Sky Horizon [Hardcover]

... and the title has nothing to do with the book. It's not labelled YA in libraries, nor being sold as a teenagers' book, but it should be - there's no way that these characters or this plot would hold an adult novel together. The plot is a standard high school coming-of-age thing, with a teenager new to his town and school trying to fit in. High school rivalry between the jocks and the nerds. The teenagers are all way smarter than the adults, as is so often the case in young adult novels. Except for one wise history teacher, from whom we get all kinds of philosophical discussions of the sort that high schoolers and college freshbeings think are novel and deep.

The long and short of the story is pretty short: first contact with aliens, who turn out to be snobby toward humans and behave stupidly. As a "reward" for rescuing the stranded alien, an entire high school is beamed to another planet. End of story. Yes, that really is the whole story. All the rest is teenage bickering and high school angst.

Obviously there are intended sequels. Equally obvious to me is that very few people would need to bother with this volume of it as a stand-alone book, all 120 pages of it at the price of a full-size novel; if you're buying it, you're buying it as a collector's item, since it's a limited edition. And as such, I can see where it would be an OK gift for a teenager who's just getting into science fiction. It could be the start of a collection of hardcover science fiction. For someone who's not a collector, however, I'd suggest waiting until after all the volumes, however many that may be, are published and then reprinted as one paperback collection, and then read the whole thing at once.

In short: possibly a good gift for a teenager who wants to collect science fiction books; otherwise, only worth a paperback.

David Brin is one of my favorite writers, one of the few I buy in hardback. So even though this is a Young Adult book, I decided to read it, remembering fondly a lot of Heinlein juveniles and similar classics that turned me on both to SF and to many science concepts. This book will do neither.
There are no interesting ideas in the book. The teen-aged characters have some appeal as they struggle with the typical problems of growing up, but they are too cliched, and the main character has had too many "adventures" as a military brat to be credible. The story is thin.
The cleverest part of the story (which I would not spoil the book by revealing if the professional reviews had not already done it) is the fact that the aliens turn out to be neither menacing nor benevolent but rude.
Brin's afterword says this story has been circulating as a draft since the 1980s. The fact that there seemed to be no great clamor to publish it sooner should have been a warning to him....

Dave Brin's SKY HORIZON clocks in at a mere one hundred and twenty-one pages, but from page one, you realize it's going to be a long haul.

Brin's prose is stiff, not bad so much as mechanically good: he seems to be trying desperately to earn an A from his English teacher. He inserts his efforts at high style into the text so overtly that they break the Fourth Wall. And then he helpfully educates his ignorant, young readers with a jackhammer onslaught of moralisms.

Look, I appreciate books with ethical perspective, but the characters' actions should speak for them. Brin's sermons are condescending rather than inspiring. Since when do teenagers sit around pontificating about ethical abstracts?

Brin's portrayal of teenagers is utterly patronizing. Either they're uptight do-gooders who pointedly admonish the reading audience to Be More Responsible, or they're fantastical idiots who are nevertheless provoked into thoughtful debates through the noble ministrations of their history teacher, Mr. Clements. (Young readers, can you say "authorial substitute"?)

Admittedly, Brin manages to make some valid philosophical points (fear of propaganda constitutes its own propaganda). And he blessedly avoids the frothing-at-the-mouth politics which dominate contemporary sci-fi.

But SKY HORIZON is one of those Humanistic books which exalt the human spirit without ever saying anything truly insightful about it. Mr. Brin clearly believes himself intellectually and ethically superior to his colleagues. The book is fraught with so many smug dismissals of "dumb sci-fi movie clichés" that you want to scream in the author's face, "Yes, we admit it, already! Lowbrow Hollywood directors are stealing your well-deserved fame! NOW MOVE ON!"

Paradoxically, Brin becomes more predictable the harder he strains to avoid cliché. He promises that his aliens are "nothing like the movies", and then he gives us...little grey men with glowing eyes.

You want to talk about clichés? Let's talk about children's lit clichés: our protagonist is a good-hearted military brat who is forced to move from school to school without ever forming any worthwhile friendships (but, conveniently, his Air Force dad sticks in California long enough for the plot to unfold). He's infatuated with an older girl whose dewy-eyed attentions he cannot possibly attract. Of course, she's dating the rich jock whom the protagonist despises. The narrative hints overwhelmingly that he should pay more attention to a younger female friend, who is not conventionally attractive but is more suited to his emotional temperament. The readymade characters alone engender déjà vu from about fifteen different children's series. They all struggle with pressing emotional concerns - not because Brin has any passion for these people, but because he's intentionally attempting to craft well-rounded characters.

Or perhaps I should say well-rounded straw men: most amount to convenient targets for Brin's ongoing ethical crusade. Coming from the pen of a self-proclaimed intellectual, many are surprisingly stereotypical - not to mention surprisingly functional. Several stock characters (the Rastafarian skater dude, the wimpy computer nerd) exist solely to further exactly one plot point and thereafter vanish. When one character falls from a school building, a passing circus performer catches her, then walks away without a word. He never reappears. Let me repeat that plot point for emphasis: /randomly passing circus performer./ This is not a joke.

The kids' dialogue is reasonably good, although they become entirely too articulate when Brin is trying to insinuate philosophical truth. But even the better lines are corrupted with that uncomfortable sense of an old guy trying to imitate teen lingo. Yo, give me a break, dude!

As a side note, Scott Hampton's illustrations are scratchy and drab with irregular human faces. All significant details are masked in monochromatic shadow. To think you could potentially pay one hundred and fifty dollars for the signed edition!

SKY HORIZON isn't a book for young people, nor is it a book for adults who remember what it was like to be young. It's a book for old people who think they know what's good for young people.

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