Eye to Eye

by Catherine Jinks

While scavenging alone in the desert wilderness, Jansi stumbles across the remains of a damaged star ship which contains a computer capable of thought, expression, and friendship.

Genres: Science Fiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Catherine Jinks is the Australian author of more than thirty books for all ages. She has garnered many awards, including the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award(three times), the Victorian Premier’s Award, the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction, the Australian Ibby Award, and the Davitt Award for Crime Fiction. Her work has been published in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Thailand.

Catherine was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1963. She grew up in Papua New Guinea, where her father worked as a patrol officer. Her high-school years were spent in Sydney, NSW; in 2006, her alma mater, Ku-ring-gai High School, named its library after her.

From 1982 to 1986, Catherine studied at the University of Sydney, graduating with an honours degree in medieval history. She then worked on Westpac Banking Corporation’s staff magazine for approximately seven years. In 1992 she married Peter Dockrill, a Canadian journalist; in 1993 she and her husband left Australia for a brief spell in Nova Scotia, where she began to write full time. They returned to Australia in 1994, and Catherine gave birth to her daughter Hannah in 1997. Since 1998, she and her family have been living in Leura, NSW.

She has two brothers, and two pet rats. Like most people in Leura, she has become a slave to her garden, but not to the extent that she’ll buy rooting powder.

Catherine has been writing books since she was eight years old. She doesn’t expect to stop writing them any time soon.

Author photo: Catherine Jinks in front of 'Conceptual Networks', by artist Paul du Moulin.
Photo by Paul du Moulin

Reviews

[Ellin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing (and side splittingly funny) story about the friendship between a primitive desert boy and a super intelligent super computer that needs help to fix itself so it can beam a distress signal back home.

Told from the alternating point of view of the boy (Jansi) and the computer (PIM) this is one of those books that I could just keep on re-reading forever. Watching them learning how to communicate with each other is equal parts amusing and touching and the ending folds itself up very neatly. A very satisfying read.

[Tanu · Rating 5 out of 5]

3.5. Nostalgia reread from childhood. I won’t review this one - don’t have much to say about it except that it’s a nice enough children’s/middle grade book. And that the narrator did well. Stock standard SF, nothing groundbreaking, but good.

[Wide Eyes, Big Ears! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young Jansi is unfamiliar with advanced technology, so when an automated space ship captures him in the hope he can make necessary repairs, he feels utterly out of his depth, imagining his god is angry with him. The story follows the growing relationship between ship and boy. The novel won the 1998 CBCA Children’s Book of the Year Award: Older Readers and the 1997 Aurelius Award for Best Young Adult Novel. I found the premise and the story interesting.

[BookswithLydscl | · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* solid ya science fiction. Nothing ground breaking but a enjoyable story.

[Laraine Anne Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jansi, scavenging in the desert, stumbles across a Stelcorp star ship embedded in the sand. The ship’s nickname is PIM and it needs Jansi’s help to repair itself. But Jansi has never encountered a star ship before, much less one capable of thinking and talking, and he takes the voice for that of Shaklat, the god of his people, and the star ship for Shaklat’s temple. PIM and Jansi forge an unlikely friendship and when PIM is threatened with destruction by Stelcorp they need all their cunning to stop this happening.
Some people might consider this book to be science fiction (because it features space ships) but it’s probably more accurate to describe it as science fantasy because it’s definitely in the realms of fantasy that humans will ever create a sentient machine of any type, never mind a machine as complex as a space ship.

Catherine Jinks abandons the stark spareness of the writing style used in the Pagan books, which abound with incomplete sentences, while still writing succinctly. I love the way each scene is revealed to the reader first through Jansi’s eyes and then through PIM’s. Jinks is the first writer to use present tense without unsettling me. It worked beautifully in the Pagan books and it works just as well here.

I couldn’t put this book down and was reading well after I should have switched off the light and gone to sleep.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine an intergalactic government for which human life is sacrosanct, manned space ships that travel across multiple solar systems and a small orphaned boy called Jansi. These are the factors that make up the world of RS4T-PIM, the artificial intelligence component of the starship that the primitive, desert-dwelling scavsnger Jansi has found himself trapped in.
But this is more than a story of friendship. having just finished reading the book for the second time I am left wonder what it is about to describe this book as "highly original" is both an understatement and as close to the truth as I may get. It is a profound story of trickery, trust and survival. It raises far more questions than it answers and brings together two completely juxtaposed "individuals" (for want of a better word) forming a primal bond that could change the state of intergalactic affairs.

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unusual, and interesting. I found the other planet's world engaging, and Jansi was a likeable character, as was the computer-ship, PIM. The fact that PIM ended up being/becoming a kind of doppelganger of Jansi was interesting - and explains the cover of his face, one part covered in computer chip stuff. Sensitive and thoughtful.

[Shawn Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a strangely moving story, with a good deal of suspense/mystery, and an interesting premise. For a young teen, just exploring sci-fi, it's a good beginning. This won an award for best Australian Children's book, and I can see why it won an award. I liked it a lot.