A bold rescue attempt by the brave lads manages to recover Willis before the headmaster sells him off to the London Zoo, but the friends' joy soon turns to surprise when Willis plays back a conversation he overheard about the Company putting an end to the seasonal migrations on Mars. The new headmaster makes life miserable for all the boys with his military discipline, and he has the audacity to take Willis away from Jim and lock him away in his office. Jim takes Willis with him when he and his friend Frank go off to school. Willis is a 'bouncer,' a furry little guy of some intelligence whose most amazing quality is an innate capability to reproduce exactly anything he hears.

Jim Marlowe is a youngster living on Mars, and he has a 'pet'-friend named Willis. It actually became a fan favorite, and now we can read it complete and unedited, the way Heinlein originally intended it to be read. Heinlein floated the idea of listing her as the co-author, wanting her to take some of the blame for a novel that he himself felt no pride in, fearing that Dalgliesh's hatchet job had produced a story that would harm his reputation. He eventually gave in and removed several sections, including a couple of pages about the legal use of guns by the young boys in his Martian world and a section centering on the production of eggs by the fuzzy little bouncer Willis - she eliminated every mention of sex in the book, despite the fact that each such mention was beyond innocuous. Alice Dalgliesh, Heinlein's editor at Scribner's, objected to several themes and ideas in the original manuscript, much to Heinlein's justified consternation. It's hard to think of it as juvenile fiction, though, because it is a fantastically fun read that introduces thought-provoking ideas on sociological and otherwise adult subjects. Red Planet is one of Robert Heinlein's most enjoyable, best-selling and important juvenile novels.

Robert a heinlein red planet