Leaping To The Stars

Rating:
Summary: HARLIE vs. Religion
Review: The Dingillian saga concludes in this third volume. Charles "Chigger" and his family are trying to decide where to go from the Moon. They will take the HARLIE unit with them. Everyone still wants the unit to help survive the polycrisis Earth is having.

But the moment the family makes up their mind, the roller coaster of events takes off again. HARLIE and its abilities represent survival and power for many groups and colonies. Their bids for possession and control drive the Dingillians on.

Once on their way things are still not perfect. Charles may have found true love but religion has reared up and started questioning HARLIE's nature.

Religion, good, evil, and being human are some of the big issues dealt with in this volume. Again Gerrold does a masterful job of blending large doses of philosophy into the action in ways that don't slow down the plot.

The book's end leaves room for further adventures of HARLIE and the Dingillian family. Let's hope we see some of them.

Rating:
Summary: HARLIE vs. Religion
Review: The Dingillian saga concludes in this third volume. Charles "Chigger" and his family are trying to decide where to go from the Moon. They will take the HARLIE unit with them. Everyone still wants the unit to help survive the polycrisis Earth is having.

But the moment the family makes up their mind, the roller coaster of events takes off again. HARLIE and its abilities represent survival and power for many groups and colonies. Their bids for possession and control drive the Dingillians on.

Once on their way things are still not perfect. Charles may have found true love but religion has reared up and started questioning HARLIE's nature.

Religion, good, evil, and being human are some of the big issues dealt with in this volume. Again Gerrold does a masterful job of blending large doses of philosophy into the action in ways that don't slow down the plot.

The book's end leaves room for further adventures of HARLIE and the Dingillian family. Let's hope we see some of them.

Rating:
Summary: HARLIE vs. Religion
Review: The Dingillian saga concludes in this third volume. Charles "Chigger" and his family are trying to decide where to go from the Moon. They will take the HARLIE unit with them. Everyone still wants the unit to help survive the polycrisis Earth is having.

But the moment the family makes up their mind, the roller coaster of events takes off again. HARLIE and its abilities represent survival and power for many groups and colonies. Their bids for possession and control drive the Dingillians on.

Once on their way things are still not perfect. Charles may have found true love but religion has reared up and started questioning HARLIE's nature.

Religion, good, evil, and being human are some of the big issues dealt with in this volume. Again Gerrold does a masterful job of blending large doses of philosophy into the action in ways that don't slow down the plot.

The book's end leaves room for further adventures of HARLIE and the Dingillian family. Let's hope we see some of them.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but falling short of the predecessors
Review: The third book of the Dingilliad certainly is entertaining. Chigger is still fun to listen to, and his escapades interesting to follow. However, the freshness of the first book has worn off, and funny Alexei, who carried much of the second book, stays on Luna. The endings of the first and second books (the court scenes that never really fit into the story and examined moral dilemmas) have been expanded to cover most of the third book - much of it now reads like a thinly disguised philosophical primer on questions such as "What makes me me?", "What is good?", "What is evil?", "What is the social contract?" and so on. Chigger has to burden himself with finding answers to these, with the help of Harlie, whom the author seems to have misused as his personal lecturing professor. I feel that the answers that are worked out fall short of what I had expected when being presented the questions and have a stale, flat quality to them.

Having read the other two books in the series, I'm glad I got to read one more, because I got to like Chigger and his family, but I feel the third book doesn't live up to the ones that came before. It is still an enjoyable read, partly because apart from the philosophy, the author presents interesting questions/problems about and neat solutions to space flight and colonisation, partly because Chigger is just an interesting character (though he's become rather strange - a philosopher with occasional delusions of grandeur or, should I say, heroic ambitions - I liked him better before)

Despite all the misgivings I had about this, I would love to read a fourth book about Outbeyond colony.

Rating:
Summary: The three books in this series are excellent
Review: These are excellent books - Jumping Off the Planet, Bouncing Off the Moon, and Leaping to the Stars, especially for adolescents and teens. Having read SF for 50 years I found them to be well written, well plotted, believable and interesting - in some ways reminiscent of Heinlein's best juveniles but with more "human" characters (always Heinlein's weakness). With a 13 year old story teller/protagonist, the series touches on such topics as artificial intelligence, sentience, "who am I", good/evil, the purpose/role of government, and economics. It starts with a believable future Earth (nearing apocolyptic status) scenario, the science is believable and fairly well, if lightly, explained. Lots of adventures, dilemmas, rescues, and some romance. And interesting to see how an originally disfunctional family learns to become functional and a family. A "coming of age" tone for the protagonist as he discovers "who am I". Worth reading, and if you want to introduce an adolescent or teenager to SF, this is a good series to start with.
If you are a parent thinking about these books for your child, note that there is a homosexual relationship in the series. I don't find this a problem, but you might.

Rating:
Summary: The three books in this series are excellent
Review: These are excellent books - Jumping Off the Planet, Bouncing Off the Moon, and Leaping to the Stars, especially for adolescents and teens. Having read SF for 50 years I found them to be well written, well plotted, believable and interesting - in some ways reminiscent of Heinlein's best juveniles but with more "human" characters (always Heinlein's weakness). With a 13 year old story teller/protagonist, the series touches on such topics as artificial intelligence, sentience, "who am I", good/evil, the purpose/role of government, and economics. It starts with a believable future Earth (nearing apocolyptic status) scenario, the science is believable and fairly well, if lightly, explained. Lots of adventures, dilemmas, rescues, and some romance. And interesting to see how an originally disfunctional family learns to become functional and a family. A "coming of age" tone for the protagonist as he discovers "who am I". Worth reading, and if you want to introduce an adolescent or teenager to SF, this is a good series to start with.
If you are a parent thinking about these books for your child, note that there is a homosexual relationship in the series. I don't find this a problem, but you might.

Rating:
Summary: worth the leap
Review: Thirteen-year-old Charles "Chigger" Dingillian and his reconciling family seek a new home. They debate whether to relocate to the Outbeyond, light years from earth. Ultimately they vote overwhelmingly for relocating to the somewhat unknown Outbeyond.

However, the trip across the stars turns dangerous because everyone seems to want Chigger's HARLIE unit, an artificial intelligence device placed inside a monkey. The government, revolutionaries, and revelationists want HARLIE for different reasons. The government believes the device is so superior it will enable them to strengthen their positions of power. The revolutionaries want the unit so they can overthrow the government and take over the positions of power. However, the greatest known peril to the Dingillian brood comes from the revelationists who consider HARLIE as evil and his owners as devils needing eradication. Then there is HARLIE growing in intelligence to the point that even Chigger fears where the AI gadget is going.

LEAPING TO THE STARS is a fantastic concluding tale to David Gerrold's wonderful trilogy starring Chigger and his family. The story line is faster than space travel and will hook fans of the two previous novels from the very first meeting between the Dingillians and Commander Boynton leader of the ship taking them to the Outbeyond. New readers either should try the first two books before this novel or stay patient while Chigger methodically fills in the gaps from events previously told. Science fiction fans will jump, bounce, and leap to the stars with the Dingillian clan trilogy.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: worth the leap
Review: Thirteen-year-old Charles "Chigger" Dingillian and his reconciling family seek a new home. They debate whether to relocate to the Outbeyond, light years from earth. Ultimately they vote overwhelmingly for relocating to the somewhat unknown Outbeyond.

However, the trip across the stars turns dangerous because everyone seems to want Chigger's HARLIE unit, an artificial intelligence device placed inside a monkey. The government, revolutionaries, and revelationists want HARLIE for different reasons. The government believes the device is so superior it will enable them to strengthen their positions of power. The revolutionaries want the unit so they can overthrow the government and take over the positions of power. However, the greatest known peril to the Dingillian brood comes from the revelationists who consider HARLIE as evil and his owners as devils needing eradication. Then there is HARLIE growing in intelligence to the point that even Chigger fears where the AI gadget is going.

LEAPING TO THE STARS is a fantastic concluding tale to David Gerrold's wonderful trilogy starring Chigger and his family. The story line is faster than space travel and will hook fans of the two previous novels from the very first meeting between the Dingillians and Commander Boynton leader of the ship taking them to the Outbeyond. New readers either should try the first two books before this novel or stay patient while Chigger methodically fills in the gaps from events previously told. Science fiction fans will jump, bounce, and leap to the stars with the Dingillian clan trilogy.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Hienlein would approve
Review: This is the third book in of the Dingillian stories. It is a great book. It has a very Heinlein feel to it. If Robert A. Heinlein was still alive I think he would approve of the story. This story goes over the first two books a little to much, for my liking but if a person has not read the first two books you can still get in to the story and enjoy it. Over all I realy enjoy how Gerrold looks at how and why religion looks at artificial intelligence. I also enjoyed the love story between Chigger and J'mee. Check it out and also check out Jumping off the Planet and Bouncing off the Moon.