(Found) Searching for à book. Interstellar, telepathy

[ErikG]

Im searching for a book I read some 20 years ago.

Although I'm not sure if this is actually one book or if I'm mixing the memory of two books together.

EDIT:
Its weird how the brain works, five mins after writing this post the word Jones popped up in my head. And I have thought about this book for some time... Google heinlein and jones promptly got the result "Starman Jones". But my memory was indeed from two books. The telepathy story I's a different one from the math story mixed in below. And so promptly searching for heinlein twins and telepathy I found the other story as well "Time for the stars".

So no help actually needed anymore. But without creating this post I don't tho k I would have figured it out. So thanks for existing!
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Original post:
The main male character was a poor boy on earth living close some kind of elevated train line. They had to wear hats while eating.
He and his brother where telepathic so they could be used during space travel for instant communication. Some weird form of math computation was involved as well where he almost competed against this experienced computational genius.
They end up on a number if weird places and finally ends up on this hosts planet with weird pretty advanced creatures that kill a lot of the crew. Eventually they get rescued by this little shuttle that could easily do the same trip they spent several years doing almost instantly.




Oh a name rings a bell... Jones

I now have a son of my own 12 yrs, facinated with space an I know he would love it.
Suggestions welcome!

 

[Metryq]

I can see how Time for the Stars and Starman Jones might tend to blur together in one's mind—especially after 20 years.

I still enjoy Starman Jones despite a technological short-sightedness that is critical to making the story work—namely, the crude astrogation method dependent on potentially fallible human skill to make it work. That is, the calculations for a hyperspace "transition" are done largely by hand, with more people in the mix calling out translations between base 10 and the base 2 math needed for a stone age computer with binary lights on it. (To say nothing of the final transition being controlled by hand.) This makes interstellar travel too much like Russian roulette, but it is needed to set up the central character as a hero.

Time for the Stars is more a coming of age story than an adventure about star-hopping. Doc Deveraux's definition of a psychiatrist is the very core of the book. The scenario where the Lewis & Clark is met by a faster-than-light ship from Earth originally appeared in For Us, The Living, a Heinlein book that did not see print until long after his death. The details of the situation work a bit better in Time for the Stars, although even then it is awkward and forced. (The general idea of a slow starship being overtaken by later technology has appeared in other sci-fi stories, such as A. E. Van Vogt's "Far Centaurus.")

 

[sueelleker]

The FTL concept was also used in Variable Star-written by Spider Robinson but based on Heinlein's writings.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50847.Variable_Star