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Space Hostages
A crazed and dying Flight Lieutenant, nine village children, a top-secret spacecraft - all of them out of control and adrift in space! Someone must take charge. But who?
Brylo has the brains, but not the personality, so it is the powerful young bully Tony who sets himself up as Captain - and steers the ship and its cargo of children towards new and horrifying dangers...
142 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
99 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Fisk
66 books22 followers(1923–2016), British author of more than forty books and television scripts and a master of science fiction for children. Fisk, whose real name is David Higginbottom, grew up during the Second World War and served in the Royal Air Force. His autobiography, Pig Ignorant (1992), covers the years 1939–1941 and details his life in Soho, a bohemian section of London, where he played jazz in the evenings until he was called to enlist. After the war Fisk worked as a musician, journalist, and publisher. He started writing in the 1960s, and his popularity was at its height in the 1970s and 1980s. His most impressive work, A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair (1982), is a thrilling futuristic novel set at the end of the 22ndcentury. The government is cloning new people and has manufactured a 1940s wartime family whose members are unaware that nothing they know is real. This moving story is a dark representation of the threat posed by technological advancement but is optimistic in its message about the triumph of the human spirit. Fisk's most enduring books include Grinny (1973), which features a technologized extraterrestrial threat in the form of a great- aunt who glows at night, and Trillions (1971), an eerie story about mysterious hard shiny objects that contain an alien intelligence. Monster Maker (1979) was made into a film.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 20, 2016
An extremely disappointing read: possibly one of the worst books I have read in a while! The whole spacecraft thing is very dated, but I can understand it may have been quite exciting in its' day, but it just doesn't work now! The cast of characters are absolutely dreadful- couldn't connect with any of them at all! They come across as caricatures- the mummy's boy, the bully etc etc, none endearing or likeable, just plain silly! Sadly, couldn't find one redeeming feature, it just annoyed me. I only gave it 1 star because zero was not an option.
June 20, 2021
Nicholas Fisk was very popular when I was a kid - especially his Starstormers series. This is one of his earlier sci-fi works for kids, dating back to 1967. I found a copy in a book exchange when out walking recently, and thought I'd give it a try.
It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read in my life! It's kind of Lord Of The Flies In Space, with a bunch of weird 1960s pop culture references, a couple of strange Mr. Cholmondley-Warner types, and a bunch of kids that bore an odd resemblance to the cast of Here Come The Double Deckers. Throw in a bit of thuggery, casual racism, and some Stiff Upper Lip, along with a plot that was used twenty years later in Space Camp...
Yeah, it's very weird.
I wonder if Fisk was off his face when he wrote it? That said, it was certainly quite engrossing, and very compelling in its strangeness, and if you like a bit of vintage kids' fiction that will scramble your brains, you'll love it.
It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read in my life! It's kind of Lord Of The Flies In Space, with a bunch of weird 1960s pop culture references, a couple of strange Mr. Cholmondley-Warner types, and a bunch of kids that bore an odd resemblance to the cast of Here Come The Double Deckers. Throw in a bit of thuggery, casual racism, and some Stiff Upper Lip, along with a plot that was used twenty years later in Space Camp...
Yeah, it's very weird.
I wonder if Fisk was off his face when he wrote it? That said, it was certainly quite engrossing, and very compelling in its strangeness, and if you like a bit of vintage kids' fiction that will scramble your brains, you'll love it.
August 11, 2014
Olen jonkun verran lukenut näitä lapsuuteni klassikoita ja tämän aika oli armotta hylännyt. Surkea ja naiivi kertomus avaruusalukseen kaapatusta lapsijoukosta, joka kaappaajan kuoleman jälkeen selviää neuvokkaiden yksilöiden ansiosta takaisin kotiin.
Tässä ei toimi mikään. Kummallista, että tämä ei tuhonnut haluani lukea äsäffää. Lukekaa mieluummin http://www.risingshadow.fi/library/bo...
Tässä ei toimi mikään. Kummallista, että tämä ei tuhonnut haluani lukea äsäffää. Lukekaa mieluummin http://www.risingshadow.fi/library/bo...
March 15, 2019
‘Space Hostages’, Fisk’s first novel as far as I can remember, is about nine village children who are abducted by an Flight Lieutenant who has stolen an RAF flying saucer, actually a secret military spacecraft, because he’s expecting an imminent nuclear holocaust and wants to preserve the human race. Because the flying saucer’s engines are nuclear-powered, he has ended up giving himself radiation sickness and dies a few days after the abduction, leaving the children to their own devices. Tony, a juvenile delinquent, declares himself captain but Brylo, a nerdish black teenager in an otherwise all-white community, is the brains of the operation and has eventually to be trained via radio from Earth to pilot the spaceship, which via a detour near Cynthia (groan, “the Moon”) lands back on Earth.
I seem to have read this in about 1974, as the images it conjures up in my mind as I re-read it are of Shalmsford, which I left in 1975. In particular I recall seeing Venus out of a window in the house I used to live in back then, the book comparing the first sight of the saucer to the appearance of the planet in Earth’s sky. The milieu of the novel seems very much to capitalise on the still relatively new youth culture of the ’60s, and it also felt like it was the beginning of the Ziggy Stardust/Glam Rock kind of sensibility which this became a few years later. It mentions the Beatles once, and I got the impression that the protagonists were very much swinging youth, with the sense of naive optimism which had died by the time I was a teenager. It also reminded me that I was within a hairsbreadth of experiencing the ’60s myself, which have a kind of hinterlandisch quality to me of being almost my time but not quite, and also having a sort of stasis to them because just as time speeds up as you get older, so does the subjective passage of time initiate from a kind of standstill at the beginning of your consciousness.
There was a clear contrast between the girls and boys. The girls were involved in cooking and caring for the youngest child and had a sort of nurturing role to the boys, who were clearly the central characters and heroes or villains of the piece. Although this is plainly sexist, it’s also interesting because it may still be true to life in terms of how children from a small village in Southern England in the 1960s would in fact have behaved. Hence I was a little torn between the sexist depiction of a division of gender roles and the likelihood that it very probably reflected real life at the time quite accurately. It should also be said that much of that stereotypically feminine role does in fact appeal to me quite strongly as something to aspire to even though my social conditioning tried to push me the other way. In the end, regardless of gender, there isn’t actually anything wrong with trying to take care of a little boy who misses his mummy because he’s been kidnapped and is lost in space, or most of the other stuff the girls did. There was a kind of allegiance and attraction between one of the girls, Di, and the “yob” Tony, as the self-proclaimed captain is described on the blurb, which made me feel that she was looking for his protection, a common dynamic which often leads to being subjected to domestic abuse.
To be fair to Fisk, although he seems to have been largely oblivious of the questionable nature of the sexual politics he portrayed, he did provide a very non-stereotypical black male character in the person of Brylo and racism was made an issue in this story. Brylo is the nerd, and although this has been done many times since, for example by Terry Pratchett in his Johnny Maxwell series, this is an early example. It’s the black boy who is the square and the intellectual as opposed to all the hip characters around him, and he saves the day. There are many pejorative references to the colour of his skin by Tony. This moves the book several places up in the “right on” league for me, and also illustrates how, although the sexual revolution was ongoing at the time and there were some elements of feminism in wider society, many people were largely oblivious of their sexism, yet racism was front and centre, which considering Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech was made in 1968 and Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination that same year, was highly topical and in the public consciousness.
Other reviewers on Goodreads have said that the depiction of space travel is very dated and of its time. I don’t find it so. To me, it’s refreshing that the setting is “human’s only”. It would’ve been very easy to churn out a story where extraterrestrials abducted children and took them away in their flying saucer, but this particular UFO is emphatically not like that but a secret military spacecraft, and this fact made me wonder whether the story subconsciously influenced me into my current belief that although there are UFOs they are probably just secret military aircraft. It’s certainly a parsimonious and conservative belief which assumes the least, and in science the most boring explanations are likely to be the true ones. One thing which niggled me a little was the fact that there seemed to be normal Earth-type gravity all the time they were in space, and that the spacecraft retained a top and bottom consistent with the position it had landed on in the village. The nuclear engines were at the bottom of the craft and were still thus perceived all the time they were in space, and no explanation was given for this even though at the time, zero gee conditions were very familiar to the general public. Acceleration would have provided a mechanism for this to happen but would have meant the engines were always on and thrusting hard, which didn’t seem to be the case. The layout of the interior of the craft reminded me a little of the USS Enterprise, and of course at the time of writing ‘Star Trek’ would’ve been in its first season, but I think this is more because this is the general way the interiors of spacecraft were supposed to be at the time in other science fiction, particularly military SF. We kind of know that spaceships are supposed to be a bit like submarines in fiction, and as I’ve mentioned previously on this blog there’s even an episode of ‘Star Trek’ which is essentially a submarine story.
The all-pervading fear of nuclear holocaust, in this case linked to a proxy war in a thinly disguised Vietnam, is present in this novel, which dates it a little, though of course that particular threat may well come back and is, in my opinion, always present in any case while we still have nuclear weapons. The original idea behind the saucer was to rescue the rich and powerful from the conflagration if the balloon went up, to which the Flight Lieutenant took exception. This is quite a common idea and is also the central theme of Ben Elton’s ‘Stark’ three decades later, though in that case the threat was different. The nuclear rocket, perhaps surprisingly, is an entirely practical space drive which was being developed at the time. The principle behind it is that a relatively inert propellant is heated by a nuclear reactor before being ejected through a nozzle. All of this is profoundly hard science.
Several aspects of the setting are kept vague. The village seems to be somewhere in Southern England, although I’m not sure its location is more precisely specified. As to time, well, the Beatles seem to be together still, but they were probably not expected to split at the time of writing, and in fact maybe the idea of bands splitting at all was quite foreign at that point. There is, however, a moonbase and there are negotiations in progress for building the Channel Tunnel, showing the prevailing optimism about human space exploration at the time, which was three years before Apollo XI, and the seemingly endless wranglings over the Channel Tunnel which had been going on intermittently since, I think, before Victorian times. In reality this would place it in the mid-1980s of course.
Finally, three relatively trivial points. The font used for the cover is that “futuristic” one known as Westminster, designed for magnetic ink and computer character recognition and associated with computers in the ’60s and ’70s. At the time it would have looked extremely fresh. The general idea behind is is that each character uses a different quantity of ink, enabling the scanning device to differentiate between them, and it’s called Westminster because of being used to print the numbers at the bottom of cheques (National Westminster Bank). Also, this was the source from which I learned the Morse code for “H”, found in it in the word “EARTH”, being used as a call sign in the rescue effort. This was almost the last Morse code I learnt, which puts things in perspective a bit – I haven’t made any progress in Morse since 1974 apparently!
My third point is a mysteriously topical reference for 2019. At one point, one of the girls calls Tony “Captain Marvel”. This reference makes little sense to me because it seems that Captain Marvel was retired after Fawcett Comics, who allegèdly created the character, were sued because he was too similar to Superman in 1953. Marvel then used the name again in a comic book published in December 1967, which is a few months too late for this reference to make sense to readers as far as Fisk is concerned, but the earlier character is too old-fashioned to be contemporary for them. This has really puzzled me.
I seem to have read this in about 1974, as the images it conjures up in my mind as I re-read it are of Shalmsford, which I left in 1975. In particular I recall seeing Venus out of a window in the house I used to live in back then, the book comparing the first sight of the saucer to the appearance of the planet in Earth’s sky. The milieu of the novel seems very much to capitalise on the still relatively new youth culture of the ’60s, and it also felt like it was the beginning of the Ziggy Stardust/Glam Rock kind of sensibility which this became a few years later. It mentions the Beatles once, and I got the impression that the protagonists were very much swinging youth, with the sense of naive optimism which had died by the time I was a teenager. It also reminded me that I was within a hairsbreadth of experiencing the ’60s myself, which have a kind of hinterlandisch quality to me of being almost my time but not quite, and also having a sort of stasis to them because just as time speeds up as you get older, so does the subjective passage of time initiate from a kind of standstill at the beginning of your consciousness.
There was a clear contrast between the girls and boys. The girls were involved in cooking and caring for the youngest child and had a sort of nurturing role to the boys, who were clearly the central characters and heroes or villains of the piece. Although this is plainly sexist, it’s also interesting because it may still be true to life in terms of how children from a small village in Southern England in the 1960s would in fact have behaved. Hence I was a little torn between the sexist depiction of a division of gender roles and the likelihood that it very probably reflected real life at the time quite accurately. It should also be said that much of that stereotypically feminine role does in fact appeal to me quite strongly as something to aspire to even though my social conditioning tried to push me the other way. In the end, regardless of gender, there isn’t actually anything wrong with trying to take care of a little boy who misses his mummy because he’s been kidnapped and is lost in space, or most of the other stuff the girls did. There was a kind of allegiance and attraction between one of the girls, Di, and the “yob” Tony, as the self-proclaimed captain is described on the blurb, which made me feel that she was looking for his protection, a common dynamic which often leads to being subjected to domestic abuse.
To be fair to Fisk, although he seems to have been largely oblivious of the questionable nature of the sexual politics he portrayed, he did provide a very non-stereotypical black male character in the person of Brylo and racism was made an issue in this story. Brylo is the nerd, and although this has been done many times since, for example by Terry Pratchett in his Johnny Maxwell series, this is an early example. It’s the black boy who is the square and the intellectual as opposed to all the hip characters around him, and he saves the day. There are many pejorative references to the colour of his skin by Tony. This moves the book several places up in the “right on” league for me, and also illustrates how, although the sexual revolution was ongoing at the time and there were some elements of feminism in wider society, many people were largely oblivious of their sexism, yet racism was front and centre, which considering Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech was made in 1968 and Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination that same year, was highly topical and in the public consciousness.
Other reviewers on Goodreads have said that the depiction of space travel is very dated and of its time. I don’t find it so. To me, it’s refreshing that the setting is “human’s only”. It would’ve been very easy to churn out a story where extraterrestrials abducted children and took them away in their flying saucer, but this particular UFO is emphatically not like that but a secret military spacecraft, and this fact made me wonder whether the story subconsciously influenced me into my current belief that although there are UFOs they are probably just secret military aircraft. It’s certainly a parsimonious and conservative belief which assumes the least, and in science the most boring explanations are likely to be the true ones. One thing which niggled me a little was the fact that there seemed to be normal Earth-type gravity all the time they were in space, and that the spacecraft retained a top and bottom consistent with the position it had landed on in the village. The nuclear engines were at the bottom of the craft and were still thus perceived all the time they were in space, and no explanation was given for this even though at the time, zero gee conditions were very familiar to the general public. Acceleration would have provided a mechanism for this to happen but would have meant the engines were always on and thrusting hard, which didn’t seem to be the case. The layout of the interior of the craft reminded me a little of the USS Enterprise, and of course at the time of writing ‘Star Trek’ would’ve been in its first season, but I think this is more because this is the general way the interiors of spacecraft were supposed to be at the time in other science fiction, particularly military SF. We kind of know that spaceships are supposed to be a bit like submarines in fiction, and as I’ve mentioned previously on this blog there’s even an episode of ‘Star Trek’ which is essentially a submarine story.
The all-pervading fear of nuclear holocaust, in this case linked to a proxy war in a thinly disguised Vietnam, is present in this novel, which dates it a little, though of course that particular threat may well come back and is, in my opinion, always present in any case while we still have nuclear weapons. The original idea behind the saucer was to rescue the rich and powerful from the conflagration if the balloon went up, to which the Flight Lieutenant took exception. This is quite a common idea and is also the central theme of Ben Elton’s ‘Stark’ three decades later, though in that case the threat was different. The nuclear rocket, perhaps surprisingly, is an entirely practical space drive which was being developed at the time. The principle behind it is that a relatively inert propellant is heated by a nuclear reactor before being ejected through a nozzle. All of this is profoundly hard science.
Several aspects of the setting are kept vague. The village seems to be somewhere in Southern England, although I’m not sure its location is more precisely specified. As to time, well, the Beatles seem to be together still, but they were probably not expected to split at the time of writing, and in fact maybe the idea of bands splitting at all was quite foreign at that point. There is, however, a moonbase and there are negotiations in progress for building the Channel Tunnel, showing the prevailing optimism about human space exploration at the time, which was three years before Apollo XI, and the seemingly endless wranglings over the Channel Tunnel which had been going on intermittently since, I think, before Victorian times. In reality this would place it in the mid-1980s of course.
Finally, three relatively trivial points. The font used for the cover is that “futuristic” one known as Westminster, designed for magnetic ink and computer character recognition and associated with computers in the ’60s and ’70s. At the time it would have looked extremely fresh. The general idea behind is is that each character uses a different quantity of ink, enabling the scanning device to differentiate between them, and it’s called Westminster because of being used to print the numbers at the bottom of cheques (National Westminster Bank). Also, this was the source from which I learned the Morse code for “H”, found in it in the word “EARTH”, being used as a call sign in the rescue effort. This was almost the last Morse code I learnt, which puts things in perspective a bit – I haven’t made any progress in Morse since 1974 apparently!
My third point is a mysteriously topical reference for 2019. At one point, one of the girls calls Tony “Captain Marvel”. This reference makes little sense to me because it seems that Captain Marvel was retired after Fawcett Comics, who allegèdly created the character, were sued because he was too similar to Superman in 1953. Marvel then used the name again in a comic book published in December 1967, which is a few months too late for this reference to make sense to readers as far as Fisk is concerned, but the earlier character is too old-fashioned to be contemporary for them. This has really puzzled me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2023
No! Nononono...
This was a DNF on page 30. There are many Nicholas Fisk books that I really enjoy, but this is most emphatically not one of them. Sure, as a sci-fi writer for children from the 1970's you have to read it as historical fiction to a certain extent. You have to make allowances for the comment on the title page "For boys of ten and older" because, of course, in the 70's no girls of ten or any other age could possibly want to read a sci-fi adventure. At least there were girls in it, even if their reason for being was to make tea and stare adoringly at the leader..
Yes, so, about that leader. We are introduced to the village children before the space ship descends onto the spall village green, from where a man emerges to kidnap the village children. As we are introduced to them, we are shown that Tony is a bully. A particularly nasty bully who everyone is afraid of. He is mean and abusive to other kids, racist in that he mocks the colour of another's skin, just pain evil in his enjoyment of baiting the elderly and defenceless in the village. You have to give a little bit of flexibility for the fact that bullying was largely regarded as ok in many earlier times. Thank goodness, not as much anymore.
On page 30 it becomes clear that the nasty, abusive bully is the leader for this book. It even calls him a yobbo on the back cover, but he still takes charge. I don't want to read this. It is nasty and unpleasant.
Please think carefully before giving it to any actual child. Although, if you are doing a PHD on bullying through the ages it might be highly useful to you.
This was a DNF on page 30. There are many Nicholas Fisk books that I really enjoy, but this is most emphatically not one of them. Sure, as a sci-fi writer for children from the 1970's you have to read it as historical fiction to a certain extent. You have to make allowances for the comment on the title page "For boys of ten and older" because, of course, in the 70's no girls of ten or any other age could possibly want to read a sci-fi adventure. At least there were girls in it, even if their reason for being was to make tea and stare adoringly at the leader..
Yes, so, about that leader. We are introduced to the village children before the space ship descends onto the spall village green, from where a man emerges to kidnap the village children. As we are introduced to them, we are shown that Tony is a bully. A particularly nasty bully who everyone is afraid of. He is mean and abusive to other kids, racist in that he mocks the colour of another's skin, just pain evil in his enjoyment of baiting the elderly and defenceless in the village. You have to give a little bit of flexibility for the fact that bullying was largely regarded as ok in many earlier times. Thank goodness, not as much anymore.
On page 30 it becomes clear that the nasty, abusive bully is the leader for this book. It even calls him a yobbo on the back cover, but he still takes charge. I don't want to read this. It is nasty and unpleasant.
Please think carefully before giving it to any actual child. Although, if you are doing a PHD on bullying through the ages it might be highly useful to you.
June 14, 2025
I read this book in c.1970, as a 9- or 10-year-old. I'd been a reluctant visitor to the local library, but this book changed everything; I had discovered science fiction, and virtually lived in the library for the next few years, devouring any SF I could find.
More than 50 years later, it poped into my mind one day (as books do), so, for nostalgia's sake, I ordered an ancient second hand copy from Amazon.
It really is a nasty little book, very badly written and full of political incorrectness that would make the modern reader gasp. Bullying, racism misogynism abound, but all this went over my head as a nine-year-old, and I didn't sustain any obvious lasting damage..
More than 50 years later, it poped into my mind one day (as books do), so, for nostalgia's sake, I ordered an ancient second hand copy from Amazon.
It really is a nasty little book, very badly written and full of political incorrectness that would make the modern reader gasp. Bullying, racism misogynism abound, but all this went over my head as a nine-year-old, and I didn't sustain any obvious lasting damage..
March 14, 2022
Sheeeeeeeeeesh! That was nerve-wracking. I read this in one sitting. It's an interesting mix for the '60s. The one person of color is the butt of rude racist jokes, but is also the hero of the story. So.... that's good, I think?
October 31, 2025
An interesting premise and an easy read. Most of the characters are likeable, although one is definitely racist, which goes with the time setting I suppose. Not as enjoyable as some of Fisks others works, but entertaining at least
October 14, 2024
1967 and it shows.
It's well done for what it is, if a tad too derivative of Lord of the Flies. I found the ending too pat, but enjoyed it more than not.
It's well done for what it is, if a tad too derivative of Lord of the Flies. I found the ending too pat, but enjoyed it more than not.
October 24, 2019
THE LISTENER & READER REVIEW
The Listener:
My partner had read this book as a pre-teen and decades later we both enjoyed it as adults.
It was a nice little piece of entertainment that had us chuckling in places. Easily read by my partner, with nothing complex in it that left you trying to figure out the plot. Nicely written by Fisk, who I thought portrayed children’s behaviours well, and showed the sensitivity of those being bullied by the bully (Tony), even when in outer space and not in their normal environment. Then when back on Earth life carrying on as normal for them like nothing extreme had ever happened. Nice to have heard a space adventure written through children's eyes for a change.
4/5
The Reader
Space Hostages was the first genuine 'Science-fiction' novel I read, and as an 11 year old found it interesting enough that it enticed me to read more Fisk, and then to branch out into the heavy-weights: from Herbert and Clarke, to Bear and Card - all as a teenager. Coming back to this slim book as a 40 year old gave me a chance to re-evaluate.
The novel was one of Fisk's earlier novels, contains no aliens, and is more like Lord of the Flies in space, but doesn't have the heavy-handedness of directing the narrative and themes towards adults. Instead we see a group a youths whisked off to intended safety by a rogue military lieutenant who fears for the destruction of earth during the cold war. The group has to try to work together when the adult dies and get themselves back to earth.
Fisk deserves some credit for featuring a black ("dark-skinned") youth as the main protagonist and most intelligent child, while featuring a bully who manages to not screw everything up and shows some useful cunning between being arrogant and vindictive. The book reads easily, and dialogue stays in character; there isn't much depth, but it is still an enjoyable story. Recommended.
4/5
The Listener:
My partner had read this book as a pre-teen and decades later we both enjoyed it as adults.
It was a nice little piece of entertainment that had us chuckling in places. Easily read by my partner, with nothing complex in it that left you trying to figure out the plot. Nicely written by Fisk, who I thought portrayed children’s behaviours well, and showed the sensitivity of those being bullied by the bully (Tony), even when in outer space and not in their normal environment. Then when back on Earth life carrying on as normal for them like nothing extreme had ever happened. Nice to have heard a space adventure written through children's eyes for a change.
4/5
The Reader
Space Hostages was the first genuine 'Science-fiction' novel I read, and as an 11 year old found it interesting enough that it enticed me to read more Fisk, and then to branch out into the heavy-weights: from Herbert and Clarke, to Bear and Card - all as a teenager. Coming back to this slim book as a 40 year old gave me a chance to re-evaluate.
The novel was one of Fisk's earlier novels, contains no aliens, and is more like Lord of the Flies in space, but doesn't have the heavy-handedness of directing the narrative and themes towards adults. Instead we see a group a youths whisked off to intended safety by a rogue military lieutenant who fears for the destruction of earth during the cold war. The group has to try to work together when the adult dies and get themselves back to earth.
Fisk deserves some credit for featuring a black ("dark-skinned") youth as the main protagonist and most intelligent child, while featuring a bully who manages to not screw everything up and shows some useful cunning between being arrogant and vindictive. The book reads easily, and dialogue stays in character; there isn't much depth, but it is still an enjoyable story. Recommended.
4/5
July 23, 2022
This is one of my most fondly remembered books. I first read it around 1973, when I was the same age as the two protagonists. Fifty years or so after that it feels a little dated. The most interesting thing is how short it is. Events that I recall being in the middle of a long read actually occur around chapter five. It has short, readable chapters, though.
Anyway, the story of nine children being abducted by a spaceship, and how they manage to get out of it and get back to Earth, is well craftyed. Most of the characters are very believable, and the racial conflict between the two protagonists, which can be read as the Apollonian/Dionysian conflict, as well as a somewhat simpler version of the conflict in Lord of the Flies is still relevant today.
This makes me think that the text may have been altered since the edition I read in the 70's. There was no doubt in my memory that Brylo, the Apollonian character, was black, but since he is described as being adopted and having a dark brown skin, he may very well be from the Indian subcontinent.
While some aspects are very much of their time, such as references to the Beatles, and the inane pop lyrics that are featured in the story (reminding of the ones from The Day of the Triffids), these can be excused because the children's characters are so well drawn.
Anyway, the story of nine children being abducted by a spaceship, and how they manage to get out of it and get back to Earth, is well craftyed. Most of the characters are very believable, and the racial conflict between the two protagonists, which can be read as the Apollonian/Dionysian conflict, as well as a somewhat simpler version of the conflict in Lord of the Flies is still relevant today.
This makes me think that the text may have been altered since the edition I read in the 70's. There was no doubt in my memory that Brylo, the Apollonian character, was black, but since he is described as being adopted and having a dark brown skin, he may very well be from the Indian subcontinent.
While some aspects are very much of their time, such as references to the Beatles, and the inane pop lyrics that are featured in the story (reminding of the ones from The Day of the Triffids), these can be excused because the children's characters are so well drawn.
January 17, 2018
Well I stumbled across another part of my reading history yesterday. Working at the book shop I discovered this title- now along with Star Ka'at this is counted as one of the first books I read on my own - I would not say that it the first book I chose no that honour goes to Rendezvous with Rama - no from the reading classes this was one of the titles that appealed to me and hence I read it.
The book is dated, but interesting how social interactions are reflective of the era it was written in and yet some aspects of it still ring true now - hints of Lord of the flies if you ask me. Either way I enjoyed this book simply because it was something I remember reading many (many) years ago and though I would never see again.
The book is dated, but interesting how social interactions are reflective of the era it was written in and yet some aspects of it still ring true now - hints of Lord of the flies if you ask me. Either way I enjoyed this book simply because it was something I remember reading many (many) years ago and though I would never see again.
February 22, 2014
I still remember the plot and key scenes from this some four decades after reading it. As with Trillions, it's a brilliant children's sci-fi novel. Very much of its time, I think. When it was originally published we'd not yet landed on the moon, and the space race was at its height. UFOs and alien invasion movies had been a feature of cinema for over a decade. And we didn't trust the government. Sound familiar? A great children's adventure story.
July 29, 2016
2.5 stars
This book was okay, but it never really got off the ground. The ending definitely needed some work as well.
Update:
I keep forgetting what this book was about so for my own sake: British kids get kidnapped, psychotic bully becomes captain.
This book was okay, but it never really got off the ground. The ending definitely needed some work as well.
Update:
I keep forgetting what this book was about so for my own sake: British kids get kidnapped, psychotic bully becomes captain.
June 14, 2007
Creepy, but excellent. I reread this recently and it definitely stands up to reading as an adult - the overtones of the cold war and the tensions between the children are so well done.
June 28, 2016
Very enjoyable and gripping.
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