The Star Beast

The Star Beast is a science fiction novel by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1954. It was first serialised, in a somewhat abridged form, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1954 under the title Star Lummox, and then published in hardcover as part of the series of Heinlein juveniles.

By the time the story opens, Earth has had interstellar spaceflight for centuries and has made contact with a number of intelligent alien species. John Thomas Stuart XI lives in the small Rocky Mountain town of Westville and cares for Lummox, an extraterrestrial beast his great-grandfather brought home; the animal has learned how to speak and has grown from something the size of a collie pup into a creature big enough to be ridden, especially after consuming a used car. Westville treats Lummox as a nuisance, and when the animal leaves the Stuart property one day and causes substantial property damage across the city, John Thomas is the one who has to answer for it. A man kept busy dealing with the consequences is Mr. Kiku, and the case he is handling grows well past the question of who pays for a damaged neighbourhood.

Heinlein wrote the novel in the middle of the run of books he produced for younger readers in the 1950s, and it shares their habit of putting an ordinary adolescent in the middle of an argument much bigger than he is. At its centre is the assumption that a creature nobody has properly understood can be kept as a family pet.