Starman Jones

A young boy gets a new "step-step-father" who decides to sell the family farm and everything they own. The boy decides to run away, with dreams of becoming an "astrogator". He manages to sneak on to a ship as a low-level crew, eventually managing to become an apprentice astrogator. His chief supporter dies of natural causes leaving him more at the mercies of the evil junior astrogator and the past-his-prime captain. These to miscalculate some numbers as they were trying a difficult jump and disregard the boy's correction, leaving them stranded in space. They land on a planet with a livable climate, with seemingly peaceful creatures. However, these creatures try to enslave them, and they realize they must escape. Meanwhile, the other astrogators die and the boy is responsible for returning the ship home through uncharted space. He manages to do this, but still gets fined by the astrogators guild. He does get to keep his post, though he opts for bachelorhood rather than marrying the rich girl from the ship. Ok, so what's the point? It seems to aimed at boys fascinated with technology and space travel who feel tied down with their current surroundings. The boy in this story was content with his life as a farmer, even though he had used his photographic memory to memorize everything needed to travel in space. He eventually achieves his glory, but still has to deal with the challenges of society. There is also the political "anti-union" message. The guilds and unions put in a lot of needless restrictions and inhibitions on people achieving what they are capable of achieving. Even though he was capable of navigating a ship through uncharted space without assistance, he was still fined and forced to resume the role of junior astrogator. What kind of justice is that? We also see a society with 1950s style division of labor and values, along with concerns of regulations and land "takings" Old science fiction also provides an interesting look at how bad we are at predicting the future. Here people use slide rules and lookup tables to calculate binary values to feed to computers so they can fly through remote galaxies. Technology has shifted on a slightly different trajectory.