Jumping Off The Planet

David Gerrold’s Jumping off the Planet proves once again that Heinlein’s juveniles are an inexhaustible font. Gerrold, best known for his work on Star Trek, here refurbishes The Rolling Stones with a broken family that parodies the Heinlein model. Gerrold has the Heinleinian voice down pat and begins with a sentence that Heinlein could have written: “I’ve got an idea!” Dad said. “Let’s go to the moon.” Thirteen-year-old Chigger is less than enthusiastic. He dismisses Dad’s suggestion as “another one of those things adults say for no other reason than to use up air.” He does not want to go to the moon, but terrestrial life is overcrowded and socially dysfunctional. For example, in a draconian to slow population show more growth, the government will require Chigger’s brother to change his sexual orientation to single-gender if he wants a scholarship. His separated parents, Chigger thinks, “do not act their age.” Mom, who already wants to limit Dad’s visitation rights, won’t sit still for his kidnapping the kids for a new life in the Sheffield Crater.

Gerrold aims his story at young readers, but there is enough for fogeys like me to enjoy. show less

I picked this book up at an airport minutes before a flight. It was a total panic buy. I grabbed the nearest fiction I could find so I'd have some company in flight. As I sat down in my squished middle seat I glanced over the back cover to see what the book was about.

"Sci-fi, rebelling against parents, elevator to the moon, check."

Then I tore into it. The writing wasn't anything special. It seemed that many parts of the plot were just excuses for the author to explain more about his ingenious moon elevator idea. Around halfway through the book I paused to re-read the back cover. Then I started wondering how long it was going to take before the book caught up with the synopsis.

Let me make a quick comment here about book jackets. When show more you read the back of a paperback or the inside jacket of a hardcover novel, you are expecting certain things as a reader. This short blurb will give you the overview of how the book is going to start and a vague idea of how it might proceed, or perhaps a lingering tension that will be paramount later in the story. These are teasers, like a movie trailer, meant to get you interested and started. They are not to be, at any time, a complete summary of everything you are about to read. After all, if that were the case, what's the point in reading the story?

So I continued the read and managed to finish it before I reached my destination. And there it was, on the very last page, that the story finally fulfilled the back cover text. Not a single surprise. Not a single new development. The book was its own spoiler.

I was pretty pissed off. Not only was the book bad, but it was ruined before I read it. Perhaps it was the middle seat on the plane, but I found absolutely nothing about this reading experience enjoyable.

In hindsight, I suppose it is a good omen for any budding authors out there. Apparently TOR doesn't set its bar very high. show less

Gerrold has created a perfectly feasible future, where cities are underground due to the heat and a new technology has allowed 'elevators' to the moon and beyond - upworld, with a schism starting between upworlders and downworlders.

However the characters in this book were not people (or children) I particularly wanted to spend time with, even though they were well drawn and believable. Three children are torn between their parents bitter divorce and then their father takes them on an extended holiday which somehow ends at the elevator, and then going to the moon, much drama ensues. I didn't like the ending, which I felt was too harsh. I won't be reading the next in the series.

I really liked the character development in the book--at least with the brothers. I found the parents unrealistic and never got a very clear idea of what the father was really like, so I didn't quite like the ending.Very imaginative near-future story, with a well-placed and subtle coming-out story mixed in (not the main character).I'm debating whether or not I'll read the second in this series or simple another of Gerrold's books.

Great concept, so-so execution. All 3 books could easily have fitted into a single novel of average length. Defiantly padded to make a trilogy.

I actually didn't read it. Since I read the 2nd book first I really wanted to see what was going to happen next and not go back. Each of the next books has enough recap that it wasn't necessary to even read this one.

I actually didn't read it. Since I read the 2nd book first I really wanted to see what was going to happen next and not go back. Each of the next books has enough recap that it wasn't necessary to even read this one.