Clifford Russell wins a spacesuit in a competition (although he was actually aiming for a trip to the moon). He fixes it up, takes care of it, and eventually decides to sell it to pay for college. He takes it out for one last spin, accidentally gets kidnapped by aliens and eventually ends up pleading for the future of the Human race in an inter-galactic court.
I enjoyed the actual story in this book, Clifford’s tale of inter-stellar derring do, but this kept being interrupted by Heinlien’s politics, which are very near the surface in this book. The whole idea of the über-competent hero who’s self-taught in everything from Latin to electronics, and despises the state education system leaves me cold. Also, while I can usually ignore attitudes to women in older books, it was harder to do here, although I’m not sure if that’s because I was already prone to finding faults.
So the story would get four stars, the politics two, so I’ll average it out with three.
