Review: The Star Beast (spoilers)

[jeriendhal]

Summary: John Thomas Stewart XI is a pretty normal kid living in North American some time in the future. He's got a nice girlfriend, his mom is a bit of pain, he's looking forward to college, and he's even got a pet, Lummox. Mind you, Lummox is an alien star beast the size of a tractor trailer that's two hundred years old and eats Buicks, but he'

Comments

[countrycousin]

I like the conversation between Mr. Kiku and the young lady at the end where he discusses Lummox's real purpose. :-) A few of the other scenes. I basically re-read a few scenes - a lot of the others, as you indicate, are pretty deadly.

[jeriendhal]

Anything with John Thomas' mother tended to make me wince, especially when he refused to really stand up to her. And the bits with Betty were almost all gold. Though there was the bit with her taking part ownership with Lummox that makes me think RAH meant to make more of a big deal about John Thomas selling Lommox than what ended up occuring in the book.

[nojay]

RAH got away with a whole lot of subtexts in that story -- if you move your POV to Lummox's race then they're coming to rescue a long-lost royal princess who was kidnapped by alien space monsters when she was a baby.

There's also Lummox' "hobby" which is only mentioned after the reader discover she is a female. She has been raising John Thomases...

[jeriendhal]

John Thomas' name tended to make me unfairly smirk through the whole book, alas. And yes, Lummox's folk were entirely justified in demanding her back, if a bit heavy handed.

[nojay]

The story goes that Heinlein's editor for his YA books was somewhat prudish and strait-laced and the John Thomas reference was slipped past her deliberately. Someone else managed the same thing with a side-reference in a book to a "ball-bearing mousetrap" meaning a tomcat.

[drhoz]

that's beautiful :D

[selenite]

I think getting a boy being rude to his mother would've been much harder to get past the editors than an important black man.

[estokien]

I remember the book with fondness, but not much specificity from my own days as a juvenile, but my school library didn't exactly abound with Science Fiction books when I was in 4th grade.

I also kind of recall that the best part about a lot of the Heinlein Juvies was when they would manage to visit Venus and see the advertisements in a land where false advertising carried the death penalty.