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Losers in Space
It is the year 2129 . . . and fame is all that matters
Susan and her friends are celebutantes. Their lives are powered by media awareness, fed by engineered meals, and underscored by cynicism. Everyone has a rating; the more viewers who ID you, the better. So Susan and her almost-boyfriend Derlock cook up a surefire plan: the nine of them will visit a Mars-bound spaceship and stow away. Their survival will be a media sensation, boosting their ratings across the globe. There’s only one problem: Derlock is a sociopath.
Breakneck narrative, pointed cultural commentary, warm heart, accurate science, a kickass heroine, and a ticking clock . . . who could ask for more?
Susan and her friends are celebutantes. Their lives are powered by media awareness, fed by engineered meals, and underscored by cynicism. Everyone has a rating; the more viewers who ID you, the better. So Susan and her almost-boyfriend Derlock cook up a surefire plan: the nine of them will visit a Mars-bound spaceship and stow away. Their survival will be a media sensation, boosting their ratings across the globe. There’s only one problem: Derlock is a sociopath.
Breakneck narrative, pointed cultural commentary, warm heart, accurate science, a kickass heroine, and a ticking clock . . . who could ask for more?
436 pages, Hardcover
First published April 12, 2012
10 people are currently reading
1411 people want to read
About the author
John Barnes
256 books196 followersJohn Barnes (born 1957) is an American science fiction author, whose stories often explore questions of individual moral responsibility within a larger social context. Social criticism is woven throughout his plots. The four novels in his Thousand Cultures series pose serious questions about the effects of globalization on isolated societies. Barnes holds a doctorate in theatre and for several years taught in Colorado, where he still lives.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bar...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bar...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
May 4, 2012
As seen on The Readventurer
2.5 stars
Losers in Space is essentially a one long test of how much of a SF nerd you are and how "hard" you prefer your SF. Evidently, I am far less nerdy than I had always thought, judging by how little of this book's SF-ness I enjoyed.
Now, I don't want to be unfair to John Barnes, he warns upfront about the nature of his novel. In a Note for the Interested, #0, at the beginning of Losers in Space, he says straight, in a funny and clever way, that his novel is "hard SF" and, being that,"it uses one form or another of what we called infodumps: lectures about the science, the imaginary world, and so on, either directly or by having characters explain things to each other. (How many characters does it take to change a lightbulb in a hard SF story? One to do it, and one to say, 'As you know, Bob, a lightbulb consists of a tungsten filament in an inert-gas-filled glass inclosure...')" According to Barnes, "people who geek on just knowing stuff, either about the real science or the fictional future, love infodumps, but infodumps are boring obstacles for readers who just want to get on with the story." (p. 2) So, to solve this problem, to compromise, Barnes separated all infodumps into sections called Notes for the Interested, that can be skipped if you are not into science.
Unfortunately, this trick doesn't manage to save Losers in Space from the over-infodumpness problem. Even if you do skip all Notes (I did, almost all of them, except those that pertained to the worldbuilding and social issues. Can you blame me for not wanting to know about reaction masses, frequencies, recalculations of spaceship courses, etc?), still, ALL CHARACTERS in the novel talk to each other in a form infodumpy tuitorials. Every conversation starts in a way as to encourage that "As you know, Bob..." long-winded and boring lecture:
Pretend like I don't know anything, because I don't. What were the "couple little things"? (to lead to a lecture on how to hook up an antenna)
Okay, you'd better explain it to me (to lead to a 2-page lecture on universal encryption), etc., etc.
I am not sure if Barnes was trying to be funny here, adhering to this hard SF canon and making a joke out of it and ended up taking it too far, or if he genuinely thought that it was impossible to write a novel that was both entertaining and scientifically solid. But I know this - Losers in Space could have been a much better book without all of that excessive, awkwardly and bluntly introduced science. Because the story itself is good.
In 2129, the world reaches a basically utopian state. Poverty, hunger, wars, diseases are all eradicated. Robotic labor supports and allows for a striving human population that has literally EVERYTHING, every person is entitled to and receives a social minimum (the 2010 equivalent of 10 million dollars a year), for which they don't have to work at all. Only a very small percentage of population can earn more than the social minimum, by performing work that can't be done by robots - art, competitive athletics, science, teaching, or entertaining. This last field is the most attractive and the easiest to enter, or so it seems. The main characters of the novel, losers, who don't show any particular skills, want to become celebrities, and, encouraged by their sociopathic leader, decide to graduate from recording nudity, sex, drugs and partying (of course, those are the most popular ways to earn fame, don't you know?) by getting on a spaceship and tricking its crew into getting them on Mars. This way, these kids can get extensive news coverage and come back to Earth as celebrities. Of course, not everything goes according to the plan, which is no surprise, considering losers have a psycho in their midst.
Again, I will repeat, this novel could have been such a riot, if Barnes didn't choose to force the infodumps down the readers' throats. They simply suffocate the social commentary (what does happen to people in a world of uniform prosperity and leisure? how far will media go in an age of such a rampant entertainment demand?) and the characters. While they were lecturing each other, I almost forgot that Glisters is an amateur pornographer, that Fleeta is a drug user who fried her brains by taking happistuff, an illegal substance that keeps you in a state of constant euphoria, that Derlock is a high-level psycho. There is such a wealth of awesomeness to explore here, hypothetically. Instead, I spent most of my reading time skimming the boring and searching for entertainment. What a pity.
2.5 stars
Losers in Space is essentially a one long test of how much of a SF nerd you are and how "hard" you prefer your SF. Evidently, I am far less nerdy than I had always thought, judging by how little of this book's SF-ness I enjoyed.
Now, I don't want to be unfair to John Barnes, he warns upfront about the nature of his novel. In a Note for the Interested, #0, at the beginning of Losers in Space, he says straight, in a funny and clever way, that his novel is "hard SF" and, being that,"it uses one form or another of what we called infodumps: lectures about the science, the imaginary world, and so on, either directly or by having characters explain things to each other. (How many characters does it take to change a lightbulb in a hard SF story? One to do it, and one to say, 'As you know, Bob, a lightbulb consists of a tungsten filament in an inert-gas-filled glass inclosure...')" According to Barnes, "people who geek on just knowing stuff, either about the real science or the fictional future, love infodumps, but infodumps are boring obstacles for readers who just want to get on with the story." (p. 2) So, to solve this problem, to compromise, Barnes separated all infodumps into sections called Notes for the Interested, that can be skipped if you are not into science.
Unfortunately, this trick doesn't manage to save Losers in Space from the over-infodumpness problem. Even if you do skip all Notes (I did, almost all of them, except those that pertained to the worldbuilding and social issues. Can you blame me for not wanting to know about reaction masses, frequencies, recalculations of spaceship courses, etc?), still, ALL CHARACTERS in the novel talk to each other in a form infodumpy tuitorials. Every conversation starts in a way as to encourage that "As you know, Bob..." long-winded and boring lecture:
Pretend like I don't know anything, because I don't. What were the "couple little things"? (to lead to a lecture on how to hook up an antenna)
Okay, you'd better explain it to me (to lead to a 2-page lecture on universal encryption), etc., etc.
I am not sure if Barnes was trying to be funny here, adhering to this hard SF canon and making a joke out of it and ended up taking it too far, or if he genuinely thought that it was impossible to write a novel that was both entertaining and scientifically solid. But I know this - Losers in Space could have been a much better book without all of that excessive, awkwardly and bluntly introduced science. Because the story itself is good.
In 2129, the world reaches a basically utopian state. Poverty, hunger, wars, diseases are all eradicated. Robotic labor supports and allows for a striving human population that has literally EVERYTHING, every person is entitled to and receives a social minimum (the 2010 equivalent of 10 million dollars a year), for which they don't have to work at all. Only a very small percentage of population can earn more than the social minimum, by performing work that can't be done by robots - art, competitive athletics, science, teaching, or entertaining. This last field is the most attractive and the easiest to enter, or so it seems. The main characters of the novel, losers, who don't show any particular skills, want to become celebrities, and, encouraged by their sociopathic leader, decide to graduate from recording nudity, sex, drugs and partying (of course, those are the most popular ways to earn fame, don't you know?) by getting on a spaceship and tricking its crew into getting them on Mars. This way, these kids can get extensive news coverage and come back to Earth as celebrities. Of course, not everything goes according to the plan, which is no surprise, considering losers have a psycho in their midst.
Again, I will repeat, this novel could have been such a riot, if Barnes didn't choose to force the infodumps down the readers' throats. They simply suffocate the social commentary (what does happen to people in a world of uniform prosperity and leisure? how far will media go in an age of such a rampant entertainment demand?) and the characters. While they were lecturing each other, I almost forgot that Glisters is an amateur pornographer, that Fleeta is a drug user who fried her brains by taking happistuff, an illegal substance that keeps you in a state of constant euphoria, that Derlock is a high-level psycho. There is such a wealth of awesomeness to explore here, hypothetically. Instead, I spent most of my reading time skimming the boring and searching for entertainment. What a pity.
January 28, 2015
You can almost feel the premise of this book and the story John Barnes wanted to tell crashing against current market forces. He's written a hard SF "teens in space" YA novel with echoes of Heinlein, and today, it's estimated that somewhere around 80% of YA readers are girls. I am not saying girls can't read hard SF! Indeed, it would be great if more of them did, and clearly Barnes is trying to encourage more young readers to embrace the geeky science stuff. But the truth is, most girls don't read hard SF, so Losers in Space is competing with hot magical boyfriends for a mostly female audience. Even though the protagonist is a girl and there is a fair amount of sex (and all of it straightforward "Yes, they are teenagers, trapped on a spaceship, what do you think they're going to do?"), there is not much romance.
So I'm not surprised I haven't seen a lot of buzz for this book, even though John Barnes is a veteran author. The fact is, Losers In Space is one of the best YA novels I've read in a long time. Of course my biases are obvious: not only do I love "teens in space" stories, but the novel I am working on is one. (Yeah, we are all recycling Heinlein.)
Losers in Space is set in post-scarcity society, and initially, it seems like a utopia. PermaPaxParity guarantees everyone on Earth a basic standard of living that is luxurious by early 21st century standards, and people pretty much do whatever job they want to do, or no job at all if they just want to sit on their asses all day. You can be an astronaut or a schoolteacher or an engineer or an artist or a doctor or whatever else you can qualify for, but you'll be paid pretty much the same.
But since it's no longer legal to inherit wealth, the only way to become rich - really, really rich - is to become famous. The nine teenagers who are our "Losers in space" are all the children of rich celebrities. They very much want to become rich and famous themselves, but they're competing with a planetful of aspiring celebrities. So one of them comes up with the brilliant idea of stowing away on a ship heading for Mars, in a stunt that will make them all famous. And in the PermaPaxParity society, you can literally get away with murder if you are entertaining enough.
What makes this book great is that every one of our not-so-intrepid teenagers experiences character growth. The main character, Susan, starts out as an annoying Lindsay Lohan type, trying to get famous by providing mediagenic flashes of cleavage and crotch and hooking up with bad boys at drunken revels. We learn that until age 12, she was actually a geeky Science Girl, and then she hit puberty, discovered she liked boys and fame (not in that order)... and also her BFF, another geeky Science Girl, took a drug called Happistuff that is a sort of cross between Mad Cow Disease and Ecstasy: it causes progressive and irreversible brain damage while making the user unable to feel anything but happy. Susan's friend Fleeta, once as smart and curious as her, is now a bubbly bimbo whose every smile is a knife through her friend's heart.
Fleeta comes along for the ride, joining a cast of other stock teen archetypes who also grow and change over the course of the story. There's the geek, the jock, the bully, the New Agey dingbat, the misfit, the nice girl.... oh, and the sociopath. That would be Susan's boyfriend.
Their adventure is long and suspenseful, especially when we get to the inevitable betrayal by the sociopath, but it's a story full of humor and humanity and heartbreak, all the way through the epilogue.
Now, Barnes does one thing in this book that kind of irritated me and I'm knocking off half a star for it, and other readers seem to have knocked off more. Since he's writing hard science fiction and he is really pushing the "science" part, he fills it with explicit infodumps. He does this in an ingenuous way, by making them skippable "Notes for the Interested" running in sidebars, in which he explains the physics of space travel, astronomical details, and information about the world of 2129. You really could skip them and still follow the story, but of course I read them all, but found them to sometimes be an annoying interruption in the narrative. It was an interesting idea, but I prefer when authors just skip the infodumping entirely. Tell us what we need to know for the story, don't overdo the "Science is soooo cool!" aspect.
Nonetheless, this was a fantastic and believable story and I was really attached to Susan and her friends. Especially Fwuffy.
4.5 stars, must-read for any fans of Heinlein juveniles or other teens in space stories.
So I'm not surprised I haven't seen a lot of buzz for this book, even though John Barnes is a veteran author. The fact is, Losers In Space is one of the best YA novels I've read in a long time. Of course my biases are obvious: not only do I love "teens in space" stories, but the novel I am working on is one. (Yeah, we are all recycling Heinlein.)
Losers in Space is set in post-scarcity society, and initially, it seems like a utopia. PermaPaxParity guarantees everyone on Earth a basic standard of living that is luxurious by early 21st century standards, and people pretty much do whatever job they want to do, or no job at all if they just want to sit on their asses all day. You can be an astronaut or a schoolteacher or an engineer or an artist or a doctor or whatever else you can qualify for, but you'll be paid pretty much the same.
But since it's no longer legal to inherit wealth, the only way to become rich - really, really rich - is to become famous. The nine teenagers who are our "Losers in space" are all the children of rich celebrities. They very much want to become rich and famous themselves, but they're competing with a planetful of aspiring celebrities. So one of them comes up with the brilliant idea of stowing away on a ship heading for Mars, in a stunt that will make them all famous. And in the PermaPaxParity society, you can literally get away with murder if you are entertaining enough.
What makes this book great is that every one of our not-so-intrepid teenagers experiences character growth. The main character, Susan, starts out as an annoying Lindsay Lohan type, trying to get famous by providing mediagenic flashes of cleavage and crotch and hooking up with bad boys at drunken revels. We learn that until age 12, she was actually a geeky Science Girl, and then she hit puberty, discovered she liked boys and fame (not in that order)... and also her BFF, another geeky Science Girl, took a drug called Happistuff that is a sort of cross between Mad Cow Disease and Ecstasy: it causes progressive and irreversible brain damage while making the user unable to feel anything but happy. Susan's friend Fleeta, once as smart and curious as her, is now a bubbly bimbo whose every smile is a knife through her friend's heart.
Fleeta comes along for the ride, joining a cast of other stock teen archetypes who also grow and change over the course of the story. There's the geek, the jock, the bully, the New Agey dingbat, the misfit, the nice girl.... oh, and the sociopath. That would be Susan's boyfriend.
Their adventure is long and suspenseful, especially when we get to the inevitable betrayal by the sociopath, but it's a story full of humor and humanity and heartbreak, all the way through the epilogue.
Now, Barnes does one thing in this book that kind of irritated me and I'm knocking off half a star for it, and other readers seem to have knocked off more. Since he's writing hard science fiction and he is really pushing the "science" part, he fills it with explicit infodumps. He does this in an ingenuous way, by making them skippable "Notes for the Interested" running in sidebars, in which he explains the physics of space travel, astronomical details, and information about the world of 2129. You really could skip them and still follow the story, but of course I read them all, but found them to sometimes be an annoying interruption in the narrative. It was an interesting idea, but I prefer when authors just skip the infodumping entirely. Tell us what we need to know for the story, don't overdo the "Science is soooo cool!" aspect.
Nonetheless, this was a fantastic and believable story and I was really attached to Susan and her friends. Especially Fwuffy.
4.5 stars, must-read for any fans of Heinlein juveniles or other teens in space stories.
June 14, 2012
I really wanted to like this book. I read the blurb telling what the book is about and it seemed like a good idea and something I would really be interested in. What turned out to be is that the book is extremely difficult to read and get into. so the author tells a bit of the story and then all of a sudden there are what he calls note for interested parties. I read the first one or two and realized that it was just distracting me from the story and making it so that I couldn't get to know the characters. the first "note" did warn that not everyone would be into it but I wanted to give it a shot the way the author intended it so I read a few, when I realized I was having trouble getting into it I decided to stop reading the "notes". I went on like that for a little while and then on page 68 i said forget it... A this point in so many other book I have been so tied up int he book that I don't want to put it down. Sorry to the author Mr John Barnes, this book just isn't for me.
November 18, 2013
Mild spoilers ahead.
This is one of those books that I imagine sets Robert A. Heinlein rolling in his grave. It's got a solid SF juvenile story at its core: spoiled teens stow away on a spaceship, and when things inevitably go wrong, they have to rely on their skills and each other to survive. This is a plot that you should not be able to go wrong with.
And Barnes goes so, so wrong with it. There's the condescending intro trying to explain hard SF to the unwashed masses. Then there are the "Notes for the Interested," which is Barnes' "solution" for the problem of big lumps of exposition in the aforementioned hard SF. Dude, Pratchett dealt with this kind of stuff in footnotes decades ago, and he did it with grace and humor. Clumsy exposition doesn't get any better when you put it in its own typeface.
And then there's the big honking piece of idiot plot that blows the whole story out of space. Picture this: a spaceship undergoes a disaster in a media-drenched future society. Presumably every eyeball in the solar system is on this ship for quite a while afterwards ... and nobody notices when the ship stabilizes itself and starts making course corrections? Nobody then draws the obvious conclusion that there is a crew on the ship waiting to be rescued? Give me a break. We could figure that out today with a halfway decent telescope, never mind in The Future, and that means the several hundred pages of "we can't get the comms to work, oh no, how shall we be rescued" make no sense at all.
The book's not a total loss, thanks to the characters and the descriptions of shipboard life. But goddamn it, if you're going to play with the hard SF net up -- and if you're arrogant enough to make a big deal about it in your introduction -- play the damn game right.
This is one of those books that I imagine sets Robert A. Heinlein rolling in his grave. It's got a solid SF juvenile story at its core: spoiled teens stow away on a spaceship, and when things inevitably go wrong, they have to rely on their skills and each other to survive. This is a plot that you should not be able to go wrong with.
And Barnes goes so, so wrong with it. There's the condescending intro trying to explain hard SF to the unwashed masses. Then there are the "Notes for the Interested," which is Barnes' "solution" for the problem of big lumps of exposition in the aforementioned hard SF. Dude, Pratchett dealt with this kind of stuff in footnotes decades ago, and he did it with grace and humor. Clumsy exposition doesn't get any better when you put it in its own typeface.
And then there's the big honking piece of idiot plot that blows the whole story out of space. Picture this: a spaceship undergoes a disaster in a media-drenched future society. Presumably every eyeball in the solar system is on this ship for quite a while afterwards ... and nobody notices when the ship stabilizes itself and starts making course corrections? Nobody then draws the obvious conclusion that there is a crew on the ship waiting to be rescued? Give me a break. We could figure that out today with a halfway decent telescope, never mind in The Future, and that means the several hundred pages of "we can't get the comms to work, oh no, how shall we be rescued" make no sense at all.
The book's not a total loss, thanks to the characters and the descriptions of shipboard life. But goddamn it, if you're going to play with the hard SF net up -- and if you're arrogant enough to make a big deal about it in your introduction -- play the damn game right.
not-my-type
May 25, 2012As Lyndsey mentioned, the marketing possibilities for this book are ENDLESS:
"I'm a 'Loser'!"
"I love 'Losers'!"
"Gotta get me some 'Losers'!"
"Will work for 'Losers'!"
"A 'Loser' kept me up last night!"
etc.
"I'm a 'Loser'!"
"I love 'Losers'!"
"Gotta get me some 'Losers'!"
"Will work for 'Losers'!"
"A 'Loser' kept me up last night!"
etc.
June 12, 2019
In this Utopian future almost all jobs are automated and only a small percentage of people get paid to work. Their children don't get to inherit. Once they come of age they revert to the standard allotment that the vast majority of people receive. We follow a group of these losers, or moes, who are trying to become celeb-eenies before they become mineys.
Derlock has a plan for the group, they will use Susan's connection to tour Virgo, a vessel in a 26 month orbit around in order to make a close pass of Earth and four months later Mars before taking the long route back to Earth. Instead of going home, they will stowaway until it's too late to return to Earth. When they get to Mars they'll be famous and become eenies.
Before they come out of hiding there is a disaster that kills everyone in the crew module leaving just the nine teenagers. The ship is tumbling, they have no communication and no reason anyone to suspect there are survivors. Susan, Glisters and Emerald take leadership roles. Besides all of the problems with the ship they have to deal with Derlock. Stack thinks Derlock may have been responsible for the initial disaster. What is definitely true is that Derlock is only thinking about what is best for Derlock. When it finally looks like they have things worked out we are introduced to a legal issue which is keeping the government from acknowledging their existence.
This was a fun read of a bunch of kids reaching within themselves to expand their potential. A few info dumps, several relating to the orbits of Earth/Mars/Virgo. They are labelled as such and give the reader the option to skip forward to the continuation of the story. I thought that the loophole in the law was a bit far-fetched, but explains Derlock. The rest of the characters were likable, and the way they grew and grew together was great.
Derlock has a plan for the group, they will use Susan's connection to tour Virgo, a vessel in a 26 month orbit around in order to make a close pass of Earth and four months later Mars before taking the long route back to Earth. Instead of going home, they will stowaway until it's too late to return to Earth. When they get to Mars they'll be famous and become eenies.
Before they come out of hiding there is a disaster that kills everyone in the crew module leaving just the nine teenagers. The ship is tumbling, they have no communication and no reason anyone to suspect there are survivors. Susan, Glisters and Emerald take leadership roles. Besides all of the problems with the ship they have to deal with Derlock. Stack thinks Derlock may have been responsible for the initial disaster. What is definitely true is that Derlock is only thinking about what is best for Derlock. When it finally looks like they have things worked out we are introduced to a legal issue which is keeping the government from acknowledging their existence.
This was a fun read of a bunch of kids reaching within themselves to expand their potential. A few info dumps, several relating to the orbits of Earth/Mars/Virgo. They are labelled as such and give the reader the option to skip forward to the continuation of the story. I thought that the loophole in the law was a bit far-fetched, but explains Derlock. The rest of the characters were likable, and the way they grew and grew together was great.
July 27, 2012
Now, this is true sci-fi. And Barnes makes it quite clear from the first "Notes for the Interested" that this is *hard* sci-fi (in other words, science fiction with an emphasis on the science and technology being as realistic as possible given today's knowledge). While it may have its technical moments, the story is anything but boring. In this future, technology has made it such that very few humans have to work and one of the most lucrative forms of work is entertainment. In a world where the vast majority of people have, quite literally, nothing to do, the meeds (think a mash-up of media and feeds) reign supreme. If one isn't extra talented in a particular field, the best way to get famous is to get your face in the meeds as much as possible.
So, given all that, we have 6 teens who all have few prospects as far as their intelligence or celeb-status go. One of them, Derlock, comes up with an idea to stow away on a up-pass ship to Mars where they will wait until it is too far out to turn around and then reveal themselves so that they can revel in their new-found fame. Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong within days of departure. The main part of the ship is lost in a massive explosion and the stow-aways are the only ones left in their part of the ship. If they're going to survive their trip, they're going to need to figure out how to correct their course, repair their communication systems and avoid sabotage by sociopathic Derlock. Can Susan and her team make it back to Earth or will they drift off into space, never to be seen again?
The particularly great part of this book is the number of levels it works on. The main plot itself is fast-paced and full of twists, mainly courtesy of Derlock. There's definitely a satirical element going on as well with the media angle. And then there's the characters, all of whom are unique and distinct. Susan, the narrator, finds herself constantly surprised to find out what her friends are capable of when circumstances demand diligence and teamwork. And then there's Fwuffy. What's not to love about Fwuffy?
This is truly a fantastic book that will leave the reader thinking about it long after the last page is turned. Plus, the reader might learn a few things along the way. Bonus!
So, given all that, we have 6 teens who all have few prospects as far as their intelligence or celeb-status go. One of them, Derlock, comes up with an idea to stow away on a up-pass ship to Mars where they will wait until it is too far out to turn around and then reveal themselves so that they can revel in their new-found fame. Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong within days of departure. The main part of the ship is lost in a massive explosion and the stow-aways are the only ones left in their part of the ship. If they're going to survive their trip, they're going to need to figure out how to correct their course, repair their communication systems and avoid sabotage by sociopathic Derlock. Can Susan and her team make it back to Earth or will they drift off into space, never to be seen again?
The particularly great part of this book is the number of levels it works on. The main plot itself is fast-paced and full of twists, mainly courtesy of Derlock. There's definitely a satirical element going on as well with the media angle. And then there's the characters, all of whom are unique and distinct. Susan, the narrator, finds herself constantly surprised to find out what her friends are capable of when circumstances demand diligence and teamwork. And then there's Fwuffy. What's not to love about Fwuffy?
This is truly a fantastic book that will leave the reader thinking about it long after the last page is turned. Plus, the reader might learn a few things along the way. Bonus!
October 1, 2012
Demented is the only good word for this book. It takes place in a future where no one has to work, yet there's still a rigid class system. To rise above normal, you either have to do so well in school that you qualify for one of the few jobs in the universe, or you have to be a celebrity. And if you're going to try for celebrity status, it has to happen before you're 21 or you're out of luck. The band of misfits in our story is obsessed with becoming famous--mostly because they all come from famous parents and can't inherit the family money unless they also become famous in their own right. So they come up with a "brilliant" and "foolproof" plan: become stowaways on a spaceship headed to Mars in order to garner mega media attention and earn their celebrity badges.
Well, the plan might have been foolproof if their fearless leader, Derlock, wasn't a complete sociopath bent on possibly becoming even more famous than the rest of them by killing everyone on the ship and stranding them out in space.
This book is a slow starter--mostly because of all the excruciatingly detailed scientific information that the author supplies in order to make the science of the science fiction as realistic as possible. But once you get past that and the deep darkness of the humor this is a sickly hilarious satirical novel. By about halfway through I couldn't put it down.
did-not-finish
May 7, 2012I tried. I gave it Nancy Pearl's fifty pages. But I couldn't do it. The language was crazy. The characters were unlikable. But worst of all, the author made what I consider to be a deal-breaking choice. He decided to write a science fiction adventure with footnotes. Giant, pages-long footnotes jammed right into the middle of the chapter. I'm sorry, and perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I believe you have to make a choice in fiction. Either the science is important to the story and you use your writing skill to work it in in a readable way, or you leave it out. The footnotes killed my reading. To be fair, the author is very straightforward about these notes. He gives the uninterested reader explicit permission to not read them. But I am not that kind of reader. When I read War and Peace, I couldn't consider it finished until I slogged through Tolstoy's essay on the philosophy of history. That's just me. And if this were a great piece of literature instead of a teen sci-fi adventure about a sociopath on a spaceship, maybe I would have kept going. But life's too short and I have too many books checked out from the library.
I reserve the right to revisit this book at a future date when I'm feeling more forgiving.
I reserve the right to revisit this book at a future date when I'm feeling more forgiving.
May 10, 2012
I would give this 4 and a half. It is truly a great book. Losers is a survival story, a space story, and a social commentary all rolled into one. What really drove me to dive into Losers was Susan (who is pretty kick ass-even if she starts off very fake) and the excellent story telling. I read all of the notes for the interested even when they were a little over my head.
My only gripe, and this is very small, is the lack of emotion of the characters. Except for an early freak out, and a touch of homesickness later, the characters adapt to this very well.
I did appreciate the lack of romance as well-the story just did not need it. Barnes handled character relations in the same way he explained math formulas and I thought it worked. Of course, I adored Fwuffy.
I highly recommend this book and will sell it to my library kids. I think they may be put off by the size of the book and the very mature writing style. I believe I know more adults who would enjoy this. That said, the title of the book will help. People chuckled when they saw me carrying this around.
I also loved the very short essay (note?) in the beginning about hard sci fi vs soft sci fi. This may be a first book in the genre for many readers.
My only gripe, and this is very small, is the lack of emotion of the characters. Except for an early freak out, and a touch of homesickness later, the characters adapt to this very well.
I did appreciate the lack of romance as well-the story just did not need it. Barnes handled character relations in the same way he explained math formulas and I thought it worked. Of course, I adored Fwuffy.
I highly recommend this book and will sell it to my library kids. I think they may be put off by the size of the book and the very mature writing style. I believe I know more adults who would enjoy this. That said, the title of the book will help. People chuckled when they saw me carrying this around.
I also loved the very short essay (note?) in the beginning about hard sci fi vs soft sci fi. This may be a first book in the genre for many readers.
January 5, 2014
I have no qualms at all in admitting that my creative writing background is in fan fiction. Been writing fic since I was 12, been participating in the community since I was 16. It’s a useful way to learn valuable skills (with the general exception of worldbuilding, unfortunately). Not only is the internet chockers with guides to How To Write Fic But Good, but if you break the rules, people will tell you about it. Nicely, most of the time.
Most of fan fiction’s rules can be broken, and at least someone out there will find the result entertaining. The exception, in my experience, is this:
Never, ever, ever put author’s notes in the middle of the story.
That’s a common rookie mistake, and except in parodies of bad fic, I’ve never seen it executed well. It’s the kind of thing that has me backspacing right out of a story. (In this age of downloading longer fics in epub or Kindle format, it’s jarring enough to hit the otherwise acceptable end-or-beginning-of-chapter-notes.)
Until I read Losers in Space, I had never seen the mid-story author’s note appear in published fiction. And I’ve still never seen it executed well.
Losers in Space is a YA science fiction novel set in the 22nd century, when famine, war and social divisions (and, apparently, any culture that’s not American) has been replaced by a system where work is optional, the UN provides everyone with a comfortable upper middle class income, and a tiny minority have the opportunity to become “eenies” — people whose talent or fame entitles them to much greater wealth and privilege.
The catch is, it’s not hereditary. On reaching adulthood, the children of eenies have to demonstrate that they’re entitled to enjoy the lifestyle of their parents: through talent, through academic achievement, or by becoming really, really famous.
As the book opens, a group of wannabes — picture the Hilton sisters, a few lesser British royals and maybe some washed up K-pop stars — set out to become famous by stowing away on a ship to Mars. Sure, they’ll be in trouble when they’re caught, but they’ll be sooooooo famous.
The problem is, one of them is a sociopath.
Sounds pretty great, right?
In the foreword, author Barnes makes a big deal out of this being hard SF. But he doesn’t want lots of exposition-heavy dialogue or infodumps, so he’s going to explain the sciencey stuff and some of the social background via … author’s notes shoved into the story. They’re labelled as “notes for the interested”, and he claims it’s possible to skip them if you’re not interested.
I don’t have a science brain, so yes, I skipped over the impenetrably mathematical or scientific notes. Problem is, there was also a lot of significant worldbuilding stuff in the notes. And the characters still had a lot of conversations revolving entirely around technobabble, while much of the social context was limited to the notes.
I honestly can’t believe an editor let this happen! I wanted to get out my red pen and start correcting it, or maybe cut up the book and rearrange it so it worked better. It was just straight up bad. I feel like the worldbuilding should have been incorporated into the story, and most of the science notes could have been removed completely. Maybe posted on the author’s website for interested readers. It got so that I resented every page I had to flick past.
I was also unconvinced by a lot of aspects of the worldbuilding, which was fairly heavy on the cliche. It was interesting, but not necessarily plausible.
What kept me reading were the plot and the characters, which were equal parts interesting and frustrating. Needless to say, the stowaway plan goes terribly wrong, and the teens have to fend for themselves, discovering new reserves of intelligence and competence, whilst also dealing with the sociopath in their midst.
I honestly can’t put my finger on what it was about the plot that bugged me, on account of how it was continually being interrupted by author’s notes. The pacing occasionally lagged, but mostly I think the problem was that the characters never completely gelled for me.
For example, at the very beginning, as we’re introduced to our characters, the narrator gives a quick summary of their personalities: morose social climber, whiny self-pitier, desperately socially awkward, creepy pervert, sociopath, etc. But many of these traits are quickly forgotten. A couple of characters have really pleasing arcs as they evolve from the unlikable people they were into productive members of society, but most of them, as soon as they begin to interact with the heroine, show hardly any sign of their introductory traits. They seem to be completely different people. And while the heroine marvels several times that she never appreciated her peers before, the turnaround is unconvincing.
I also had a lot of trouble with the hero, because I couldn’t quite shake the first impression of him as a creepy pervert who essentially makes fanvids from pornography and always has a camera on the girls.
Meanwhile, the villain is supposed to be a charming sociopath, except at no point is he actually charming. I’ve had some dealings with sociopaths in my life, and generally they sneak up on you. I mean, one of the key aspects of sociopathy is the ability to pass for a normal person, leaving trails of people in your wake wondering if they’re the ones who are crazy. Derlock (…I KNOW) doesn’t do that. He’s just straight up evil.
It’s a compelling kind of straight up evil, though, and part of the reason I kept reading was to see him get his comeuppance. SPOILERS! He doesn’t. He gets away with everything until the epilogue, in which it’s briefly mentioned that the heroine had him killed.
One curious thing about this book is that it has a bunch of reviews on GoodReads praising it for breaking out of the YA dystopian SF mould. It’s true that Losers in Space is a bit different from the recent run of YA SF, but … not dystopian? This is a world where a crime is the intellectual property of the criminal, meaning that a rapist or murderer will be exonerated if he can demonstrate sufficient media interest in his “work”. There’s a scene where the girls explain this law to the boys, who have never heard of it. The girls, on the other hand, had a special class about it, because it puts them all at risk.
Suffice to say, a lot of the “thank heavens it’s not dystopian” reviews are coming from blokes.
It’s details like that — a literal rape culture — that kept me reading, because I was continually seeing the seeds of a much better book between the lines. Genetically engineered animal with human intelligence? GREAT! He’s a pink elephant named Fwuffy with a phonetically-rendered speech impediment? UM.
So, yes, it’s all a bit mixed. ON THE OTHER HAND, I couldn’t put it down (except when I hit an author’s note), and I’ve just had 1200 words worth of thoughts about it.
Other stuff
- This future is not white. One character is described as a “pink-headed Caucasian throwback”, from which we can assume that he’s the only white kid in the group. The heroine was genetically engineered for very dark skin.
- Nevertheless, of the nine people depicted on the cover, four are white, and the central girl, presumably the heroine, has light brown skin.
- Hey, I like to keep track of these things.
- Very few of the characters have mothers in their lives. This seems to be a future where fathers get custody. The heroine’s mother essentially abandoned her for reasons which aren’t fully explained. But remember, not a dystopia.
- The heroine’s father is an actor who has made his name as a leading man. Most of his movies seem to be remakes of early to mid 20th century films, which are quoted several times. It’s a nifty trick for creating a body of pop culture that’s familiar to the audience, or so I thought when I Arthur C. Clarke did it in 2010. I was also eleven at the time.
Most of fan fiction’s rules can be broken, and at least someone out there will find the result entertaining. The exception, in my experience, is this:
Never, ever, ever put author’s notes in the middle of the story.
That’s a common rookie mistake, and except in parodies of bad fic, I’ve never seen it executed well. It’s the kind of thing that has me backspacing right out of a story. (In this age of downloading longer fics in epub or Kindle format, it’s jarring enough to hit the otherwise acceptable end-or-beginning-of-chapter-notes.)
Until I read Losers in Space, I had never seen the mid-story author’s note appear in published fiction. And I’ve still never seen it executed well.
Losers in Space is a YA science fiction novel set in the 22nd century, when famine, war and social divisions (and, apparently, any culture that’s not American) has been replaced by a system where work is optional, the UN provides everyone with a comfortable upper middle class income, and a tiny minority have the opportunity to become “eenies” — people whose talent or fame entitles them to much greater wealth and privilege.
The catch is, it’s not hereditary. On reaching adulthood, the children of eenies have to demonstrate that they’re entitled to enjoy the lifestyle of their parents: through talent, through academic achievement, or by becoming really, really famous.
As the book opens, a group of wannabes — picture the Hilton sisters, a few lesser British royals and maybe some washed up K-pop stars — set out to become famous by stowing away on a ship to Mars. Sure, they’ll be in trouble when they’re caught, but they’ll be sooooooo famous.
The problem is, one of them is a sociopath.
Sounds pretty great, right?
In the foreword, author Barnes makes a big deal out of this being hard SF. But he doesn’t want lots of exposition-heavy dialogue or infodumps, so he’s going to explain the sciencey stuff and some of the social background via … author’s notes shoved into the story. They’re labelled as “notes for the interested”, and he claims it’s possible to skip them if you’re not interested.
I don’t have a science brain, so yes, I skipped over the impenetrably mathematical or scientific notes. Problem is, there was also a lot of significant worldbuilding stuff in the notes. And the characters still had a lot of conversations revolving entirely around technobabble, while much of the social context was limited to the notes.
I honestly can’t believe an editor let this happen! I wanted to get out my red pen and start correcting it, or maybe cut up the book and rearrange it so it worked better. It was just straight up bad. I feel like the worldbuilding should have been incorporated into the story, and most of the science notes could have been removed completely. Maybe posted on the author’s website for interested readers. It got so that I resented every page I had to flick past.
I was also unconvinced by a lot of aspects of the worldbuilding, which was fairly heavy on the cliche. It was interesting, but not necessarily plausible.
What kept me reading were the plot and the characters, which were equal parts interesting and frustrating. Needless to say, the stowaway plan goes terribly wrong, and the teens have to fend for themselves, discovering new reserves of intelligence and competence, whilst also dealing with the sociopath in their midst.
I honestly can’t put my finger on what it was about the plot that bugged me, on account of how it was continually being interrupted by author’s notes. The pacing occasionally lagged, but mostly I think the problem was that the characters never completely gelled for me.
For example, at the very beginning, as we’re introduced to our characters, the narrator gives a quick summary of their personalities: morose social climber, whiny self-pitier, desperately socially awkward, creepy pervert, sociopath, etc. But many of these traits are quickly forgotten. A couple of characters have really pleasing arcs as they evolve from the unlikable people they were into productive members of society, but most of them, as soon as they begin to interact with the heroine, show hardly any sign of their introductory traits. They seem to be completely different people. And while the heroine marvels several times that she never appreciated her peers before, the turnaround is unconvincing.
I also had a lot of trouble with the hero, because I couldn’t quite shake the first impression of him as a creepy pervert who essentially makes fanvids from pornography and always has a camera on the girls.
Meanwhile, the villain is supposed to be a charming sociopath, except at no point is he actually charming. I’ve had some dealings with sociopaths in my life, and generally they sneak up on you. I mean, one of the key aspects of sociopathy is the ability to pass for a normal person, leaving trails of people in your wake wondering if they’re the ones who are crazy. Derlock (…I KNOW) doesn’t do that. He’s just straight up evil.
It’s a compelling kind of straight up evil, though, and part of the reason I kept reading was to see him get his comeuppance. SPOILERS! He doesn’t. He gets away with everything until the epilogue, in which it’s briefly mentioned that the heroine had him killed.
One curious thing about this book is that it has a bunch of reviews on GoodReads praising it for breaking out of the YA dystopian SF mould. It’s true that Losers in Space is a bit different from the recent run of YA SF, but … not dystopian? This is a world where a crime is the intellectual property of the criminal, meaning that a rapist or murderer will be exonerated if he can demonstrate sufficient media interest in his “work”. There’s a scene where the girls explain this law to the boys, who have never heard of it. The girls, on the other hand, had a special class about it, because it puts them all at risk.
Suffice to say, a lot of the “thank heavens it’s not dystopian” reviews are coming from blokes.
It’s details like that — a literal rape culture — that kept me reading, because I was continually seeing the seeds of a much better book between the lines. Genetically engineered animal with human intelligence? GREAT! He’s a pink elephant named Fwuffy with a phonetically-rendered speech impediment? UM.
So, yes, it’s all a bit mixed. ON THE OTHER HAND, I couldn’t put it down (except when I hit an author’s note), and I’ve just had 1200 words worth of thoughts about it.
Other stuff
- This future is not white. One character is described as a “pink-headed Caucasian throwback”, from which we can assume that he’s the only white kid in the group. The heroine was genetically engineered for very dark skin.
- Nevertheless, of the nine people depicted on the cover, four are white, and the central girl, presumably the heroine, has light brown skin.
- Hey, I like to keep track of these things.
- Very few of the characters have mothers in their lives. This seems to be a future where fathers get custody. The heroine’s mother essentially abandoned her for reasons which aren’t fully explained. But remember, not a dystopia.
- The heroine’s father is an actor who has made his name as a leading man. Most of his movies seem to be remakes of early to mid 20th century films, which are quoted several times. It’s a nifty trick for creating a body of pop culture that’s familiar to the audience, or so I thought when I Arthur C. Clarke did it in 2010. I was also eleven at the time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 28, 2017
He grins. “I know a woman who falls for a partial derivative when I see one.”
you know, this was actually rather superb? The potential ability and intellect of these kids, set in such a bleak future really comes to shine through. When I thought they were all just airheads and wasn't really expecting much of this story, I assumed it would just be an average read. But the first EVA just over half way through brought a tear to my eye and from then on, it was clear to me I was hooked and cared about what happened. SO that's a great sign right there.
whilst I can't really get behind all the slang and moral torpidity and the medianess is extreme, this is still a brave, engaging work with a lot riding inside.
you know, this was actually rather superb? The potential ability and intellect of these kids, set in such a bleak future really comes to shine through. When I thought they were all just airheads and wasn't really expecting much of this story, I assumed it would just be an average read. But the first EVA just over half way through brought a tear to my eye and from then on, it was clear to me I was hooked and cared about what happened. SO that's a great sign right there.
whilst I can't really get behind all the slang and moral torpidity and the medianess is extreme, this is still a brave, engaging work with a lot riding inside.
June 13, 2012
TALES OF THE MADMAN UNDERGROUND remains one of my favorite books I've ever reviewed for In Bed With Books. It was a surprising treat. But I started LOSERS IN SPACE with astronomical expectations. The first page of the book met those expectations. Notes for the Interested #0 explains that LOSERS IN SPACE will be hard science fiction, but all the science stuff will be regulated to Notes for the Interested instead of infodumps. I love hard sci-fi, so that didn't deter me, and I thought the notes were a clever way to appeal to two audiences.
Then the characters where introduced. Narrator Susan once wanted to be a scientist, until she realized that fame is the most important thing. Now that's true in the LOSERS IN SPACE world, where a YouTube-like version of reality TV is the easiest avenue of work in a world where most work is valued at nothing. If you want any power over your life, you need to have a salable story. But, true though it might be, I don't want to read about a smart girl who dumbs herself down to be a celebutante. And all her friends seemed to deserve their title as losers.
John Barnes, I apologize for doubting you. I absolutely love this book and regret that I wasted time that I could have used reading it. Please know that I only ever doubted you because I love your work.
Novels like LOSERS IN SPACE don't come around that often. It exemplifies the great possibilities that lie within the young adult genre. At it's heart, LOSERS IN SPACE is driven by the characters. The losers decide to stowaway aboard a ship to Mars in order to gain fame. When things go catastrophically wrong, they must somehow survive alone in space for months. Some of the losers rise to the occasion. Some rise and fall. The losers turn out to be much more than they ever thought they could.
Except for Derlock, who is a sociopath. Did I mention that they're trapped in space with a murderous sociopath? How could I leave that part out?
But on top of being a character-driven survival story with thriller elements, there's a nice heaping slice of social satire and classic SF. It's TUNNEL IN THE SKY meets Libba Bray. And let me tell you: TUNNEL IN THE SKY is one of my favorite books ever. I doubt I could give a book a better compliment.
Please, please, please read LOSERS IN SPACE. John Barnes should be one of the big YA names along with John Green and Scott Westerfeld. I would wax poetic longer, but I need to get back to reading.
Then the characters where introduced. Narrator Susan once wanted to be a scientist, until she realized that fame is the most important thing. Now that's true in the LOSERS IN SPACE world, where a YouTube-like version of reality TV is the easiest avenue of work in a world where most work is valued at nothing. If you want any power over your life, you need to have a salable story. But, true though it might be, I don't want to read about a smart girl who dumbs herself down to be a celebutante. And all her friends seemed to deserve their title as losers.
John Barnes, I apologize for doubting you. I absolutely love this book and regret that I wasted time that I could have used reading it. Please know that I only ever doubted you because I love your work.
Novels like LOSERS IN SPACE don't come around that often. It exemplifies the great possibilities that lie within the young adult genre. At it's heart, LOSERS IN SPACE is driven by the characters. The losers decide to stowaway aboard a ship to Mars in order to gain fame. When things go catastrophically wrong, they must somehow survive alone in space for months. Some of the losers rise to the occasion. Some rise and fall. The losers turn out to be much more than they ever thought they could.
Except for Derlock, who is a sociopath. Did I mention that they're trapped in space with a murderous sociopath? How could I leave that part out?
But on top of being a character-driven survival story with thriller elements, there's a nice heaping slice of social satire and classic SF. It's TUNNEL IN THE SKY meets Libba Bray. And let me tell you: TUNNEL IN THE SKY is one of my favorite books ever. I doubt I could give a book a better compliment.
Please, please, please read LOSERS IN SPACE. John Barnes should be one of the big YA names along with John Green and Scott Westerfeld. I would wax poetic longer, but I need to get back to reading.
Read
May 2, 2023This was a book that took me a while to warm to, and this is more like a 3.5 than a 4 for me. I'm still not into the first person present tense narrative style (mostly because the present tense just doesn't seem necessary), but I suddenly loved the novel about 2/3 of the way in after . That, to me, is when things get really great. I particularly loved the reveal about . Okay, maybe loved isn't quite the right word--it pissed me off and made me want to reach through the pages to choke the life out of Penn Slabilis.
I spent 2/3 of the book not really liking most of the characters (and being tempted to bail on the book) and the last 1/3 wanting to hug them, so I'm not sure what that says. The Notes for the Interested thing . . . I'm undecided about those. Certain notes were necessary to, as Barnes indicates, avoid infodump. At the same time, I skimmed/barely read 95% of them.
The final third of this novel was fantastic and redeemed the entire endeavor. I'm glad I hung in there.
I spent 2/3 of the book not really liking most of the characters (and being tempted to bail on the book) and the last 1/3 wanting to hug them, so I'm not sure what that says. The Notes for the Interested thing . . . I'm undecided about those. Certain notes were necessary to, as Barnes indicates, avoid infodump. At the same time, I skimmed/barely read 95% of them.
The final third of this novel was fantastic and redeemed the entire endeavor. I'm glad I hung in there.
July 5, 2012
Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers
Let me preface this review with a warning: I loved this book. Intensely. Fangirlish gushing ahead.
It is the year 2129, and Earth has changed. It is a peaceful place, without war or strife, and everyone lives a comfortable lifestyle of leisure thanks to a largely robotic workforce. While robots handle the bulk of humanity's needs, there are some very key professions that still require a human touch; namely the arts/entertainment, athletics, certain elements of science (especially manned space exploration), or teaching. As such, society has been rejiggered into three main classes: eenies, mineys, and meanies.
The eenies sit atop the social pyramid - these are the celebrities, the uber-talented, and the super-geniuses. In order to become an eenie, one must pass a few incredibly difficult tests - they must excel in their studies and pass their culminating PotEval tests with flying colors; or they must be talented beyond compare in any entertainment field (sports, acting, singing, etc). Those that don't measure up become eenies are mineys, who comprise the majority of society as the plugged in middle class that is happy to consumer entertainment on a massive scale, and whose living is subsidized by the government (don't feel bad for the mineys - their yearly income is the equivalent of $2M in 2010). Those adults that do not fall into those two major classes of society (eenies or mineys) are meanies - convicted sociopaths, thieves, killers, and other assorted dangerous criminals.
Susan and her friends are the teenage children of eenies - and due to the strict laws that govern this new Earth, even the children of the elite have to work for their inheritance. This motley crew call themselves moes, aka losers. They aren't talented enough or automatically famous enough to become eenies, and the deadline for them to make the jump to eenie status is rapidly approaching (i.e. if they don't achieve a high enough recognition score, maintained for a full month by the established age deadline, they are screwed and destined to be mineys). Instead of becoming eenie by way of exceptional talent, Susan decides to go along with her almost-boyfriend Derlock's get-famous-quick scheme - to stowe away aboard the Mars-bound ship Virgo, thereby breaking the law but instantly becoming so famous that she and her friends will be immune from any nasty consequences. Though the plan is dangerous and technically illegal, Susan and the rest of her moe friends know it will work. And everything goes basically according to plan...until Virgo is rocked by an unforeseen explosion, killing the crew and knocking the ship off course and out of orbit. With finite resources and slim chance of rescue in the cold vacuum of space, Susan and her friends struggle to survive aboard their crippled ship, and with each other.
Dudes. DUDES. I freaking adored this book. Let me put it out there first by saying that I am an unabashed dork for exposition done well, and I love me some good hard science fiction. Losers In Space is predicated on the current laws of physics - in the words of author John Barnes as he explains his brand of SF, in our universe when Superman leaps over a building in a single bound, he must drill a hole into the sidewalk when he lands. In Losers In Space, the Virgo cannot be "rescued" by interplanetary rescue boats because there is no way for them to know where the ship is, and it would take months - even years - for a rescue ship to come from Earth or Mars to intercept Virgo in her off-kilter new orbit.
(I hope I'm getting this right. I might love reading this stuff, but a scientist I most assuredly am not.)
Guys, I freaking LOVE it when there are rule systems in place for speculative fiction - not that I don't love the Roddenberry brand of scifi, but it is infinitely cooler to read about space travel in the context of the actual laws of physics and plausible technologies. THIS is where Losers in Space excels. John Barnes not only creates a world that is plausible in terms of societal structure (albeit with cheesy nomenclature - eenie, meenie, miney, moe, anyone?) and space exploration, but also makes sure to explain the principles behind the technology and the rationale behind our intrepid heroes' plight.
Don't let this talk of science and explanation turn you off, though. For those that are not interested in the principles of space travel, you'll be happy to learn that all of this explanation and exposition is not included in the story proper. Rather, Barnes allows the narrative to proceed with minimal science lecturing - those details and explanations are parsed out into separate sections ("Notes for the Interested") that are interspersed throughout the story. If you're interested in the blatantly infodump-y science lecture, you read the note. If not, you can move on and enjoy the overall story without being subjugated to a physics lesson. (I liked reading the notes, even if I had a hard time comprehending all of the principles. Your mileage may vary!) It's a very clever, elegant solution that should appeal to readers of all ranges of scientific expertise, and I really admire that.
But enough of my babbling on incoherently about the virtues of footnotes and hard SF! What about the story and the characters? In these respects, Losers in Space also totally rocks. I love the concept of the world and the rationale behind these "losers" taking to a drastic scheme to get famous quickly by doing something very stupid - hey, these are celeb-brats trying to get on the "meeds" (think...TMZ/YouTube of the future) as quickly as possible, with the least amount of effort. I love the concept of this utopian - but really, ultimately dystopian in a sort of Eloi-ish way - world, where conflict has been eradicated at a fantastically high cost.
Once the drama in space finally hits and Susan and her friends are struggling to stay alive and figure out their best chance for survival and rescue, I loved the tension that unfolds between the new crew members. This is where character comes in too, because while each of our protagonists starts out the book as decidedly UNlikable, they grow and change so dramatically when they are forced to take their lives into their own hands. Susan, our narrator heroine, in particular has an astonishing character arc, metamorphosing from apathetic hot brat chick to capable, brave, and keenly intelligent leader.
Honestly, there's very little NOT to love with Losers In Space. There's a dramatic, action-packed plot, involving some truly great characters with their own flaws and strengths. There's the satirical quality of the book, explicating our own society's fascination with fame and infamy (and, though I don't agree with it, some not-so-subtle commentary regarding Intellectual Property and the current judicial system). Of course, there's the glorious plausible well-researched and impeccably explained science. Wrap that all together, and you get one hell of a book.
I loved Losers In Space truly, deeply and passionately. Chalk it up to another book on my Top 10 of 2012 list. Absolutely recommended to readers of ALL ages.
Let me preface this review with a warning: I loved this book. Intensely. Fangirlish gushing ahead.
It is the year 2129, and Earth has changed. It is a peaceful place, without war or strife, and everyone lives a comfortable lifestyle of leisure thanks to a largely robotic workforce. While robots handle the bulk of humanity's needs, there are some very key professions that still require a human touch; namely the arts/entertainment, athletics, certain elements of science (especially manned space exploration), or teaching. As such, society has been rejiggered into three main classes: eenies, mineys, and meanies.
The eenies sit atop the social pyramid - these are the celebrities, the uber-talented, and the super-geniuses. In order to become an eenie, one must pass a few incredibly difficult tests - they must excel in their studies and pass their culminating PotEval tests with flying colors; or they must be talented beyond compare in any entertainment field (sports, acting, singing, etc). Those that don't measure up become eenies are mineys, who comprise the majority of society as the plugged in middle class that is happy to consumer entertainment on a massive scale, and whose living is subsidized by the government (don't feel bad for the mineys - their yearly income is the equivalent of $2M in 2010). Those adults that do not fall into those two major classes of society (eenies or mineys) are meanies - convicted sociopaths, thieves, killers, and other assorted dangerous criminals.
Susan and her friends are the teenage children of eenies - and due to the strict laws that govern this new Earth, even the children of the elite have to work for their inheritance. This motley crew call themselves moes, aka losers. They aren't talented enough or automatically famous enough to become eenies, and the deadline for them to make the jump to eenie status is rapidly approaching (i.e. if they don't achieve a high enough recognition score, maintained for a full month by the established age deadline, they are screwed and destined to be mineys). Instead of becoming eenie by way of exceptional talent, Susan decides to go along with her almost-boyfriend Derlock's get-famous-quick scheme - to stowe away aboard the Mars-bound ship Virgo, thereby breaking the law but instantly becoming so famous that she and her friends will be immune from any nasty consequences. Though the plan is dangerous and technically illegal, Susan and the rest of her moe friends know it will work. And everything goes basically according to plan...until Virgo is rocked by an unforeseen explosion, killing the crew and knocking the ship off course and out of orbit. With finite resources and slim chance of rescue in the cold vacuum of space, Susan and her friends struggle to survive aboard their crippled ship, and with each other.
Dudes. DUDES. I freaking adored this book. Let me put it out there first by saying that I am an unabashed dork for exposition done well, and I love me some good hard science fiction. Losers In Space is predicated on the current laws of physics - in the words of author John Barnes as he explains his brand of SF, in our universe when Superman leaps over a building in a single bound, he must drill a hole into the sidewalk when he lands. In Losers In Space, the Virgo cannot be "rescued" by interplanetary rescue boats because there is no way for them to know where the ship is, and it would take months - even years - for a rescue ship to come from Earth or Mars to intercept Virgo in her off-kilter new orbit.
(I hope I'm getting this right. I might love reading this stuff, but a scientist I most assuredly am not.)
Guys, I freaking LOVE it when there are rule systems in place for speculative fiction - not that I don't love the Roddenberry brand of scifi, but it is infinitely cooler to read about space travel in the context of the actual laws of physics and plausible technologies. THIS is where Losers in Space excels. John Barnes not only creates a world that is plausible in terms of societal structure (albeit with cheesy nomenclature - eenie, meenie, miney, moe, anyone?) and space exploration, but also makes sure to explain the principles behind the technology and the rationale behind our intrepid heroes' plight.
Don't let this talk of science and explanation turn you off, though. For those that are not interested in the principles of space travel, you'll be happy to learn that all of this explanation and exposition is not included in the story proper. Rather, Barnes allows the narrative to proceed with minimal science lecturing - those details and explanations are parsed out into separate sections ("Notes for the Interested") that are interspersed throughout the story. If you're interested in the blatantly infodump-y science lecture, you read the note. If not, you can move on and enjoy the overall story without being subjugated to a physics lesson. (I liked reading the notes, even if I had a hard time comprehending all of the principles. Your mileage may vary!) It's a very clever, elegant solution that should appeal to readers of all ranges of scientific expertise, and I really admire that.
But enough of my babbling on incoherently about the virtues of footnotes and hard SF! What about the story and the characters? In these respects, Losers in Space also totally rocks. I love the concept of the world and the rationale behind these "losers" taking to a drastic scheme to get famous quickly by doing something very stupid - hey, these are celeb-brats trying to get on the "meeds" (think...TMZ/YouTube of the future) as quickly as possible, with the least amount of effort. I love the concept of this utopian - but really, ultimately dystopian in a sort of Eloi-ish way - world, where conflict has been eradicated at a fantastically high cost.
Once the drama in space finally hits and Susan and her friends are struggling to stay alive and figure out their best chance for survival and rescue, I loved the tension that unfolds between the new crew members. This is where character comes in too, because while each of our protagonists starts out the book as decidedly UNlikable, they grow and change so dramatically when they are forced to take their lives into their own hands. Susan, our narrator heroine, in particular has an astonishing character arc, metamorphosing from apathetic hot brat chick to capable, brave, and keenly intelligent leader.
Honestly, there's very little NOT to love with Losers In Space. There's a dramatic, action-packed plot, involving some truly great characters with their own flaws and strengths. There's the satirical quality of the book, explicating our own society's fascination with fame and infamy (and, though I don't agree with it, some not-so-subtle commentary regarding Intellectual Property and the current judicial system). Of course, there's the glorious plausible well-researched and impeccably explained science. Wrap that all together, and you get one hell of a book.
I loved Losers In Space truly, deeply and passionately. Chalk it up to another book on my Top 10 of 2012 list. Absolutely recommended to readers of ALL ages.
November 26, 2017
I really had no idea what this book was about when I picked it up. The cover is unappealing, just parts of peoples' faces, and the title I found mildly repelling-- do I really want to read about losers? In fact, the only reason I bought it (for a buck at the library's perpetual sale) was because the author was John Barnes. And I was right to trust that whatever Barnes decided to write about would be interesting.
It's set about a hundred years in the future. Most people live on the dole; there isn't need for many workers. Of the few who do work, most are professional celebrities. This is the story of a group of a half dozen children of professional celebrities, who have decided not to try to study for exams to get one of the few remaining jobs and so are just doing nothing with their lives. Then they come up with a plan to stow away on a trip to Mars, hoping that it will be newsworthy enough to make them celebrities for the rest of their lives. Of course things go wrong along the way, and they need to struggle to survive against challenges both technical and interpersonal, including one sociopath among them.
The backstory was thought out so well I kept wondering if there was a prequel I hadn't read. The narrator's best friend had taken a drug that made her happy all the time, at the cost of slowly losing her mind. The tragedy of her friend was so awful that I was uncertain until two thirds of the way through the book how it would turn out-- I figured the narrator would survive, but I wasn't sure about anyone else.
As usual, Barnes combines diamond hard-SF with speculation about historical forces, sociological effects of innovations, and engaging characters. Besides a solid interplanetary adventure, there's a lot of ideas about celebrity, what it means, how it is engineered, what it is good for, and how it can be used for evil.
There are odd info-dumps as footnotes interspersed through the text. I'm not sure I liked the effect (I think an appendix would have been less jarring), but it would have been difficult to include all the material in dialogue or narration, the way one usually does in hard-SF.
There is also a surprise character, who adds an odd flavor to the book, but I won't give away the surprise. There is also underage sex (though not described) which might put off some of those reading this review.
It's set about a hundred years in the future. Most people live on the dole; there isn't need for many workers. Of the few who do work, most are professional celebrities. This is the story of a group of a half dozen children of professional celebrities, who have decided not to try to study for exams to get one of the few remaining jobs and so are just doing nothing with their lives. Then they come up with a plan to stow away on a trip to Mars, hoping that it will be newsworthy enough to make them celebrities for the rest of their lives. Of course things go wrong along the way, and they need to struggle to survive against challenges both technical and interpersonal, including one sociopath among them.
The backstory was thought out so well I kept wondering if there was a prequel I hadn't read. The narrator's best friend had taken a drug that made her happy all the time, at the cost of slowly losing her mind. The tragedy of her friend was so awful that I was uncertain until two thirds of the way through the book how it would turn out-- I figured the narrator would survive, but I wasn't sure about anyone else.
As usual, Barnes combines diamond hard-SF with speculation about historical forces, sociological effects of innovations, and engaging characters. Besides a solid interplanetary adventure, there's a lot of ideas about celebrity, what it means, how it is engineered, what it is good for, and how it can be used for evil.
There are odd info-dumps as footnotes interspersed through the text. I'm not sure I liked the effect (I think an appendix would have been less jarring), but it would have been difficult to include all the material in dialogue or narration, the way one usually does in hard-SF.
There is also a surprise character, who adds an odd flavor to the book, but I won't give away the surprise. There is also underage sex (though not described) which might put off some of those reading this review.
June 19, 2019
I hated this book at the beginning (and I’ll get into why later). But once the book really got going, I found myself hopelessly in love.
I really liked that the plot wasn’t really revealed in the blurb - more hinted at than anything. It’s sort of random, but I enjoyed being utterly surprised by the plot.
The characters were stunning. I’m a sucker for unlikely friends, character development, and interesting backstories, and this book has plenty of those. The main character was one of the best I’ve read in a while, and I quickly grew to love her crew as the story progressed.
The books concepts were incredibly original and unique, both difficult things to achieve nowadays. Well, there was one concept that, while unique, failed the book - “notes for the interested.”
“Notes for the interested” is why I initially hated the book. The explanation at the beginning held hints of condescension, for me, as if hard sci fi was the best sort of sci fi, and less intelligent people wouldn’t be interested in it. I don’t believe that was the author’s intentions, but that was how it came across in my mind. Also, the mere fact that I kept trying to get immersed in the story but was continually interrupted by NFTI was astoundingly irritating.
Additionally, it says in the small intro essay that readers can skip the NFTI and not be lost - but on at least one occasion, a very important piece of world building history was included in the NFTI, and the full effect of the chapter - and, in fact, one of the conflicts - wouldn’t have hit me had I skipped it. Advice for the author: cut back on the technical talk if you plan on writing a fun YA sci fi book. We don’t need to know details about astrophysics to enjoy the plot. Plus, you should be able to incorporate all the important information into the book naturally, especially since this was your 30th book. Otherwise, the info doesn’t need to be in there.
Luckily, NFTI stopped in the latter half of the book, which coincidentally was my favorite part. In fact, it sort of felt like two different people wrote this book...
Final thoughts: suffer through the first few chapters. Overall, this book is worth it!
I really liked that the plot wasn’t really revealed in the blurb - more hinted at than anything. It’s sort of random, but I enjoyed being utterly surprised by the plot.
The characters were stunning. I’m a sucker for unlikely friends, character development, and interesting backstories, and this book has plenty of those. The main character was one of the best I’ve read in a while, and I quickly grew to love her crew as the story progressed.
The books concepts were incredibly original and unique, both difficult things to achieve nowadays. Well, there was one concept that, while unique, failed the book - “notes for the interested.”
“Notes for the interested” is why I initially hated the book. The explanation at the beginning held hints of condescension, for me, as if hard sci fi was the best sort of sci fi, and less intelligent people wouldn’t be interested in it. I don’t believe that was the author’s intentions, but that was how it came across in my mind. Also, the mere fact that I kept trying to get immersed in the story but was continually interrupted by NFTI was astoundingly irritating.
Additionally, it says in the small intro essay that readers can skip the NFTI and not be lost - but on at least one occasion, a very important piece of world building history was included in the NFTI, and the full effect of the chapter - and, in fact, one of the conflicts - wouldn’t have hit me had I skipped it. Advice for the author: cut back on the technical talk if you plan on writing a fun YA sci fi book. We don’t need to know details about astrophysics to enjoy the plot. Plus, you should be able to incorporate all the important information into the book naturally, especially since this was your 30th book. Otherwise, the info doesn’t need to be in there.
Luckily, NFTI stopped in the latter half of the book, which coincidentally was my favorite part. In fact, it sort of felt like two different people wrote this book...
Final thoughts: suffer through the first few chapters. Overall, this book is worth it!
June 13, 2024
I've been meaning to read this for several years, and finally got around to it! I loved Barnes' Printz Award book, Tales From the Madman Underground, and so I knew I'd enjoy this one as well. It's an excellent teen science fiction novel--a "hard SF" novel, not a space opera, as the author explains in the introduction. Hard SF has all the science correct, and there's no fantasy or magical elements, no sound in space, etc. But he acknowledges that many readers don't care so much about the science "infodumps" necessary to explain the real science, so in this book he separates that out in various "Notes for the Interested" interspersed between chapters. You can skip the Notes, just read the story and have enough basic info to get what's going on, or, if you geek out on the science you will love reading every Note. I read all the notes, of course! I think they also added to the story's fictional aspects, because he talks about what is different in the story from what would have happened in reality. Loved the book. A little hard to get into at first, because you are inundated with a slew of new concepts and made-up futuristic vocabulary: the author has made up a future world (the year is 2129) where no one has to do any work, they are given a minimum guaranteed salary, robots and computers do most stuff, no one has to really learn anything anymore. Everyone is divided into levels of society called "eenies," "meanies," and "mineys." And the main character Susan is very unlikeable at first. All she cares about (all ANY of these teens care about) is becoming as popular as possible on social "meeds" while doing as little as possible. They are very shallow. But on their tour of a spaceship going to Mars, where the group plans to stowaway and become famous for doing so, something goes wrong with their plan, and then reality hits: they are lost in space, with a sociopath on board. Now their true characters will come out, and they'll either figure out how to run the ship and get help, or they'll die. There are nice character growth arcs, and a very funny character named "Fluffy" that I do not want to spoil for anyone. Terrific story!
September 24, 2019
3.5. This was definitely enjoyable at parts. The tension of survival was reminiscent of The Martian, but in a way that lost suspense after the halfway point. Although I was cheering on the crew the whole time, the ending still felt weak to me.
John Barnes has no idea what teenaged girls think about. Susan was mostly robotic and horny, but only horny when it was convenient, and that was her whole personality. It's really a shame that Glisters was the true protagonist with his mastery of every skill they needed to survive moment-to-moment when it was from Susan's perspective. Thinking on it, the boys had much more individual personality than the girls, and the girls were mostly stereotypes propelled by strong emotions. Plus, I can't believe every single one of those teens was straight.
The mix of science- and then later social-derived obstacles was interesting, but it was an odd choice to make much of his worldbuilding skippable. The format of the asides leads naturally to a tell, don't show format, and the philosophical implications of their civilization still happen mostly in dialogue.
John Barnes has no idea what teenaged girls think about. Susan was mostly robotic and horny, but only horny when it was convenient, and that was her whole personality. It's really a shame that Glisters was the true protagonist with his mastery of every skill they needed to survive moment-to-moment when it was from Susan's perspective. Thinking on it, the boys had much more individual personality than the girls, and the girls were mostly stereotypes propelled by strong emotions. Plus, I can't believe every single one of those teens was straight.
The mix of science- and then later social-derived obstacles was interesting, but it was an odd choice to make much of his worldbuilding skippable. The format of the asides leads naturally to a tell, don't show format, and the philosophical implications of their civilization still happen mostly in dialogue.
September 9, 2019
This wasn't as good as I was expecting. I initially wanted to read it because of the Notes for the Interested, which appealed to my nerdy self. But, I ended up hating most of the characters.
Emerald, for example, I had really mixed feelings about. I hated her at first, then began to like her when she became commander, then began to hate her even more because of her stupidity when she ran away with the confirmed sociopath and untrustworthy person Derlock because of "love". She was warned by everyone not to trust him, and yet she still said "Ugh, you don't understand our love" and died. Also, the prank situation? Why would you ever agree to that? Why would you ever listen to Derlock and decide to give him your commander passcode to fire the ship's thrusters while a crew member is outside, doing something highly important? Emerald is an idiot. I'm glad she died.
Marioschke also annoyed me a lot. She just wouldn't. Stop. Whining. Luckily, she became better near the end, but that first half of the book was nearly unbearable.
And the main character, Susan, also isn't the best of people, but she's still somewhat forgivable. Also, I find it funny how everyone has these weird names like Emerald, Stack, Glisters, Wychee, etc. and then you just had Susan. It's like me writing a book filled with fantastical names like Ayetaysabyyhqbdh, Furyuyaydq, and Aelyunahs, and then having the protagonist be named Bob.
All in all, this wasn't good, but I can appreciate the thought and research put into it.
Emerald, for example, I had really mixed feelings about. I hated her at first, then began to like her when she became commander, then began to hate her even more because of her stupidity when she ran away with the confirmed sociopath and untrustworthy person Derlock because of "love". She was warned by everyone not to trust him, and yet she still said "Ugh, you don't understand our love" and died. Also, the prank situation? Why would you ever agree to that? Why would you ever listen to Derlock and decide to give him your commander passcode to fire the ship's thrusters while a crew member is outside, doing something highly important? Emerald is an idiot. I'm glad she died.
Marioschke also annoyed me a lot. She just wouldn't. Stop. Whining. Luckily, she became better near the end, but that first half of the book was nearly unbearable.
And the main character, Susan, also isn't the best of people, but she's still somewhat forgivable. Also, I find it funny how everyone has these weird names like Emerald, Stack, Glisters, Wychee, etc. and then you just had Susan. It's like me writing a book filled with fantastical names like Ayetaysabyyhqbdh, Furyuyaydq, and Aelyunahs, and then having the protagonist be named Bob.
All in all, this wasn't good, but I can appreciate the thought and research put into it.
January 7, 2019
I actually had this book for some time before I read it. The title just threw me off a bit. I'm a sucker for books at the local dollar tree, so I bought it anyway. I'm glad I did. It's a bit different from the SF I'm used to in that he sets up the science part outside of the main story for the most part in his "notes for the interested" that begin on the first page. I actually liked this for a couple of reasons, 1. I didn't have to read them & 2. I could go back to them if I missed something, forgot something, or just hadn't read that one, but needed some of its info. All in all I enjoyed this book especially watching (most of) the characters grow.
August 4, 2020
I really did enjoy the structure of this book and the bits of information scattered throughout to help the reader understand the science behind everything. All of the characters who go into pace are dynamic characters and it is interesting to see where they end up in the end.
The only thing I didn't like was the very last chapter, it was boring as hell. Like every part of the book was amazing and then the last chapter came along and took a fat shit on the book. Blah, disgusting.
(The last chapter depicts what happens 30 years into the future)
The only thing I didn't like was the very last chapter, it was boring as hell. Like every part of the book was amazing and then the last chapter came along and took a fat shit on the book. Blah, disgusting.
(The last chapter depicts what happens 30 years into the future)
April 11, 2019
Okay, i actually did not finish reading this. it was so difficult to understand, so confusing and I did not like it at all. Maybe it's because it's above my reading level, or something, but definetley do not recommend.
January 2, 2018
RTC. I liked it, with reservations. 3.5 stars
January 21, 2018
I'm really glad I found this boook. It's a very clever take on the idea of post work.
April 6, 2018
just don't, please.
August 20, 2018
This book captured my attention and kept it. A shockingly amazing story about a girl growing into a woman. 10/10 would read again.
January 29, 2019
i loved the characters, they were extremely complex, their arcs were amazing and i love how the author seperated out the science part, very easy to read!! i really loved it
January 12, 2023
It was phenomenal! Super interesting and thought provoking and funny and felt real. I'd love to read more.
March 4, 2017
I feel kind of guilty for only giving this book 3 stars because there were some parts that were extremely interesting. The only real issue that I had was that it got (understandably) boring for the 3/4 of the book.
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