dimensional geometry is actually an expert at it — Heinlein still tends to treat women poorly in most places.

Some of the good points bear mentioning too. For such a short novel, the book feels like an epic adventure. The number of places visited and described is lengthy, and the character list is voluminous compared to most Heinlein novels. The world-building is superb — especially considering that this book doesn’t fit on any of the known Heinlein timelines. Characters feel fully fleshed out and like real people — even the ones that fill archetypal roles. Both humans and non-human sentients populate the story (though all main characters are humans), and the humans are from multiple ethnicities, cultures, language groups, and backgrounds. Many of the human characters are non-white.

An interesting theme that I didn't fully notice until after I was finished was the idea that each station in Thorby’s life was simply a different type of slavery, only the first being literal. Even after Baslim freed him, Thorby was a minor and therefore chattel in a sense. Once he joined the family of Free Traders, the strict cultural rules (and the physical limits of living one’s life entirely in a spaceship) formed a different type of unfreedom. When he enlisted in the Hegemonic Guard, as with any military stint, one’s choices in life are strictly limited. And finally, as one of the wealthiest people alive, he found himself restricted in so many other ways — responsibilities to shareholders and employees, social obligations, and the complexities of tax codes and business regulations that apply to an interstellar corporate behemoth.

Note: Apparently the book bears a resemblance to the Rudyard Kipling novel Kim, which I have never read, but it sounds interesting.

Conclusion

I remember really liking this book when I first read it as a teen. Now I wonder if I ever truly finished it. I had clear memories of the opening scenes, with Thorby as a slave, Baslim the Cripple, and some of the action scenes. But I recalled very little, if anything, about the final 70 pages — the least interesting part of the book.