Customer Reviews

Easy Travel to Other Planets

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was the best first novel of its year, a beautifully written book that captured the sensibility of a generation of university-educated Americans (their fears, their open minds) and transcended some of its shocking scenes to leave a residue of powerful images. Mooney's uncanny discussion of "information sickness" appeared years before ARPAnet became the internet, and the "Fossil Fuel 500," so intriguing to the cancer-stricken mother, prefigures the red-state popularity of NASCAR. And who can forget the relationship-averse friend who's afraid to stop using her airline pass? This is a special book, better than Mooney's second and third novels (though "Singing into the Piano" is worth a read), and I recommend it to anyone who loves literature and/or wants a glimpse into the inner life of what are now 50 year-old boomers.

I agree with many of the criticisms of the other reviewers. Yes, some aspects are disturbing. But so many details were remarkably prescient. Notice how the race audience pays more attention to their headphones than to what's going on in front of them. Notice the multi-tasking and information overload. I read this book in its original edition. I don't even remember how long ago that was, but I still find myself thinking about it! To me that's a book worth reading.

Mooney has been able to with his first novel what many others have struggled to do with more experience: make a poem about a scientific subject that both poets and scientists can enjoy. Easy Travel to Other Planets is a well written, quick moving tale that encorporates the love (in more than one way) of dolphins, and a sense of the pull that men and women have for each other. It is a tremendous first effort.

I read this book twenty years ago, and I still think of it from time to time. It was an enormously prophetic book, talking of things like "information sickness" a term that's made its way into my lexicon. I'm so glad to see it's still in print and still selling!

Sheila Curran,

author of DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN

I probably let too many writers slide on by on the strength ofthe cool idea alone. A few weeks short of New Year's, I will resolveto end this practice. The problems inherent in Easy Travel to Other Planets (a book which, on the surface, concerns a scientist who is not only teaching a dolphin how to speak but also having sexual relations with it (!) and the wounded psyches that she calls her family and friends) could probably be summed up by the title, which, unless I'm an idiot, is never fully explained, and so I will have to use my incredible (ha ha) powers of deduction to infer that the intention of the use of this title was to refer to the feverish addiction to the future that we (meaning society as a whole) possess, future not necessarily referring to technology (although there is more than the occassional nod to this type of progress, chief among them talking dolphins and the infuriatingly underexplained "information sickness" which apparently runs rampant through the novel's time period (somewhere close to now). The novel's inhabitants are either formulating scientific hypotheses, tending to illnesses both physical and psychological (through physician-prescribed and self-medicating means), investing in race cars, or planning happy futures together (or apart), but they are very rarely focused on dealing concretely with the present, and this, Mooney seems to want to communicate, is part of what will lead to tragedy, on both societal and personal levels. The main problem here is that Mooney could have communicated all of this in a much stronger fashion (I know he COULD HAVE done it... the language occassionally flashes brilliantly with insight) but the novel as a whole, much like much of its characterization and plot's finale, come off as feeling like... there just could have been, and should have been, more.

I give this books a thumbs down. While some of the ideas (different forms of love, individuality, and stretching the limits of socially accepted behavior, life and death) were interesting, the way they were conveyed in this book was not effective for me. None of the characteristics were likable, nor was I able to feel for any of them. The book starts out with a woman having sex with a dolphin, and ends with unexpected deaths. While some smaller sections were enjoyable to read, I generally found myself wishing this experience was over.

please, do not waste your time. This book is disgusting. Dolphin erotica and suicide? Seriously? Yes, you will find those in this book.. and they're not funny... or artfully done... just gross.