Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Citizen of the Galaxy is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction and published in hardcover in 1957 as one of the Heinlein juveniles by Scribner's. Influenced by Rudyard Kipling's Kim, the novel, like many of Heinlein's, may also have been influenced by the author's background in and nostalgia for the U.S. Navy. Thorby is a young, defiant slave boy recently arrived on a strange planet. He is purchased by an old beggar, Baslim the Cripple, for a trivial sum (much to the amusement of a wealthy nobleman, who subsidizes the purchase) and taken to the beggar's surprisingly well-furnished underground home. As in many of Heinlein's books, the principal character is portrayed over time, beginning in relative ignorance, learning from experience, receiving the benefits of education, and using that education to resolve subsequent problems in his own life and that of those around him.