A suburban teenager is taken by spacecraft to help fight in a war against an evil force.
Michael Hudson is the pen name of Michael P. Kube-McDowell. "Photon" was a forgettable Lazer Tag ripoff of the 1980's. The toy company commissioned a TV show based on it, and this novel was intended to be a tie-in to the show. (There is a separate series of children's novels connected to the show written by Peter David under the pen name David Peters; don't read them, they're awful). Hudson took great liberties with the source material he was given, producing a much more intelligent and mature story than the show lent itself to.
The premise is reminiscent of The Last Starfighter--the Photon game turns out to be an alien civilization's method of locating and training potential fighters for an interstellar war against a genuinely evil enemy.
Percival is wonderful as the lonely wunderkind. It's difficult to write an intelligent child character properly, but it's wonderful when it is done right, whether it's L'Engle's Charles Wallace or the BBC's Tomorrow People or Twain's Huck Finn. Bhodi Li is the gifted but overeager teenager who has to learn the seriousness of war. I've always loved reptile characters, and as Lihon delivers lessons on Sun Tzu and the strategy of avoiding needless bloodshed, he lends a weighty, saurian dignity to the proceedings. The rapid-terraforming devices that the war is being fought over are a very cool piece of technology.
This was intended to be the beginning of a series of books, and it's a pity that others were not completed-though my understanding is that Kube-McDowell was only under contract for this one book, so subsequent volumes might have wound up being of lower quality.
Reminiscent of Heinlein's young adult books, this is a fun, intelligent adventure that I'd recommend to science fiction fans of any age.
Description:
A suburban teenager is taken by spacecraft to help fight in a war against an evil force.
Michael Hudson is the pen name of Michael P. Kube-McDowell. "Photon" was a forgettable Lazer Tag ripoff of the 1980's. The toy company commissioned a TV show based on it, and this novel was intended to be a tie-in to the show. (There is a separate series of children's novels connected to the show written by Peter David under the pen name David Peters; don't read them, they're awful). Hudson took great liberties with the source material he was given, producing a much more intelligent and mature story than the show lent itself to.
The premise is reminiscent of The Last Starfighter--the Photon game turns out to be an alien civilization's method of locating and training potential fighters for an interstellar war against a genuinely evil enemy.
Percival is wonderful as the lonely wunderkind. It's difficult to write an intelligent child character properly, but it's wonderful when it is done right, whether it's L'Engle's Charles Wallace or the BBC's Tomorrow People or Twain's Huck Finn. Bhodi Li is the gifted but overeager teenager who has to learn the seriousness of war. I've always loved reptile characters, and as Lihon delivers lessons on Sun Tzu and the strategy of avoiding needless bloodshed, he lends a weighty, saurian dignity to the proceedings. The rapid-terraforming devices that the war is being fought over are a very cool piece of technology.
This was intended to be the beginning of a series of books, and it's a pity that others were not completed-though my understanding is that Kube-McDowell was only under contract for this one book, so subsequent volumes might have wound up being of lower quality.
Reminiscent of Heinlein's young adult books, this is a fun, intelligent adventure that I'd recommend to science fiction fans of any age.