Return to Earth

by Helen Mary Hoover

Friendship between an experienced interstellar diplomat and a young girl who inherits political power is threatened by the schemes of an unscrupulous religious leader

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Childrens

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

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

[Tiuri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn’t read this book in six years, so I decided to purchase it and add it to my Hoover collection. This read-through I had trouble putting it down, read way too much in one sitting and have thus decided to bump the rating up from three stars to four. What changed in six years? I guess I did, since the book didn’t. I enjoyed Galen very much as a main character (when do old men ever get to be the MC of a YA novel? In a Hoover book) and Samara. Their relationship and conversations are what keep this novel going. Although to me Samara’s personality seems to shift halfway through and I feel like she gets replaced with another Hoover heroine (which one I’m not sure…a bit of Lian or Merry with a dash of Varina?)
Here are some selections I collected:

He had the oddest feeling, as if he had just robbed himself of his own past.

&

By the time he stood beneath the temple roof, the music was so loud that his body was resonating with sound. Wondering if it frightened anyone else, he glanced at the people around him.
They seemed unaware of the volume. All of them, young and old, were looking up at the ceiling, their faces open and expectant, eyes glazed like a lover's, waiting.

&

"It's simply a matter of courtesy."
"You will learn," Galen said, "that courtesy is seldom simple—as common sense is, unfortunately, quite uncommon.
I've learned to value both as rare virtues."
For the briefest moment he thought this too-sober girl was going to laugh, but training won out over instinct and she controlled the urge. It was that control, and the need for it, that made him feel compassion for her. She was much too young to be so old.

&

The scent of flowers came on the wind that rustled through the garden below. He pulled the blanket up about his chin. Those yellow roses were magnificent, as was so much of Earth. What spoiled the place was some of the people.

&

As he had when he was a boy, he wanted to shout to someone, anyone, "Hey, come look!" God's infinite attention to detail still filled him with awed excitement. But there was no one to call.
There never had been. He had almost quit expecting there ever would be and convinced himself it did not matter. It did, of
course.
One never gets accustomed to that kind of loneliness, and on this morning in particular, Galen was vulnerable to reality.

&

utopias breed a very special kind of boredom. Pervasive, soul corroding. You can see a mild version of the same symptoms in your company towns— the fads, the ultra-neatness.

&

"You've never seen them?"
She shook her head. "I always come in late and sit on the stage."
After he explained, she sat lost in thought for a while. "I never understood what made them act like that." She sounded exasperated with herself. "How stupid of me! I would sit there and listen to his speech and watch those light shows, and everybody in the audience would be in ecstasy, and I would think it must be me. I must be missing something!"

[Bogi Takács]

#BogiReads Patreon | Twitter | Mastodon | Instagram | Facebook | Website


I missed out on vast swathes of American kidlit, having not grown up in America – Hungary has a massive kidlit industry, and when I was a child it was further fueled by authors of adult fiction who have experienced political repression often only being allowed to publish kidlit.

I especially wanted to find vintage YA science fiction, as this is something I greatly enjoy, but most recommendation lists only have very recent titles. So shortly before Twitter became the incredible mess it is right now, I asked this question. H.M. Hoover was recommended to me by multiple people, among them Rasha Abdulhadi, Sandstone, and Toby MacNutt. They mostly recommended different titles, I picked up three so far here and there, but on the lookout for more. This was the first one I read, I decided to start with it because people were complaining on the internet that it had a problematic age gap romance. And that sounded strange enough for vintage kidlit!

This is a far future book with space colonies, though the bulk of the plot takes place in North America. I wouldn’t call it a romance. The main characters are an older man and a teenage girl. They have no romantic interactions, and in the end, they (spoiler, decode with ROT13) rkcyvpvgyl sevraqmbar rnpu bgure, gubhtu gurl qb qvfphff vs vg pbhyq unir jbexrq jvgu yrff bs na ntr tnc – ohg gura gurl pbapyhqr vg jbhyqa’g.

So I can say the question of romance definitely occurred both to the author and to the characters in-narrative, but that’s not where the plot goes. It is more of a mentoring relationship, between an elderly, quasi-retired political leader and a teenage girl who finds herself in a leadership position after a terrorist attack. There’s very very little of this type of mentorship in YA science fiction overall, so I was really happy about this, and I liked their character interactions.

Also adventures happen! The antagonist is a cult leader and they have to both escape him and fight him (I thought the fighting was done ingeniously, and in a way that is more realistic than it tends to be in SFF). The antagonist was a bit one-dimensional though, compared to the protagonists, but the book is short and there isn’t time for everything.

At one point, Indigenous people help out the characters, but the whole “how do we return the favor without forcing ourselves on them and ruining their lives when they just want to be left alone, can we even do that” is discussed by the characters. So there’s clearly an attempt to engage with these themes thoughtfully and it read like a conscious reaction to harmful stereotypes in fiction.

Overall I enjoyed it! I would have liked it to be longer, but it was cool and now I can see that she explores similar themes of political power, leadership, mentoring in some of her other works as well. Time to read those too! Thank you everyone for the rec.
____
Source of the book: Book swap

Note – I am on a vintage YA SFF reading kick, I’ve read a bunch of your other recommendations as well, but this is the first one I’m getting around to reviewing :)

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Galen is the retired Governor of Marsat, an artificial colony. Samara is the daughter of the Director of Continental Lloyd Corporation, one of Earth's largest companies. A chance meeting in Galen's old house propels them into a crucible of political intrigue and death as Samara has to become Director when her mother is assassinated.

As with all H.M Hoover's works, this is well written, believable and exciting. The relationship between Galen and Samara is touching and sweet, without becoming cloying. The future that Hoover paints is calm but with hints of underlying trouble. I would recommend this book to any fans of H.M Hoover's other works and to anyone who has not encountered her before.

[Sue J · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for many years. I finally decided to read it. It was an interesting look at H. M. Hoover’s concept of the future.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cover of my edition promised a pulpy, badly written, sci-fi adventure. 100% delivered. Absolutely terrible.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this, and I was grateful it didn’t get gross about Samara and Galen

[A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lousy SF book. Contains a corrupt pagan priest and a November-April quasi-romance. Contains no Godfrey Ho. In the book's favor, laser rifle wounds are basically invisible except for swelling, which is you know about what a laser rifle wound would look like if such a thing existed.

[SciFiOne · Rating 5 out of 5]

1989 grade A