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Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Enghdal
| Journey Between Worlds By Sylvia Engdahl Release Date:
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Melinda should be happy to get to travel to Mars with her dad. Everyone wants to go to space, don’t they? But not 18-year-old Melinda. She had her life all planned out with her earthbound boyfriend, and she’s not happy when dad springs this graduation trip on her. Still, it’s for less than a year, she can start college when she gets back, and her boyfriend will still be waiting.
Once she arrives on Mars, she’s surprised at how, well… civilized the colonies are. Of course, she makes a few enemies when she inadvertently insults colonists she meets by calling them the equivalent of savages. Still, she manages to make friends with a second-generation colonist named Alex and is soon torn between new love and old prejudices.
Wow did I love this book. I grew up on old sci-fi young adult books, especially those of Robert A. Heinlein. The moment I first saw this book on the shelf in hardcover, I wanted to read it. The cover just reminded me of Podkayne of Mars (by Heinlein), which was one of my teenage favorites. As it turned out, both books were originally published about seven years apart. I did hesitate to buy Journey Between Worlds, because I had a couple of other books by the author, and neither book had really caught my interest, but I was in love with this one from the first page.
The author, Sylvia Engdahl, writes after the story about how when she re-released this book, all she did was update some facts about Mars, but in essence, this is the same book that she published in 1970. And the book still holds a lot of truth. Journey Between Worlds is about the unknown and shaking your life up. Melinda expects Mars to be cold and dome life to be a sterilized bore. True, there are some differences, meat is synthetic and everyone lives in apartments due to space issues, but she finds that people adapt and can love this life just as much as the one back on Earth. She simply can’t comprehend why someone would choose to leave Earth for Mars or if they were born on Mars, not move back to Earth. Alex, her new Mars born friend, especially puzzles her, because he spent a few years in college on Earth and actually wanted to return to Mars to live out his life. His choice to live on Mars makes no sense to Melinda.
While the book has science fiction elements, it’s more of the pioneering western sci-fi. A sub-category all of its own, it’s one that I personally love. There’s something so human about adapting to a new environment, the give and take of living and molding the land into what we want. Humanity has never been happy with where it is, and the stars are simply the next great unknown. I think a lot of 50s, 60s, and 70s era sci-fi really captures that wonderment in a unique way, because at the time, humanity hadn’t yet put its footprint on the Moon and there was still so much unknown. (Yes, I know, the first moon landing was 1969 and the book was published in 1970, but you have to allow a year or so for publishing.) And after we did land on the Moon, it was suddenly all possible, and we could begin to imagine that our children’s children might really live in colonies on the surfaces of other planets.
Another great aspect of this book is the pioneer spirit. As I touched on before, Melinda can’t understand why people would want to live away from Earth, just like others have wondered why someone would want to cross the deadly ocean from England or make the trek to Oregon. For as long as pioneers have made the journey, there have also been those wondering why someone would want to leave. Sure, space might be getting cramped, but why risk the dangers of the unknown? Engdahl does an excellent job of showing the journey of Melinda’s thoughts and giving us a very believable conclusion to her story. I really felt like Melinda was growing and changing, that she was a real person telling me a story.
Action 2 – Action-packed, this is not. Story moved at a good pace and all, but it was pretty introspective and focused on Melinda’s thoughts.
Romance 5 – I found the relationships in this book to be extremely realistic. All the problems that they faced, the changes in feelings, rang true with me, and I could understand each decision the character made.
Characters 4 – The characters were enjoyable and distinct, though her Earth boyfriend was a bit too stereotypically chauvinistic, but I think it’s fine when you consider it was written in the late 60s. Plus we certainly still see guys like him even now.
Overall 4 1/2 – I was in love with this book from the beginning. I hadn’t read much science fiction in a while, since I find a lot of it focuses too much on space battles. But this was a great book that looked at humanity in a classic science fiction way, exploring how humanity reacts to the stars. I really liked that it was from the point of view of someone who had no intention of leaving Earth.
Extras:
Sylvia Engdahl has written two other YA Science Fiction books, Enchantress from the Stars and The Far Side of Evil, both reprinted by Firebird Fantasy as well. These other two books are loosely connected, as they have the same protagonist, but one (Enchantress) is intended for a much younger audience than the other. Sylvia also has a myspace page for herself in general as well as one for Journey Between Worlds, both of which have a lot of great information about mars and space exploration. Since space exploration is so important to her, she also has a subpage with her writings on space and human survival.
Podkayne of Mars was one of my favorite teenage novels. All right, so my roommate calls her space Barbie, but if you don’t mind Meg Cabots books, you probably won’t blink an eye at Podkayne. The book covers Podkayne’s journey from Mars to Venus as she gets the chance to finally travel in the tri-planet loop on a luxurious space liner with her uncle and younger brother. Now, Podkayne wants to be a captain some day and doesn’t mind using her feminine wiles to talk her way onto the bridge on the ship or convince off-duty crew members to tutor her. When she gets to Venus though, things start to go downhill for her as her brother gets kidnapped and her uncle is blackmailed. If you’re going to read this book (and I highly recommend you do), you must read the copy that I linked to, as it includes the author’s original ending. He was forced to change it because the publisher didn’t think that the YA audience could handle it at the time. Granted, I like the new ending better, but it’s always good to know what the author intended.
If you like the “space is just like the West but bigger!” genre, try the anime Cowboy Bebop. In essence, it’s space cowboy/bounty hunters with really cool music. It’s a classic anime and has something for lots of audiences. You might also enjoy Joss Whedon’s Firefly, another space western, that was sadly cancelled.
Q&A with Sylvia:
1. How far in the future do you imagine this book taking place? Has that changed since you first wrote the book?
When I first wrote it I imagined it about a hundred years in the future. Now, I don’t know, as we have made far less progress in space than I assumed we would back in the 60s and 70s and we are still stalling.
2. Did you come up with the title? I feel that it is perfect for the book, as “worlds” both means planets and societies in our minds.
Yes, it was the easiest of my titles to think of — I came up with it when I first started writing the book. Some reviewers have pointed out it also means a journey between adolescence and adulthood.
3. I like to recommend some other books to read if the reader liked the book I’m reviewing. Do you have any book recommendations?
I really don’t know of any others that are meant for the same audience — most fiction about space is adventure fiction, or else appeals to readers who already have read a lot of science fiction. But I have not kept up with recent Young Adult books, as it has been a long time since I my YA books were first published.
4. Do you think that the space pioneering spirit is as strong as it was back when you first wrote the book, when humans had not yet made it to the Moon?
I’m sorry to say that I don’t think it is nearly as strong among the general public, although it’s even stronger among a small minority. Young people don’t seem to be as interested, but that is because they have been exposed to a lot of negative propaganda that makes them feel pessimistic about human progress, and they do not realize that the only way to solve our overcrowded planet’s problems is for our species to expand into space. I wish they would read the quotations I’ve posted at http://www.spacequotes.com/ about why it’s so important.
Parents:
Parents: 13+ Nothing naughty or violent in this book, but it is rather intellectual, and I probably wouldn’t have truly loved it until I was getting into my teens. I think this could make a great high school graduation gift, for someone who is beginning to face those choices about the rest of their life.
If you like books on Mars, there is a novella out there with a plot that is reverse of that, where the people of Mars go to colonize Earth. If that interests you, check out that site at http://www.myspace.com/journeytotarah! It’s smaller than most books, but it’s a good read, almost like a movie!