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Heinlein, Robert A.
CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY
book-date: 1957
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GRADING:
Ace
1973?

Paperback
Davis Meltzer
$1.25
VG+ or better

Tight and almost square with flat spine, light wear to edges of spine. Age tanning is very mild and uniform - better than expected for this vintage. No stamps, marks or writing.

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) - serialized in Astounding, September to December 1957.

Thorby, a small, scared, dirty and defiant little boy, is sold as a slave to a one-eyed, one-legged beggar in the city of Jubblepore, Captital of the Nine Worlds. Baslim the cripple is not just any beggar - he is engaged in some sort of illegal activity involving a disguise with an artificial leg, a photo-lab in their home, and keeping track of certain starships and their activities. Thorby thinks nothing is unusual about this - "Pop" can do anything. Baslim gives Thorby an education and starts using him as runner - until the old man is killed for spying. His final request: deliver a message to the captain of the Free Trader Sisu. The Free Traders owed Colonel Baslim a great debt for rescuing a family-ship from slavery. Thorby is adopted into the Free Traders, and learns their ways, until he is transferred to the Hegemonic Guard - and then to Earth, when his true identity is finally traced. Heinlein shows us four different societies from the inside, and makes them believable and natural for those who live in them. He also gives a story-line that is impossible to put down: beggar boy makes good, then better, and finally finds a place where he "fits." One of Heinlein's best.