Shooting for the Stars

Laurence Steven is Chairman of the English Department at Laurentian
University and author of Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s
Fiction.

This multiaward-winning, science-fiction/fantasy novel for 10- to
15-year-olds is packed with action, excitement, suspense, and conflict
from beginning to end.

Michel Lenoir, an 18-year-old hockey wonder in the year 2000, is
informed that he must compete against a team of robots. Ostensibly,
Michel’s owner, David Swindler (really!), forces him to play in this
series because it could determine the very continuance of the human
race. But Michel soon discovers the real reason for the series: Swindler
owns the robot consortium as well, and is “playing both sides for all
they’re worth.” He also learns that Swindler’s consortium has
scientifically preserved major political and business tycoons, who would
otherwise have died long ago, and with them has assumed almost complete
economic and political control of the planet. Android technology is
their final step to ridding themselves of inefficient human resources.
Michel confronts Swindler, who vows to get rid of him. Michel flees to
the Old City, where he joins the Inactives (other now-unemployed humans)
and becomes an outlaw.

Cфté’s development of the setting, plot, and characters is
effective from the bread-and-circuses separation (with the rich in their
towers in New City and the poor watching hockey in the polluted anthill
of Old City) to Michel’s growing awareness that something is
desperately wrong. The plot grabs the reader’s interest right from the
start and holds it until the very end.