This is my favorite of the Jupiter novels. It's a well-done story about how a spoiled brat grows up, and the people who help him do it once he's removed from the bad influence of his stiflingly rich family. I found it interesting enough that I have reread it several times (even though I am well out of the age range of the target audience of the Jupiter novels).

Sheffield comments that this is his rewrite of a classic story by Rudyard Kipling. I haven't read that story, but from what I can tell, the least plausible parts of this story come from trying to adhere too closely to Kipling's outline. ( )

The Billion Dollar Boy is a science fiction novel written for teens by author and physicist Charles Sheffield.

Set a few hundred years in the future, Shelby Jerome Prescott Cheever is the son of the wealthiest man on the Earth. Spoiled and used to getting his way, he convinces his mother to take him on a space cruise of the mined out asteroid belt. Bored and in a drunken stupor, Shelby Cheever dons a space suit and heads for a nearby node, a type of man-made wormhole that allows people and ships to travel instantaneously to other regions of space.

Too drunk to think straight, Shelby ends up in the Messina Dust Cloud 27 light years from Earth instead of the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system, where he was aiming on going. Picked up by a ship harvesting heavy elements of the dust cloud, and heading away from the nearest node, no one believes that Shelby is rich (since most of the people on Earth are poor). To earn his keep, Shelby must work alongside the crew of the harvester.

When Shelby and the crew of the harvester meet up at Confluence to trade and socialize with other harvester crews during midseason, the only two people who believe Shelby about his wealth on Earth plot to kidnap him and hold him for ransom.

The Billion Dollar Boy is an exciting read. Although spoiled and rich, the reader learns to like Shelby Cheever as he learns how to be a productive member of the harvester crew. The setting, in a colorful and dangerous dust cloud light-years from the Earth stimulates the imagination, and the supporting characters are quirky and believable. The science behind the technology described is solid, as the writer is a physicist, and I believe that this would be a good book for teens who are interested in space and technology, as there is an abundance of both. ( )

The book was solid, aimed at a teen crowd, but I found it a bit derivative of Heinlein's science fiction books aimed at teens. The plot was predictable, and the characters are cardboard.

My two pet peeves with this book is 1) a kid in a spacesuit managed to get out of the ship, and then finds the portal that takes him 22 light years from earth. Does this ship have no security? Do they want tourists wandering around everywhere? and 2) Hey Dad, I only see you once a month, but when I come home as a man, you all of a sudden want to be in my life and manage to give all my friends what they need! ( )