Jumping Off the Planet is not your usual science fiction story. It is the first book of a three-part series the author David Gerrold calls the Starsider’s Trilogy. This is the story of three adolescent brothers and their struggle to gain their own independence from their feuding parents.  

The protagonist is thirteen-year-old Charles Dingillian, who goes by the nickname “Chigger.” He lives with his father and his two brothers, but they are far from the perfect family. The brothers find themselves in the crosshairs of a brutal custody battle between their two dysfunctional parents. Their father takes them on a trip to the moon via the Beanstalk, a humongous space elevator. It becomes apparent this trip is actually a custodial kidnapping. Their mother gets wind of this and pursues them as they climb toward space. As if that is not enough, the family is also being pursued by a clandestine organization with a sinister plot.  

The idea of a space elevator is not new. They are featured in earlier science fiction novels such as Arthur Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise. However, David Gerrold’s imagination is enormous.  This space elevator is a city in itself, with its own law enforcement, shopping malls and hotel-like rooms for the passengers for their two-day trip into space.   

At first look, the novel resembles one of Robert Heinlein’s juvenile science fiction novels. However, the Dingillian family is not a stable family like the ones often featured in Heinlein’s novels. The brothers are always fighting each other. They dislike their parents, who absolutely hate each other. The tension between the family members is ever present and a main character in the story.  

The novel is studded with humor, and also mystery as Chigger wants to know why criminal henchmen are following him. If the other two books in the series are like this one, it will be well worth your while to read them all.