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Rocket Girls #1
Rocket Girls
Yukari Morita is a high school girl on a quest to find her missing father. While searching for him on the Solomon Islands, she receives the offer of a lifetime—she'll get the help she needs to find her father, and all she need do in return is become the world's youngest, lightest astronaut. Yukari and her teen friends, all petite, are the perfect crew and cargo for the Solomon Space Association's launches, or will be once they complete their rigorous and sometimes dangerous training.
214 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1995
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February 9, 2017
Uma curiosa mistura de Hard SF com ficção YA, apesar do lado Young Adult ser o que mais pesa. Neste romance, uma adolescente japonesa que aproveita as férias escolares para ir às ilhas Salomão em busca de um pai que abandonou a sua mãe na viagem de núpcias, vê-se envolvida num projecto experimental japonês para colocar um astronauta em órbita. Um projecto que decorre nas ilhas um pouco à revelia das estruturas rígidas das agências espaciais tradicionais, e que se encontra em perigo. Os sucessivos insucessos com os seus foguetões mais avançados levaram o governo japonês a ameaçar cortar o financiamento de que dependem. A solução está em lançar astronautas com foguetões menos potentes, e também menos propensos a explodir no lançamento. Motores menos potentes implicam menores cargas de lançamento, e é aqui que a jovem adolescente entra. As suas proporções diminutas e baixo peso tornam-a a candidata perfeita para astronauta desta missão japonesa.
O resto, como se diz, é história, com as peripécias de uma jovem que até nem quer ser astronauta mas pensa que é a forma de obrigar o pai, transformado em chefe de tribo nativa das ilhas Salomão, a regressar ao Japão, as agruras do treino, a amizade com a sua meia-irmã, que também se torna candidata a astronauta, e uma missão inicial em que após um lançamento bem sucedido para a órbita terrestre, tudo corre mal e só uma missão pilotada pela irmã a conseguirá salvar. Pelo meio, ainda visita a estação espacial MIR, com consequências funestas para a base orbital.
Leitura leve e divertida, com alguns toque de hard sf na discussão de tecnologias espaciais, mas que é essencialmente um romance despretensioso de YA.
O resto, como se diz, é história, com as peripécias de uma jovem que até nem quer ser astronauta mas pensa que é a forma de obrigar o pai, transformado em chefe de tribo nativa das ilhas Salomão, a regressar ao Japão, as agruras do treino, a amizade com a sua meia-irmã, que também se torna candidata a astronauta, e uma missão inicial em que após um lançamento bem sucedido para a órbita terrestre, tudo corre mal e só uma missão pilotada pela irmã a conseguirá salvar. Pelo meio, ainda visita a estação espacial MIR, com consequências funestas para a base orbital.
Leitura leve e divertida, com alguns toque de hard sf na discussão de tecnologias espaciais, mas que é essencialmente um romance despretensioso de YA.
June 23, 2014
Trying to give a brief analysis on Rocket Girls is simultaneously extremely simple to outline, but also surprisingly complex.
On the one hand its an amalgamation of various tropes and ideas any avid watcher of anime can instantly pick out, from the exaggerated caricatures of people to the hefty dose of zaniness which is thrown into them mix. It’s also lightly written, skipping a lot of the real meat you would expect to find on a on a book of its length and keeping details to a bare minimum.
On the other however, Nojiri wrote it with clear self awareness of just how the book was going to be seen and visibly wrote many sections to appeal to a young adult audience. What’s more is that many ideas present involving space travel were well ahead of their time, and for the most part the science is unexpectedly accurate and in-depth.
Set during an undisclosed year in the mid 1990s, Japan’s Solomon Space Agency is suffering setback after setback as its various experimental rockets continue to fail, exploding in the air or on the platform. Despite their every effort, the programme’s continued technical failings will soon mean doom for the SSA should they fail to make a successful manned launch and return to earth within the next few months. With this mounting pressure and the borderline insane measures of Director Nasuda to lighten the next rocket’s payload, the nerve of the SSA’s chosen pilot finally snaps and he flees the base. Fortunately for them, the short chase which ensues leads them to an unlikely replacement candidate: Yukari Morita, a girl looking for her missing father and willing to go to any lengths to find him.
So yeah, anime exaggerated plot with a younger-than-they-should-be-in-this-profession protagonist, surrounding a core of mostly realistic science. It’s appealing to a very specific audience here, but the book itself is actually fairly good despite that fact. It’s hardly Clarke or Asimov levels of work, yet when you consider its audience and the approaches to younger audiences writing in this era, it’s rather intelligent. Many of the works attempting to promote a message or explore themes through young adult novels did so through a veil of a specific genre and with characters belonging to the audience’s age group, often disguising their true intention.
A famous example from this era would be the Animorphs saga. Despite the initial premise being human teens turning into animals to fight aliens, the series presented a surprisingly graphic account of guerrilla warfare, morality and science fiction tropes from more cerebral novels. Here we have the same thing, while there is plenty of action, zaniness, and the SSA’s colourful ensemble of staff pulls acts which would never fly in a real agency, it’s backed by careful research. Much of Yukari’s training is gone over detail by detail from the knowledge to physical trials, the technical details such as fuel and the use of the heat shield are explained in more depth than would be expected, and the technical systems for the rocket are outlined.
It’s hardly a blow-by-blow analysis, but it’s more than enough to give a starting point and frames the information in a story to help get people interested at a younger age. Even when it does focus upon these aspects, there is enough self awareness shown through humour or every-man comments to the technology which prevents it from sounding overly technical or preachy. Notably with Yukari’s reaction to her biosuit, which pokes fun at its design even as it predicts something which would be developed over ten years after the book’s publication.
The characters and figures seen in the book are hardly complex, often veering into one caricature or another, but what they do help represent in their cheerfulness and determination is a sense of optimism. Almost everything they are trying are ideas untested in the field but backed by prior knowledge, using new ideas and methods to try and overcome the logistical and technical problems holding them back. While this might sound generic, it’s emulating the basic themes of an age of discovery and exploration with the SSA pushing to break new boundaries. It helps to enhance the story with a sense of energy and enthusiasm, and the odd moments of silliness come across as if the book was trying to tap into the Golden Age of science fiction. That first time authors really pushed for new ideas and concepts involving the stars, space travel and scientific journeys.
This said, there are a few definite times the book pushes the humour far too hard to the point where it is forcing contrived events and seems to abandon much of the science. Sadly this mostly takes place during the latter half of the initial space flight, and while the story does reflect upon the impact of their accomplishment, certain events are far too easily brushed over or outright ignored. Really, where the module lands is almost enough to cause a thinking reader to give up there and then.
While the characters do work for the story, there are times when their apparent lack of depth does harm the tale. It can sometimes be hard to take it seriously when the subject of death or failure is seemingly brushed under the rug; and there are only a few key points in which seem truly meaningful or maturely handled. Easily the worst of all these are the Solomon Islands’ natives. Japan is not exactly known for its racial sensitivity, and while far from the worst example in the last few decades, the almost stereotypical presentation of the dark skinned tribe can severely undermine the story. This might not have been so bad were it not for the fact one of the major supporting characters in the book is one of these natives.
Furthermore, while it’s hard to criticise the lack of detail and odd approach to certain subjects thanks to the language and cultural barrier, the book suffers from a bizarre plot structure. Along with effectively shooting down a potentially major plot thread from the outset, many points take some very strange turns, and the middle act is far more episodic than the story initially suggests. Often focusing upon one issue at a time in isolated events rather than naturally flowing from one act to the next.
At the end of the day, Rocket Girls will largely appeal to certain audiences of a certain age but it’s far from bad. For all its flaws it never fails to be entertaining, and the very brief chapter structure, style and pacing make it easy to breeze through. It’s fun enough to hold your attention, and i’ll even admit it was enough for me to look up the next book, but there’s no denying Planetes is a better option for this sort of story. Give it a look if you truly want, but read a few extracts on Amazon first.
On the one hand its an amalgamation of various tropes and ideas any avid watcher of anime can instantly pick out, from the exaggerated caricatures of people to the hefty dose of zaniness which is thrown into them mix. It’s also lightly written, skipping a lot of the real meat you would expect to find on a on a book of its length and keeping details to a bare minimum.
On the other however, Nojiri wrote it with clear self awareness of just how the book was going to be seen and visibly wrote many sections to appeal to a young adult audience. What’s more is that many ideas present involving space travel were well ahead of their time, and for the most part the science is unexpectedly accurate and in-depth.
Set during an undisclosed year in the mid 1990s, Japan’s Solomon Space Agency is suffering setback after setback as its various experimental rockets continue to fail, exploding in the air or on the platform. Despite their every effort, the programme’s continued technical failings will soon mean doom for the SSA should they fail to make a successful manned launch and return to earth within the next few months. With this mounting pressure and the borderline insane measures of Director Nasuda to lighten the next rocket’s payload, the nerve of the SSA’s chosen pilot finally snaps and he flees the base. Fortunately for them, the short chase which ensues leads them to an unlikely replacement candidate: Yukari Morita, a girl looking for her missing father and willing to go to any lengths to find him.
So yeah, anime exaggerated plot with a younger-than-they-should-be-in-this-profession protagonist, surrounding a core of mostly realistic science. It’s appealing to a very specific audience here, but the book itself is actually fairly good despite that fact. It’s hardly Clarke or Asimov levels of work, yet when you consider its audience and the approaches to younger audiences writing in this era, it’s rather intelligent. Many of the works attempting to promote a message or explore themes through young adult novels did so through a veil of a specific genre and with characters belonging to the audience’s age group, often disguising their true intention.
A famous example from this era would be the Animorphs saga. Despite the initial premise being human teens turning into animals to fight aliens, the series presented a surprisingly graphic account of guerrilla warfare, morality and science fiction tropes from more cerebral novels. Here we have the same thing, while there is plenty of action, zaniness, and the SSA’s colourful ensemble of staff pulls acts which would never fly in a real agency, it’s backed by careful research. Much of Yukari’s training is gone over detail by detail from the knowledge to physical trials, the technical details such as fuel and the use of the heat shield are explained in more depth than would be expected, and the technical systems for the rocket are outlined.
It’s hardly a blow-by-blow analysis, but it’s more than enough to give a starting point and frames the information in a story to help get people interested at a younger age. Even when it does focus upon these aspects, there is enough self awareness shown through humour or every-man comments to the technology which prevents it from sounding overly technical or preachy. Notably with Yukari’s reaction to her biosuit, which pokes fun at its design even as it predicts something which would be developed over ten years after the book’s publication.
The characters and figures seen in the book are hardly complex, often veering into one caricature or another, but what they do help represent in their cheerfulness and determination is a sense of optimism. Almost everything they are trying are ideas untested in the field but backed by prior knowledge, using new ideas and methods to try and overcome the logistical and technical problems holding them back. While this might sound generic, it’s emulating the basic themes of an age of discovery and exploration with the SSA pushing to break new boundaries. It helps to enhance the story with a sense of energy and enthusiasm, and the odd moments of silliness come across as if the book was trying to tap into the Golden Age of science fiction. That first time authors really pushed for new ideas and concepts involving the stars, space travel and scientific journeys.
This said, there are a few definite times the book pushes the humour far too hard to the point where it is forcing contrived events and seems to abandon much of the science. Sadly this mostly takes place during the latter half of the initial space flight, and while the story does reflect upon the impact of their accomplishment, certain events are far too easily brushed over or outright ignored. Really, where the module lands is almost enough to cause a thinking reader to give up there and then.
While the characters do work for the story, there are times when their apparent lack of depth does harm the tale. It can sometimes be hard to take it seriously when the subject of death or failure is seemingly brushed under the rug; and there are only a few key points in which seem truly meaningful or maturely handled. Easily the worst of all these are the Solomon Islands’ natives. Japan is not exactly known for its racial sensitivity, and while far from the worst example in the last few decades, the almost stereotypical presentation of the dark skinned tribe can severely undermine the story. This might not have been so bad were it not for the fact one of the major supporting characters in the book is one of these natives.
Furthermore, while it’s hard to criticise the lack of detail and odd approach to certain subjects thanks to the language and cultural barrier, the book suffers from a bizarre plot structure. Along with effectively shooting down a potentially major plot thread from the outset, many points take some very strange turns, and the middle act is far more episodic than the story initially suggests. Often focusing upon one issue at a time in isolated events rather than naturally flowing from one act to the next.
At the end of the day, Rocket Girls will largely appeal to certain audiences of a certain age but it’s far from bad. For all its flaws it never fails to be entertaining, and the very brief chapter structure, style and pacing make it easy to breeze through. It’s fun enough to hold your attention, and i’ll even admit it was enough for me to look up the next book, but there’s no denying Planetes is a better option for this sort of story. Give it a look if you truly want, but read a few extracts on Amazon first.
July 15, 2022
Rocket Girls is a Japanese young adult science fiction novel that had a second life as an anime TV series. It pays some homage to the American and Russian space programs, though some of the plotting and details require considerable suspension of disbelief. Here’s the setup: Japanese teenager Yukari travels to the Solomon Islands looking for her father who abandoned the family years before. She finds him hiding out as a village chief, but she and her half sister are shanghaied by a Japanese company that needs a healthy person weighing under 48 kilograms to test their space capsule and their underpowered unreliable rocket. Humor is over the top and it reads like the anime it eventually became. 3.5 stars.
September 4, 2023
This was the first Japanese novel I read that felt like reading an anime. Some of the odd-ball things that you can do in manga go over a bit more strangely in written form - like what becomes of Yukari's father. The blatant sexism was also much more apparent in the written text than on screen. The story was fun, though, and the space scenes held onto the wonder of being in space while adding a bit of hard sci-fi elements.
May 30, 2017
It wasn't the best book I've read. It was unexciting and nothing really happened. I won't be reading the other books in the series.
January 20, 2018
Gloriously weird
March 5, 2018
Could not stop reading, even though it wasn’t all that remarkable of a story or writing.
February 18, 2023
Full Review Below:
http://oasfis.org/Event%20Horizon%20A...
http://oasfis.org/Event%20Horizon%20A...
October 5, 2010
The Solomon Space Agency, a semi-private enterprise trying to put a man in orbit, has a problem: their newest rocket design just doesn't work. It keeps exploding on the launchpad. With their backers threatening to cut funding, Director Nasuda decides upon a desperate course -- they'll switch back to an older, more reliable model. The only problem is, the old rocket doesn't have enough payload capacity. By stripping down the capsule to bare essentials and putting their astronaut on a severe diet, they should be able to get into orbit by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, astronaut Yasakawa isn't too keen on this plan -- he thinks 110 pounds is a little to thin. But the SSA has a stroke of luck when they stumble upon young Yukari Morita, a Japanese school girl who came to the Solomons to look for her dad, who went missing many years before on his honeymoon. Twisting her arm, Nasuda soon has Yakari in astronaut training.
Sound silly? It is. Yukari is the only sane person in the entire book -- rocket scientists, physicians, even cosmonauts, behave like boobs. Nor is it simply that this is a YA novel where the kids are smart and adults idiots, because when SSA recruits a second teenage astronaut, she proves just as spacey as everyone else. I had a hard time with the humor at first, but that changed around page 40 when Yukari had her first class with Flight Director Kinoshita, who couldn't believe that a 14 year old girl didn't know integral calculus and reverse Polish notation.
"It doesn't have an equals button."
"Of course it doesn't!" He looked like he might burst a vein. "Haven't you heard of reverse Polish notation?"
Yukari brought her hand down on her desk with a bang. "Obviously not!"
"Then I'm going to spend the next five minutes drilling it into your head. When I'm finished, you'll never want to touch a normal calculator again."
I don't know why, but that scene flipped a switch in my head and suddenly I got the humor. When the next scene came and the chief of security put Yukari into a live-fire exercise on her first day of survival training, I had no problem with the absurdity.
Yet despite all that, the book is hard-SF -- Nojiri strains plausibility occassionally, but the technology is mostly stuff that exists, only better. The biggest stretch (so to speak) is the skin-tight spacesuit SSA designs for Yukari. It's only intended for use in the capsule, but it does work in vacuum provided the wearer is shaded from the sun. Nojiri notes in his afterword that when he originally wrote the book in '95, he considered the suit to be impossible tech, but MIT is conducting research into similar technology.
Overall the book reads like an old fashioned Heinlein juvenile, except Yukari could kick Podkayne's ass back to Mars.
Unfortunately, astronaut Yasakawa isn't too keen on this plan -- he thinks 110 pounds is a little to thin. But the SSA has a stroke of luck when they stumble upon young Yukari Morita, a Japanese school girl who came to the Solomons to look for her dad, who went missing many years before on his honeymoon. Twisting her arm, Nasuda soon has Yakari in astronaut training.
Sound silly? It is. Yukari is the only sane person in the entire book -- rocket scientists, physicians, even cosmonauts, behave like boobs. Nor is it simply that this is a YA novel where the kids are smart and adults idiots, because when SSA recruits a second teenage astronaut, she proves just as spacey as everyone else. I had a hard time with the humor at first, but that changed around page 40 when Yukari had her first class with Flight Director Kinoshita, who couldn't believe that a 14 year old girl didn't know integral calculus and reverse Polish notation.
"It doesn't have an equals button."
"Of course it doesn't!" He looked like he might burst a vein. "Haven't you heard of reverse Polish notation?"
Yukari brought her hand down on her desk with a bang. "Obviously not!"
"Then I'm going to spend the next five minutes drilling it into your head. When I'm finished, you'll never want to touch a normal calculator again."
I don't know why, but that scene flipped a switch in my head and suddenly I got the humor. When the next scene came and the chief of security put Yukari into a live-fire exercise on her first day of survival training, I had no problem with the absurdity.
Yet despite all that, the book is hard-SF -- Nojiri strains plausibility occassionally, but the technology is mostly stuff that exists, only better. The biggest stretch (so to speak) is the skin-tight spacesuit SSA designs for Yukari. It's only intended for use in the capsule, but it does work in vacuum provided the wearer is shaded from the sun. Nojiri notes in his afterword that when he originally wrote the book in '95, he considered the suit to be impossible tech, but MIT is conducting research into similar technology.
Overall the book reads like an old fashioned Heinlein juvenile, except Yukari could kick Podkayne's ass back to Mars.
April 7, 2011
Después del mal sabor de boca que me dejó 100 Cupboards opté por leer ahora algo de ciencia ficción, de ahí que agarré Rocket Girls, pequeño libro (200+ páginas) de Housuke Nojiri el cual me enteré que fué adaptado en un anime.
Se trata de una organización, auspiciada por el gobierno japones que está al borde del deadline para poder enviar un cohete tripulado antes de que les recorten totalmente los fondos, en su desesperación encuentran a Yukari Morita, una adolescente que puede, gracias a su peso y complexión, ser el perfecto piloto para uno de sus cohetes.
El libro es sencillo y se nota que pretende serlo, no es ciencia ficción pesada sino más bien se centra en el hecho de que el personaje es una adolescente, no más, no menos, y hablando del personaje principal, es casi el personaje principal esperado de un ánime, de hecho en general todos los personajes lo son, incluidas sus descripciones (por ejemplo, hay una científica que viste todo el tiempo en minifalda y una bata ajustada).
Considerando ese punto hay dos opciones en la reseña, como literatura seria tendría posiblemente dos estrellas, más sin embargo, el hecho de que el libro realmente no se toma en serio y está escrito (a mi parecer) por la mera intensión de entretener es por ello que le doy 3 estrellas, porque en realidad está bastante entretenido.
Se trata de una organización, auspiciada por el gobierno japones que está al borde del deadline para poder enviar un cohete tripulado antes de que les recorten totalmente los fondos, en su desesperación encuentran a Yukari Morita, una adolescente que puede, gracias a su peso y complexión, ser el perfecto piloto para uno de sus cohetes.
El libro es sencillo y se nota que pretende serlo, no es ciencia ficción pesada sino más bien se centra en el hecho de que el personaje es una adolescente, no más, no menos, y hablando del personaje principal, es casi el personaje principal esperado de un ánime, de hecho en general todos los personajes lo son, incluidas sus descripciones (por ejemplo, hay una científica que viste todo el tiempo en minifalda y una bata ajustada).
Considerando ese punto hay dos opciones en la reseña, como literatura seria tendría posiblemente dos estrellas, más sin embargo, el hecho de que el libro realmente no se toma en serio y está escrito (a mi parecer) por la mera intensión de entretener es por ello que le doy 3 estrellas, porque en realidad está bastante entretenido.
May 14, 2014
While the excitement of a pending rocket launch with young girls at the helm is suitably satisfying, I found myself a bit at odds with the heroine, the young Yukari Morita. Far from relishing her role as being a young Japanese astronaut, she was obsessed with the idea of reuniting with her father, even after she learned that he was a polygamous deadbeat who skipped out on her mother on his honeymoon and couldn’t care less about getting back together with the Japanese wife and child that he abandoned.
Every time she attempted to talk with him about the issue, they wound up bickering. I wondered why she should bother or care. He was a failure at being a father to her; she’d grown up without him so didn’t need him for emotional support and he was in no position to give money (being a leader of a tribe in the jungle). So what exactly did she expect him to do for her besides provide a false picture of a whole, happy family? A bit more good old-fashioned feminist backbone on her part would have been more welcome.
Then again, the emphasis on family over sociological notions is part of the Japanese mindset and Western mores would be at odds with it. So while the story is very well written—the scientific parts read very convincingly and don’t drag down the story—perhaps it won’t be as appealing to Western readers who won’t understand Yukari’s position.
Every time she attempted to talk with him about the issue, they wound up bickering. I wondered why she should bother or care. He was a failure at being a father to her; she’d grown up without him so didn’t need him for emotional support and he was in no position to give money (being a leader of a tribe in the jungle). So what exactly did she expect him to do for her besides provide a false picture of a whole, happy family? A bit more good old-fashioned feminist backbone on her part would have been more welcome.
Then again, the emphasis on family over sociological notions is part of the Japanese mindset and Western mores would be at odds with it. So while the story is very well written—the scientific parts read very convincingly and don’t drag down the story—perhaps it won’t be as appealing to Western readers who won’t understand Yukari’s position.
September 13, 2014
A few years after this was written in 1995, it was adapted into an Anime television miniseries in Japan where it was quite popular. After reading the book, I was able to find some clips of the miniseries on youtube, and recognize them from the situations portrayed. The English translation of the book has only been available since 2010.
It is about an off-shore (from Japan) private space program based in the Solomon Islands, that decides to use teenage girl astronauts because of their diminutive weight.
The writing is a sort of hybrid between hard-SF and Anime, which makes it pretty noteworthy, I think. I should be clear that this book is not manga; it is textual writing - no drawings. But the situation of the extravagantly cute teenage girls training for flight in a rocket capsule is so fanciful as to be out of that same mold. The characters and their family situations are just absurd. And yet, there is quite a bit of reasonably accurate, though dumbed down, technical description. I had to laugh when young Yukari Morita asserts her authority as "captain" during technical discussions. What a privileged brat she must be.
In the end, I have to say that while I was amused, I was disappointed with this as a book. I have read Nojiri's Usurper of the Sun, and know that he is capable of writing real science fiction.
It is about an off-shore (from Japan) private space program based in the Solomon Islands, that decides to use teenage girl astronauts because of their diminutive weight.
The writing is a sort of hybrid between hard-SF and Anime, which makes it pretty noteworthy, I think. I should be clear that this book is not manga; it is textual writing - no drawings. But the situation of the extravagantly cute teenage girls training for flight in a rocket capsule is so fanciful as to be out of that same mold. The characters and their family situations are just absurd. And yet, there is quite a bit of reasonably accurate, though dumbed down, technical description. I had to laugh when young Yukari Morita asserts her authority as "captain" during technical discussions. What a privileged brat she must be.
In the end, I have to say that while I was amused, I was disappointed with this as a book. I have read Nojiri's Usurper of the Sun, and know that he is capable of writing real science fiction.
March 30, 2013
Since every kilo you send to orbit is astronomically expensive, the astronauts of the future are the lightest fully functional human beings -- Japanese schoolgirls.
"Rocket Girls" strikes an odd balance between perving out about its protagonists and fleshing out their characters and motivations. They have agency, but they spend a lot of time being leered at as they wear skintight spacesuits.
The treatment of the Solomon Islander natives is bizarrely racist. They are naive, magical, ignorant, happy, one-dimensional. And naturally a Japanese man is their polygamous cult leader.
The higher-ups in the book behave in very unethical ways without obvious repercussions. Kidnapping and similar non-consensual approaches to recruitment are routine in the organization depicted.
The book is a neat bit of fluff, but not of the same calibre as Issui Ogawa's Next Continent at all.
"Rocket Girls" strikes an odd balance between perving out about its protagonists and fleshing out their characters and motivations. They have agency, but they spend a lot of time being leered at as they wear skintight spacesuits.
The treatment of the Solomon Islander natives is bizarrely racist. They are naive, magical, ignorant, happy, one-dimensional. And naturally a Japanese man is their polygamous cult leader.
The higher-ups in the book behave in very unethical ways without obvious repercussions. Kidnapping and similar non-consensual approaches to recruitment are routine in the organization depicted.
The book is a neat bit of fluff, but not of the same calibre as Issui Ogawa's Next Continent at all.
December 10, 2013
Super fun story about a girl that accidentally becomes an astronaut.
Doesn't sound cool, but the execution is hilarious.
The overall style is light-hearted, cozy-schmozy with over-the-top, cartoon-like characters.
(They've actually made an Anime series out of this book, which doesn't surprise me.)
The science is believable (not that I know anything about rocket science) and sprinkled in just the right amounts without being too hardcore.
If you want a different, fun story with quirky characters and the venture into space, give this one a go.
It's a quick and delicious read.
Doesn't sound cool, but the execution is hilarious.
The overall style is light-hearted, cozy-schmozy with over-the-top, cartoon-like characters.
(They've actually made an Anime series out of this book, which doesn't surprise me.)
The science is believable (not that I know anything about rocket science) and sprinkled in just the right amounts without being too hardcore.
If you want a different, fun story with quirky characters and the venture into space, give this one a go.
It's a quick and delicious read.
October 20, 2010
"Rocket Girls" has a silly premise - privately funded space agency recruits petite teenage girl to pilot ship because of strict mass limits, she's less than pleased, etc. - but it's silly in the way that "Golden Age" sci-fi is, with its combination of scientific rigor and relentless optimism, combined with the broad characters and melodrama of a Japanese animated series. It's got a likable heroine, a story that's funny without falling into parody, and a nifty climax.
March 11, 2012
High school student Yukari Morita travels to the Solomon Islands in search of her long-lost father and accidentally lands a job as the world's youngest, lightest astronaut. When she finds her father who’s become the chief of a native tribe she also discovers a half-sister, Matsuri. They become the astronaut corps for the Solomon Space Association first attempt to put a human into Earth orbit.
This is a light and entertaining YA science fiction adventure.
This is a light and entertaining YA science fiction adventure.
March 10, 2012
Nice Saturday read. I will read 2nd book and any others that are lucky enough to come out in English too.
The book really tries to be hard SF. Of course it has that teenage girl worshiping aesthetic that is seen so much in Japanese storytelling. The girls are smart, but they are small and that's the point. Why didn't NASA ever come up with that?
The book really tries to be hard SF. Of course it has that teenage girl worshiping aesthetic that is seen so much in Japanese storytelling. The girls are smart, but they are small and that's the point. Why didn't NASA ever come up with that?
September 24, 2015
This one was just like reading the script for an anime. The characters are all caricatures and the situations are all outlandish. It is quite the silly book. That said it flowed pretty well and if you are into anime it will be amazing fun for you.
October 6, 2010
Enjoyable fluff.
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May 31, 2018This book is the good book. The book talk about a gorl have a things can make she very strong. And she company boos want she to do some bad things. But she don't want that. So the boos want to kill she. Finally she find what she want to do. This book tell us you must have you on idea.
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