Sumana’s kindly…

Sumana's kindly forwarded me a few of the comments she's found on "Jump Space" -- very fun!

"'Jump Space', which I purely love. It's a head-on collision between the Heinlein juvenile adventure stories I adored as a kid - the Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Space Family Stones - and a thoroughly 21st century set of attitudes towards love, sex, dating one's professor, marriage, faithfulness, jealousy, prostitution, slavery and even raising children (my main preoccupation these days and one that Heinlein tended to rather idealize...) "

-- mizchalmers

"Mary Anne Mohanrajs 'Jump Space' has some of the most fully realized relationships that Ive seen in science fiction. The plot is a family drama, really, set against a science fiction background. Like Welcome to the Federation, which I also blogged about, I dont think this story had to be science fiction. I could see it rewritten as a story of plain old Earthbound foreign travel. Its really about the strains the main character places on her children and polyamorous marriage when she finds a new lover. Also like in Welcome to the Federation, the storys genre emphasizes the theme of strangeness (foreigners arent just foreigntheyre alien)." (There's quite a bit more review at the link below.)

-- Erica Naone

And then there's this interesting comment on a scene in the book:

"[I] agree wholeheartedly with Sumana that yes, this short vignette does offer one particularly good example of one right way for a student to approach a teacher...."

With a long thread discussing the issue of asking out your professor, and a follow-up on shyness / initiating interaction, etc.

For the record, I actually do think what Sarita does puts her professor in an ethical bind, and strictly speaking, Joshua should have just said no and walked away. That's what I'd expect myself or Kevin to do, no matter how cute (or confident) the student was. But I never claimed my characters were always perfectly ethical all the time. Sometimes we love them because they're flawed, no? And as you can see in the story, Sarita's willingness to cut corners at this point hints at the bigger problem she creates later on... In fact, in some sense, that's what the story is all about -- her character, and her family's response to it.

I really do have to get back to that sequel to "Jump Space." Maybe tomorrow. Back to slogging through the e-mail now...