Customer Reviews

Prisoners of space

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"Prisoners of Space" is readable but unremarkable.

The plot revolves around a 17-year-old girl and her friend and semi-adopted brother, an 18-year-old-boy. They live in the mining colony Diana in tunnels and bubbles on the Moon, which rumor holds will be shut down because of lack of ore. The problem is that the boy and girl were both born on the Moon and could not live on earth, so they would have to move to a space station which doesn't appeal to either of them. The boy, feeling adventuresome, goes exploring in the far tunnels and thinks he hears something alive. Together the boy and girl befriend "Fuzzy", a creature that reminds me of the alien pet the Jetsons have, but without the springy suction-cup legs. The origin of the creature is a mystery which is solved as the plot thickens.

The intro, written by Del Rey, isn't bad, but other than that the beginning is the worst part of the book. To start off with, the names of the characters are monosyllabic and annoyingly common place: Dave, Jane, Joe, Grace, Etc. The dialogue is quite campy at times and there's a fair amount of it, so you see the names again and again. Then there are some glaring improbabilities. The boy doesn't know what grass is, though he is familiar with the expression "the grass is always greener on the other side." He also thinks that the flare he saw in the sky could have been a meteorite, and for some bizarre reason he avoids telling anyone that he thinks it was a rocket. He and the girl have adapted to breath low-pressure and the air on a visit to earth is too heavy. So far okay, but then what the heck do the other colonists breath? Why would the colony have lower pressure than Earth? This is stuff Jules Verne would not have gotten wrong, especially a year before the first Apollo landing.

Overall, it is a an okay book, and some would rate it better. But I consider it something less than Heinlein's better juveniles and Del Rey's better short stories. Probably it should be considered as an average juvenile.