This is an omnibus vol­ume pre­sent­ing Robert Hein­lein’s first four “juve­nile” nov­els, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Scrib­n­er’s in 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1950. Hein­lein wrote twelve sci­ence fic­tion nov­els for teenagers, and put more care and artistry into them than most writ­ers put into seri­ous adult fic­tion. Their impact has been aston­ish­ing, and they remain wide­ly read long after their sci­ence and “futu­ri­ty” has become out­dat­ed. They were tremen­dous­ly lib­er­at­ing for young read­ers, espe­cial­ly when you judge them in the con­text of North Amer­i­can soci­ety when they were writ­ten. Unlike any author writ­ing for young peo­ple, up to that time, Hein­lein treat­ed his read­ers with hon­esty and respect, as well as pro­vid­ing them with a rich intel­lec­tu­al feast. Hein­lein strug­gled with his edi­tors, who con­stant­ly pan­icked over the pos­si­ble “unsuit­abil­i­ty” of his treat­ment and sub­ject mat­ter. But they were devoured by libraries, and thus were avail­able to peo­ple (like me) who were in no posi­tion to buy books. Scrib­n­er’s pub­lished them in a hand­some for­mat, with illus­tra­tions of great artis­tic mer­it by Clif­ford Geary. I came to them when they were start­ing to show their age, but their “sense of won­der” and their moral impact remained vivid. Cit­i­zen of the Galaxy, for exam­ple, was one of the three books that most stim­u­lat­ed my life-long fas­ci­na­tion with the issue of free­dom and slavery.
 
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