Another Heaven, Another Earth

by Helen Mary Hoover

After being lost for several hundred years, a space colony is rediscovered by an exploratory expedition from Earth whose technology threatens to destroy the colony's painfully constructed civilization.

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult

173 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

http://www.orrt.org/hoover/

Over the course of her twenty-three-year career as a writer, H.M. Hoover won eight awards for her writing, including three Best Book for Young Adult designations from the American Library Association and two Parent's Choice Honor Awards. Another Heaven, Another Earth received the Ohioana Award in 1982.

H.M. Hoover lived in Burke, Virginia. Her last published work was The Whole Truth - And Other Myths: Retelling Ancient Tales, in 1996.

Hoover changed her pen name to H.M. Hoover before Children came out because there was already a children's author named Helen Hoover.

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable, poignant book. I couldn't help comparing it while I read to all of the more recent YA I've read. 'Another Heaven, Another Earth' has adult protagonists dealing with a complex and emotional situation, no teen angst, no sparkly soulmates... it is a powerful story that asks the reader to consider the effects of colonisation from the sides of both colonisers and colonised. I loved HM Hoover's 'This Time of Darkness' as a teenager and thought I'd try some of her other titles, which are all tucked away in our Research Library stacks. Though it doesn't give the (cheap) thrills I've mostly been looking for in a book of late, what with tiredness and lack of reading time, it left me feeling a lot more satisfied and thoughtful at the end of it. Kind of like the difference between eating a cheeseburger and eating a good, home-cooked meal. Recommended if you don't mind a slow-burning plot.

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I would call the moral or theme of the story is thought provoking and timely, even though the book is dated (1981). "Is it better to live an exceptionally long life in a sterile, confined, mechanized environment, devoid of nature; where every need is provided with the push of a button or to live in the midst of an open, hazardous, yet beautiful nature, free to explore at will, eke out a living by hard manual labor, with needs met in a minimalist manner, suffering health complications and dying at a very early age?" Made me wonder if these are the worlds my children's children's children will inhabit.

Oddly enough, during the time I read this I also watched "Dances With Wolves" for about the 5th time. A movie which always effects me upon watching with the plight of the American Indian, overcome by an advanced (?), mechanized, unsympathetic interloper hell bent on progress toward a better (?) world.

I know there are vast differences in these two scenarios, but it is the reference I made between the two at the time.

enjoyed the book, glad I read it.

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Still good, but not as wonderful as the first two books of hers that I read.

Plot: in the future, earth is pretty much paved over, and we're colonizing the galaxy. Scientists come upon a planet that seems good--but realize with a shock that Earth has already colonized it, 500 years ago, but that the colony was forgotten about. The hero of the book is the 20-year-old healer of that small community, now only 1400 people where once it was ten thousand. The planet is not particularly friendly to humans, but they've carved an existence out of it, a hard one, an agrarian life, with domestic animals and wild ones providing them sustenance, and with plants providing all their medicine.

The scientists in the spaceship are clueless about this way of life, and see the people as primitive and backwards, where the primitive folks are pretty happy and think the visitors are rude, judgmental, estranged from nature--and they are.

Spoilers ahead:

The reason this doesn't satisfy as much as her other books is twofold: 1) there is some lack of resolution and 2) the issues she brings up are disturbing. It's like Avatar (the over-CGI'ed, "noble savages" movie that I'm no fan of) but without any unlikely heroic uprising. Things turn out okay enough with little violence, but Eden has been spoiled to some extent. The reader is left with some disturbing questions, like "what is it to live to the age of 100 if you never see wilderness or eat real food?" I think because we have traveled that road so far (I have a sister who I think believes chicken breasts grow from plastic trays in the back rooms at Walmart, and I know far too many people who live on social media on their phones and never look up from it, not even when they take a walk outdoors), questions like this feel a bit too personal or accusative. And as the planet has problems, as the devastation to the population numbers shows, the workers for the corporation that explores space for habitable planets start to suspect all the colonies that ever were are like this, and that they are working for an evil monster that only leads people to their deaths. Dark stuff, really.

Again, really solid writing, characters you believe, and great worldbuilding from Ms. Hoover

[Fen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My last book of the year. When I was in seventh grade, I stumbled across H.M. Hoover's book This Time of Darkness (just a few years after it was published) and *loved* it. Our library had none of her other books, so I branched out to books with similar themes and moved on (although I have reread that book many times over the years and it remains a favorite).

Another Heaven, Another Earth started off incredibly well and I really did thoroughly enjoy reading it... until the last few chapters where everything gets wrapped up very quickly and, it seems, everyone pretty much returned to how they were living life before the events of the story. I don't know what I would have preferred to have happen, but the ending just seemed so rushed and unsatisfying.

There was also a major, sudden shift in how the Corporation was handling the lost colony that came out of nowhere (almost literally... I had set the book down for a few hours, came back to it in the next chapter and wondered if there were pages missing from the book, things changed that drastically and with no explanation.

All that said, overall I really did enjoy it and will likely reread it at some point. The characters were nicely fleshed out and believable, the science made sense and the confrontation between the two cultures was interesting.

[Kimberley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this a lot but it’s not my favorite of her books. I love the world building Hoover does, it’s interested and detailed. Generally her other books have left me feeling that just enough was explained to understand while still leaving things to ponder. While they say it’s better a book be too long than too short I felt like I got less of the story than I wanted. There were a lot of unanswered questions that weren’t about the overall moral point of the story. The main character was interesting and compelling. The other characters were a bit hard to keep track of, they weren’t fleshed out enough to even remember which was which.

[Gold Dust · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the premise of the story—pointing out that people were “so smart they were stupid” (92). It was like Mij’s Testament: Ailand and Ogidni combined.

“Suppose we can visit any world we like, but we cannot live there? Suppose we are creatures of Earth, uniquely designed by four billion years of the ever-increasing molecular complexity called evolution to fit Earth’s environment and only Earth’s? Suppose we can create artificial worlds that match the conditions of our home, but there is no other natural world to which we can adapt and on which we can survive and endure?” (105).

But I feel that the book could’ve been written much better. The tale should’ve been told solely from Gareth’s point of view. Then we would feel more emotion toward the people in her village, and for what the outsiders want to do to it. It got confusing when the author would just switch character viewpoints whenever she wanted, without any chapter or line break. She also should’ve used more line breaks when time had passed between one paragraph and the next.

Plot holes (with spoilers):
“Seeing the logs start to smoke and then flame, without a match, was as unreal as the fact that she was safe at home again” (70). If this community is so primitive, then how are they able to get matches?

“It is the writers’ joint opinion that, should we decide to recolonize Xilan, the present population be removed. Such action, while costly, would avoid unnecessary negative response from new emigrants” (107). This acts like this little piece of land these primitives live on is the whole planet. There is plenty of other land emigrants could live on, without ever coming in contact with the primitives. So it is completely unnecessary to remove them.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A marvelous YA piece of science fiction, the story is ostensibly about a clash of cultures as a space-age civilization meets a neolithic people who are descendants of a lost colony sent 500 years ago. It is however a clever parable about the faults of our technological society that has lost touch with nature and human connection. Despite the poorer health and physically harder lives of the natives it is telling that none of them were willing to trade it for the squeaky clean yet soul-less existence of their space faring friends.

The characters were well crafted and believable, the world of planet Xilan beautiful in its vast wilderness and broad vistas teeming with alien life. This is classic sci-fi so typical of the 1970s and 80s in its idealism and fanciful imagination of other worlds. Books like these made me yearn to be an astronaut once upon a time..

[Bob Pony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Krista Donnelly for suggesting this author! I picked this novel at random from among her works, because it was free on Kindle Unlimited. The author's books were marketed in the 70's and 80's as 'Young Adult' fiction, but from this sample size of one, I'd say that's a misnomer. The writing is solid, the story is thoughtful, and I found myself both intrigued and surprised by what happened. This is a story of colonization and arrogance, of forgotten things rediscovered. It's not a long book, but it makes good use of the pages it's been given. I'd say the writing level is akin to something like The Hobbit - it's not dense, but it's not simplistic either. Just enough detail and information is given, and the world building is strong - I want to go to there. :)
Recommended. I'll have to seek out more books by the author!

[CJ Andrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book for Christmas a few years ago. Sci Fi never was and probably never will be my thing, but I was at that age where I couldn’t NOT read a perfectly readable book. It was an okay read from what I remember—a bit confusing and hard to follow, but then again I was probably eleven or twelve when I read it. Apparently there’s a deeper meaning and / or symbolism behind Another Heaven, Another Earth. If there was, I didn’t notice it. Maybe I’ll re-read it sometime.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Different concept than what I've read. The cover on the shelf attracted me to it, glad i read it.

[SBC · Rating 5 out of 5]

H.M. Hoover is an author I feel I missed out on reading in my teens (my school and local libraries and bookstores never had any of their works), so I am slowly making my way through her ouevre as an adult. Although I believe most of her books were juvenile sci-fi, I'm not sure that this one was intended to be so - there are two main characters, each grown women.

This book, for me, was a wonderful example of culture shock - two human cultures separated geographically for several hundreds of years and now unable to really comprehend each other. Because one was pseudo-medieval and yet had aspects of our world and time (e.g. a natural diet and a love for the natural world) and one was futuristic (e.g. techno-savvy), readers of the now are perfectly poised to comprehend both worlds and their difficulties in comprehending each other.

A really interesting story.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one might be my new favorite Hoover

[Julie S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I own this book and read it a few times when I was quite young. Since my copy that I got at a garage sale has no cover, adding this to GoodReads is the first time that I have ever seen the cover. Hmm.

I may have to reread this to review/rate it more accurately, but I remember that I liked it. If I do reread it, I'm not in a huge rush since I have a lot of other books to read.

[Douglas Larson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I liked this story, I didn't find it to be as profound as some reviewers portray it. The story and its surprise twist of the plot are well done and believable but it didn't hit me as it was like nothing else. It may be that by the time I read this I had already read 5 or 6 of Hoover's other works, some of which I liked better and some not as much as this one.

[Jen526]

Kind of a compressed environmental-message story about an advanced society finding a lost colony that has gone native and the clash of cultures between a typical sterile, technology-driven future Earth and the nature-loving natives. The concept is a bit cliche nowadays, and so risks feeling dated, but as an intermediary book, I think it sets up a nice moral conflict for kids to think about.

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perspective-taking alternates between two main characters and their world views, not consistenly well-developed motivation or explanation. Ethical dilemma of corporate responsibility for colonists adds to suspense.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a juvenile book, even though nominally written for kids. Very thoughtful, a bit scary, a lot sad, and very satisfying.

[Collie]

Melancholy and thoughtful, like all her books, and morally complex as well.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

"when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again." excerpt from a quote by William Beebe

This novel was published in 1981, one of H.M. (Helen Mary) Hoover's early excellent books (like [This Time of Darkness]). It makes me sad that her books seem to have gone out of print. Our local library used to have several of them in the children's and teen section and every one has now been purged. In fact there are none in our entire county system. Hoover's books that I have read seem to have a strong nature (i.e. environmental) element to them, feature women and men working well together, and like this novel, the two main characters are both women.

This story is about two cultures meeting each other after a separation of 500 hundred years. A small population had colonized a planet but the records did not show that - only an expedition, and we have a couple mysteries to puzzle out. When a new expedition arrives both sides are surprised to discover each other. The interpersonal relationships and strong characters made this a very enjoyable read.

I am purposely not giving away details of the story in my comments because I did not want to spoil things. However I thought I would add that the story made me a little sad and melancholy, and that this is a bit of a "message" story that is as true today as it was in 1981 when written and as the author imagined it might be a 1000 years or so in the future. 3 1/2 stars, not quite 4. This strikes me as a very good story for 8th grade or so middle schoolers to read and think about.