Review of Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Robert Heinlein is best known these days for a handful of novels—Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. But before these books were published, Heinlein had built a foundation on YA fiction featuring silver space ships, clunky computers, intergalactic aliens—he helped shaped the stereotypes. Almost two decades later, when science fiction was near the end of the generation which followed Heinlein's YA work, New Wave sf, Alexei Panshin decided to throwback with Rite of Passage (1968), and oddly enough, was rewarded for it.

Rite of Passage is as classic a YA bildungsroman as classic YA bildungsromans can be. It tells the story of Mia Havero, teenager living aboard a galactic ship that moves from planet to planet, trading knowledge for the goods its limited population need to stay alive. Eugenics are part of the reason the population is tight, but another is that every teen must go through a rite of passage. Each year the group of teens coming of age are dumped on a strange planet with basic supplies, and thirty days later the ship returns to pick up the survivors. Hotheaded, arrogant Mia has a lot of work to do to get ready for this trial.

Review: I Hear a New World by Alan Moore

In 2022, Alan Moore signed a Bloomsbury deal to write a five-book series. At the time Moore was excited, saying he bubbled with fiction (I paraphrase). A difficult feeling to sustain, Moore nevertheless delivered a sparkling, exuberant effort two years later in The Great When. An irreverent mix of Dickens, Joyce, and Aleister Crowley, Moore deployed his singular style on an alternate, mid-20th century London indeed, in bubbly fashion. But could Moore maintain the groove in 2026's I Hear a New World, second book in the series?

It takes a fun, meandering road, but I Hear a New World eventually picks up on the happenings of our weak-chinned hero, Dennis Knuckleyard. Roughly ten years after the events of The Great When, Dennis is still possessor of the key brought back from Long London, and in the early going, he uses an opportunity at a socialite party to pass possession to Joe Meek, a music producer. Meek's never the same after, and Dennis finds himself caught between an occult rock and octogenarian hard place.