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David Brin's Out of Time: Yanked

David Brin's Out of Time: Yanked

List Price: $4.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Kinda Like A Comic Book I Didn't Like Very Much, But Better!
Review: A comic book trope that I always despised was used sporadically in the 1960s. Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, would periodically get shanghaied to the future by a bunch of ineffectual dweebs who didn't have any heroes of their own. They assigned him a new secret ID ("Pol Manning"), had him fight the menace of the issue, then wiped his memory before they sent him packing.

The OUT OF TIME series uses a similar gimmick: Teenagers from various centuries get yanked to the future and issued marching orders against crypic aliens. Unlike the old GL comics, they remember who they are while in the future; like GL, they get their memories erased before going home.

The book at hand is better written than the comic books (no big surprise). The characters are reasonably interesting, if a bit basic, and they interact well. This is science fiction in a fairly Hamiltonian way -- very little discussion of technology, just of the results, but a heavy emphasis on color and imagery and exotic environments.

My two biggest quibbles:

1. The cover sucks, and so does the cover to volume two. The titles and blurbs are hard to read and the photo-illustration is ugly.

2. The book itself reads like it escaped from the Young Adult section -- low page-count, youthful protagonists, clean language, empahsis on consensus-building and lessons learned, etc. I don't particularly mind the approach, but it comes as a surprise, since there's nothing on the book to indicate it is intended for other than an adult audience.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Excellent writer, bad choices
Review: As a teacher and writer of young adult novels, I have to say that I was very excited by the idea that one of the most brilliant authors of speculative fiction, Nancy Kress, was going to try her hand at a young adult novel. Using David Brin's setup (and when will he get around to writing one, hmmm?), Kress unfortunately populates her story with overly simplistic characters, motivations, and plot events. The novel reads as if she's slumming, and completely oblivious of the revolution in young adult fiction that has taken place in the last twenty years. Anybody who has read Cynthia Voigt's "The Runner" or any of Chris Crutcher's books would know that you don't write down to kids -- you write up to them. What makes it even worse is that within the origins of science fiction YA novels, Robert Heinlein set an example of complexity that makes them classic reads for young and old even today -- and, one suspects, for decades to come. What makes all this still worse is that Nancy Kress is married to one of the masters of today's science-fiction YA form, Charles Sheffield, whose Jupiter novels are absolutely first-rate reading. Having said all that, I do think there are some worthwhile moments in the novel: the rescue scene of the baby is done well, as is the overall tricking of the aliens. The main female protagonist rings a little truer than the male protagonist, although both are thoroughly cliched. The supporting cast is a bit less stereotyped, although not by much. Essentially, I would guess Kress got the novel past an editor who had no clue what YA novels are like these days (which her complaint about the marketing would seem to support). Hopefully, she will either give them up or bring her formidable talent into full play next time.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good young adult novel
Review: I bought this book because I enjoyed Nancy Kress' "Beggars" series. This book was very disappointing to me, just because nothing had warned me that it was a book for young adults - which was immediately evident once I started reading it. I felt like I was back in high school. That said, I think it is well-written for its audience, an interesting story, with good characters and good values.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: An Insult to Our Youth
Review: If this book is an example of what "Young Adult" readers think is good (see the high marks by Rebecca), I would be insulted. I think young readers of science fiction are more likely to have limitations of attention span than a need to identify with shallow characters and weak plots. I could (and have!) re-read classic "youth" fiction from Heinlein like Podykane of Mars, Starman Jones, and Citizen of the Galaxy as an adult and they still entertain. For other readers to review it poorly, then say it would be great for youthful readers, is unfair to our youth.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: An Insult to Our Youth
Review: If this book is an example of what "Young Adult" readers think is good (see the high marks by Rebecca), I would be insulted. I think young readers of science fiction are more likely to have limitations of attention span than a need to identify with shallow characters and weak plots. I could (and have!) re-read classic "youth" fiction from Heinlein like Podykane of Mars, Starman Jones, and Citizen of the Galaxy as an adult and they still entertain. For other readers to review it poorly, then say it would be great for youthful readers, is unfair to our youth.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Teens Taken to the Future
Review: In the twenty-fourth century, the Earth is a happy and healthy place. War and disease have been wiped out. It is a utopia. Humanity has become peaceful and calm. So when mysterious aliens nicknamed Givers came and gave humanity the ability to reach the stars with transporters, humans were no longer prepared to face the dangers of a new frontier. As special problems arise, they search in time for special individuals with "grit" and bring them forward to help out. Because teleporters don't seem to work with adults, teenagers are the ones yanked to the future.

This first volume has two teens from 1999 yanked to the future to join two others from even further in the past. Their mission, if they accept it, is to teleport to a lost colony and find a secret hidden there by a dying ship's captain. Another alien race also seems to know about the secret and are sending their own people.

The secret concerns one of the steps humanity must take before the Givers will convey even more powerful secrets and abilities. It would not be good for the more belligerent aliens to gain the secret first.

A pretty good start to this series with some nice explanations for the story's framework. Interesting aliens and an important deadline add to the mix and make the book move fairly quickly. A very pleasing read that helps recapture some of the wonder of early science fiction.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great start
Review: Nancy Kress jump starts this series. Like the idea of real today kids being pulled into this action adventure. I have ordered both Tiger in the Sky by Sheila Finch and The Game of Worlds by Roger MacBride Allen. I hope they handle their parts of the series as well as Nancy Kress.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A cool science fiction thriller.
Review: Sharon and Jason are two ordinary teens from New York City. Along with a group of kids from the past, and the near future, they are sent to 2339 to combat an alien menace threatening to destroy an Earth that is now made up completely of pacifists. Now, Sharon and Jason must reach within themselves to find the courage to be heroes and save the humanity of the future. This was a page-turner, edge-of-your-seat science fiction thriller that also gives you a lot to think about. Highly reccomended.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Yanked simplistically promotes savagery above rationality.
Review: Yanked! is the first of the "Out of Time" young adult novels following a series premise created by the well-known science fiction author David Brin. Established science fiction author Nancy Kress has written a formulaic and simplistic novel featuring formulaic and simplistic characters. In the year 2339, human society has reached the stage in which rationality, gentleness and kindness have supplanted greed, savagery and deceit. Because the members of this society no longer possess these qualities, euphemistically designated in the novel as stick-to-itiveness or "grit," they use a computer to "yank" various teens selected from the "Ten Thousand Heroes" of the past to solve the particular problem now facing them. If any of the kids are not then returned to their own time unharmed and with all memory of their adventures in the future erased, the society that "yanked" them may be destroyed and the universe itself may actually be torn apart by the time paradox. Nevertheless, members of this enervated future "Utopia" are so uncertain of their own ability to solve problems that they are willing to take this risk. A black basketball player given to sexist remarks about "babes" and a shy, bookish girl are "yanked" from the 1990's, and joined by a girl from Dark Ages Iceland, a boy pickpocket from nineteenth-century London, and one boy from the 2339 society. They are sent to rescue a colony of children marooned on a faraway planet. The humans were provided with a method to teleport across vast distances by mysterious "Gift Givers," but neglected to test it before using it to teleport a space ship across the galaxy. Only when the ship arrived at the new planet did they learn that this method of teleportation results in the death of anyone over the age of sixteen, and the children on the ship saw their parents die horribly in front of them. The "Yanks" team is sent not only to rescue the children but also to find a clue left for the way to earn the next present offered by the "Gift Givers". They must rush to discover the clue before it is found by the youngsters of a competing alien species who are also teleporting to the planet. Only the youngsters of either race can use this method of teleportation. This set-up could have allowed a plot in which the "Yanks" team learned to befriend and understand the kids from the alien species. Instead, Kress opts to show the teens using deceit, savagery and greed to combat the alien kids who are themselves cruel and greedy. This tediously wordy novel shows the "Yanks" team learning to use their various "talents" to try to rescue the marooned children, win out over the aliens, and overcome their own constant squabblings among themselves. One important plot element demonstrating the team's special abilities involves the kids discovering that training native creatures to be used for the savage sport of cock fighting is essential to their plot to outwit the aliens. In another example, the boy from 2339 is considered to be a weakling and a liability by the rest of the team until in a fit of anger he tries to beat another team member to death. As a result, the boy he attacked works to prove his worth to the team with a deceitful plot to trick the aliens by turning their predilection for gambling against them. Additionally, the book's "surprise" ending is so clumsily foreshadowed that I was able to figure it out completely from the earliest heavy-handed hint. This book is a major disappointment from such major science fiction writers as David Brin and Nancy Kress. It is particularly disturbing that it glorifies deceit and savagery above rationality, self-control and kindness when deceit, violence and brutality are among the major problems plaguing our schools today.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A book about heroes
Review: Yanked! tells an exciting story about teenagers from our time confronted with difficult challenges. Not only do they have to deal with a otherworldly situation (literally), but they also have to cope with people from the past and future who have very different views on life: a boy from the past who is a violent, dishonest fellow who is willing to trade people for property, and a robot from the future that can't deal with anything outside its normal experience. How the heroes from our time manage to achieve their goals in spite of these obstacles makes a fine tale.



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