The Rolling Stones (novel)
novel by Robert A. Heinlein
The Rolling Stones (also published under the name Space Family Stone in the United Kingdom) is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
A condensed version of the novel had been published earlier in Boys' Life (September, October, November, December 1952) under the title "Tramp Space Ship". It was published in hardcover that year by Scribner's as part of the Heinlein juveniles.
Plot summary
The Stones, a family of "Loonies" (residents of the Moon), purchase and restore a used spaceship and go sightseeing around the Solar System.
The twin teenage boys, named Castor and Pollux after the half-brothers of classical legend, buy used bicycles to sell on Mars, their first stop, where they run afoul of local regulations, but their grandmother Hazel Stone saves them from jail. While on Mars, the twins buy their brother Buster a native Martian creature called a flat cat, which produces a soothing vibration, as a pet.
Instead of returning home as originally planned, they decide to travel to the asteroid belt, where the equivalent of a gold rush is in progress, prospecting for "core material" and radioactive ores. The twins obtain supplies and luxury goods on Mars to sell at their destination, on the principle that it is shopkeepers, not miners, who get rich during gold rushes. En route, the rapidly maturing, fertile (and pregnant) flat cat and its offspring quickly cause a population explosion aboard, so the family places them in hibernation and later sells them to the miners.
After an adventure or two, the family sets out to see the rings of Saturn.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Rolling Stones (novel)” is novel by Robert A. Heinlein. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rolling, Stones and novel, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7761365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Rolling Stones (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.