Growing Up Weightless

Written by John M. Ford and Francis Spufford

Narrated by John Skelley

Matthias Ronay has grown up in the low gravity and great glass citadels of independent Luna—and in the considerable shadow of his father, a member of the council that governs Luna’s increasingly complex society. But Matt feels
weighed down on the world where he was born, where there is no more need for exploration, for innovation, for radical ideas—and where his every movement can be tracked by his father on the infonets.

Matt and five of his friends, equally brilliant and restless, have planned a secret adventure. They will trick the electronic sentinels and slip out of the city for a journey to Farside. Their passage into the expanse of perpetual night will change
them in ways they never could have predicted … and bring Matt to the destiny for which he has yearned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705072097

John M. Ford

John M. Ford (1957–2006) was a science fiction and fantasy author, game designer, and poet. Some of his books include the Star Trek tie-in novels, How Much for Just the Planet? and The Final Reflection. 

Reviews for Growing Up Weightless

[slothman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A coming-of-age tale set in a lunar colony. Ford ably depicts the troubles and tensions of a father and son, each of which has to grapple with their responsibilities and goals in life. The underlying science in the fiction is well thought out, and this 1994 book does a good job of anticipating the issues related to connecting to a public information network.

[sr510 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This starts out really good. Ford sets up an intriguing situation, with a protagonist completely enmeshed within Lunar society, who doesn't even know how much he takes for granted every aspect and convention of being a Lunar native... who wants more than anything to leave the moon, or so he believes. The big question is how that's going to be resolved, and, alas, the author punts it. The last 35 pages or so, in which the whole thing is hastily wrapped up, pretty much totally suck.With that said, Ford gets points on style; he does a nice jobs of seamlessly switching between perspectives (there's not a single chapter or section break in the whole book, and there's only one jarring transition in the bunch), and of making those perspectives noticably different from one another.It's not a bad book. But it could have been so much better, had the ending lived up to the beginning.