George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt

(read as research for book I'm writing - spoilers ahead!)

This is the 2nd instalment (of 3) in the series of children's novels about physics, especially cosmology. This time George's best friend and neighbour, Annie, is leaving to live in Florida with her parents, because her Dad is working on a Mars Rover with the fictional equivalent of NASA. But after a short time, Annie calls him up and invites him to the States, saying it's an emergency. His gran forks out the money to go and the whole family take various holidays there. At Annie's, a new kid is staying, Emmett, who is a computer wizard, but not great on social skills. He and Annie are initially enemies, but soon Emmett is helping on the quest. It turns out that the Mars Rover show more Annie's dad, Eric, is working on, Homer, is malfunctioning, and seems to be sending an alien message to Eric's personal supercomputer. The message is cryptic, but suggests that if someone doesn't come to Homer on Mars soon, Earth will be destroyed. Emmett makes the supercomputer workable and makes it open up a doorway to Mars. Annie and George clamber through the portal and soon find another clue, drawn by the Mars rover, which sends them to Saturn's largest moon Titan, where there is another clue. They go through another door to the dangerous planet within the nearby Alpha Centauri system, falsely believing this is the next stage of the treasure hunt, but manage to escape and then jump (now with Eric joining them, after he came to rescue them) to the system 55 Cancri, where there is an earthlike planet. But instead of finding aliens, they find Eric's arch enemy, Graham Reeper, who is still bent on revenge and destruction. The only way they can get back though is with his help. It turns out Eric wasn't very fair to Graham when they were both students, and after they both apologise, they work together to get back home to Earth and safety, with Graham slowly becoming a friend again - as well as being accepted once more into the scientific community. There are preludes to the next book, which will probably be on the LHC and nuclear physics.

This novel has similar strengths and weaknesses to the last one. It has a semi-gripping story, even if it is a bit crude and even painfully childish (in a way that decent writers like Roald Dahl never were). There are a few colourful characters, but it still feels a bit bland. The science is explained as a series of facts, rather than shown. It is inspiring, because space and cosmology is inspiring, and using fiction and imagination to explain the different worlds and moons is a powerful tool. But at times it does feel a little dry, especially with the non-fiction sections, which are a mixture of factsheets and essays written by prominent academics. Some of these essays are poorly written and not especially clear, and even as an adult I found them a bit dull at times.

I think that it does have a niche and is a book I'd recommend to any scientifically curious child, but partly because there is little competition, sadly. show less

This book was really fun to listen to and my rating is reflected as an adult reader (five stars for a child or teen). The story line is cute (nothing deep) but the lack of depth is made up for by scientic facts! Even though this was meant for someone younger, I found myself learning many things (all facinating facts). Want to brush up on your planetary knowledge? This book is a perfect, quick, fun read that I would recommend to ANY parent. Buy the audio book and play this in the car to the kids and I bet they'll want more! Apparently this is the second book to this series and although I found that out halfway through listening to it, this didn't bother me at all. I would have enjoyed starting off with the first book though, and would show more recommend others to do the same. show less

My son Michael loved this book written by Lucy Hawking and her famous scientist father, Stephen Hawking. Although I found my mind wandering through some of the descriptions of red shift and black holes, Michael was mesmerized and would bring me back to the book with questions about the universe. I found "let's ask Dad" a good answer for most of them. This is a good book for science fans.

Z really liked it . . . I think that the fiction part is pretty poorly written and full of stock characters. The science essays were awesome.

Features less story and more science than book 1, but still an adventure leading to more understanding about outer space and some astrophysics. The photographs are are great and more included than in book 1.
No rating until the book is evaluated by my grandchildren for the storyline and the astrophysics.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2665275.html

From the series that starts with George's Secret Key to the Universe; likewise almost entirely by Lucy Hawking, with a few inserted pieces on science by her father Stephen Hawking and various other well-known scientists. To be honest I wasn't all that impressed; George and friends are taken by convenient plot device to a number of educational settings to have adventures; Annie, the kick-ass heroine of the first book, gets rather sidelined here for other young male characters, and the means and motivation of the bad guys are not very clear or consistent. But the illustrations by Garry Parsons are jolly, and both books have a lot of beautiful astronomical photographs which are almost worth the show more price themselves. show less

its good because george went to mars.