Review: Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett (1992)

Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
Publication: HarperCollins (2006), Paperback, 224 pages / ISBN 0552139262
Genre: Sci-Fi, YA
Rating:
Find @ Amazon or IndieBound
First sentence: Johnny bit his lip and concentrated.

This was a slightly disappointing book, mostly in that it’s nowhere nearly as elegant as Nation. It’s a decent read, with an interesting plot, but it seemed heavy-handed and out of touch with modern teenage readers. Seeing that it was originally written in the early 1990′s, that’s not entirely surprising.

Summary from Amazon:

Johnny Maxwell, 12, thinks he’s a loser. People don’t seem to notice him, his parents are threatening to split up, and he’s not very good at the shoot-up-the-bad-guys computer games that he and his friends are always playing. But after his hacker buddy, Wobbler, gives him an illegal copy of Only You Can Save Mankind, strange things happen. The captain of the alien fleet that Johnny is supposed to shoot up surrenders to him–unheard of in a computer game–and soon after that all of the aliens from all copies of the game have vanished. Players looking for someone to shoot at sail through light years of empty space and return the game to the store, demanding their money back. Johnny also discovers that he is able to enter the alien ship in dreams and grows convinced that the aliens are somehow real, and are actually dying when human players shoot at them. And soon the day arrives when the humans can resume their shooting.

Continue on under the jump to read the rest of my review!

Like Nation, it’s not the same sort of humor as found in the Discworld books, but there are hints of the typical Terry Pratchettian jokes. One character, for instance, can pronounce brackets as well as Words with Capitals. Small moments like those were quite amusing, plus the absurdity of the whole set up helped lighten things up.

However, some very heavy issues are dealt with in Only You Can Save Mankind, and I do think they’re important ones for kids to think about: war, xenophobia, and even a bit about government. I really liked that Johnny thought about these things himself, and came to his own conclusions. It didn’t feel like Pterry was preaching, just that the situation was there and things could be learned from it, and here’s what one character learned.

I also liked Johnny’s progress from mindless, ignoring-anything-that-makes-me-think to a more-complete and willing to see everything person. It showed character growth, which I love enormously.

I said before that I didn’t think Only You Can Save Mankind was necesarily in touch with a modern teen, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t interest them. It’s set during the 1991 Gulf War, which I don’t think teens know a lot about, but it’s vague enough that it could be set during any war after the advent of television and computers, really. It’s not even the problem of out of date technology– the newer version of the book (revised in 2006, I think) has fixed some of those problems, as well as updated the slang. It’s more that it just feels like a book written for a different generation of kids, even with the updates in place. It’s hard to describe, as you can no doubt tell, but that’s how I feel.

On the other hand, Pterry kinda explains how the book was written a while ago and things are different now in the introduction to the book– so maybe he knows it, too.

Only You Can Save Mankind is part of a trilogy, and since I already have the third book I might as well get the second one and read them both. Maybe then I’d appreciate this one more.

Other reviews: Children’s Books | Booklore | Harriet Klausner’s Review Archive