The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones is a science fiction novel by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1952 and written for young readers.

The Stones are Loonies, and the twins' plan to buy a ship is complicated by their father's decision to buy a better one and take the whole family along. Hazel Stone, the grandmother, is the book's most forceful character and the reason the twins keep escaping the trouble they get into, beginning on Mars, where they land with a cargo of bicycles and run straight into local trading regulations. From there the family travels outward: to the asteroid belt, where prospectors are working a rush and where their mother, a doctor, is needed to deal with an outbreak of disease; and eventually to Titan and beyond. A Martian pet bought for the youngest child produces the novel's most famous comic difficulty, since the flat cats breed faster than anyone expected and the ship is not designed for a population explosion. Heinlein had serialised an earlier version in Boys' Life in 1952 under the title Tramp Space Ship, and the book appeared as part of the novels he wrote for Scribner's, the sequence readers usually call the Heinlein juveniles. In Britain it was published as Space Family Stone.