Kea’s Flight
by Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker
CreateSpace
Copyright © August 2011
ISBN: 1466240482
577 Pages
$22.50 Paperback
$3.89 Kindle
A Kea is a bird from New Zealand. It is a species that has long disappeared by the time our stalwart heroes make their appearance on a flight from 25th century Earth to… somewhere else. It is also the nickname of our favorite hero, little Kea something or other, the last names don’t matter much because they’re all made up by computers anyway. Our heroes don’t have parents, they have test tubes and caretaking robots.
I know, there’s a lot of info there. I’ll try to break it down for you. At some point in Earth’s future, mankind decides to take genetic testing to the next logical step… selecting the traits of the children based on their genes and discarding the ones that don’t measure up. Not wanting to be heartless louts, future us place their discarded embryos on a spaceship and send it off to colonize a likely looking planet that may or may not still be there when the ship arrives.
The ship is crewed by other societal cast-offs for whom a trip to a neighboring solar system is preferable to staying in jail on Earth. It’s in this backdrop that we meet Kea and her friends. Most of them have some level of autism. This manifests itself in a variety of ways, from social dysfunction to learning disorders to… well, you’ll have to read the book to see the many forms it takes. The authors have a pretty convincing handle on autism and Asperger’s syndrome.
Kea and her companion in crime/boyfriend Draz aren’t really setting out to be rebels, but they are smart enough to devise a system of communication that lets them circumvent the ever-present monitors and largely avoid having to spend time being re-educated, the punishment for rebellion or any other non-sanctioned behavior. By being able to communicate freely, they can compare notes and learn that not everything on the ship is as it seems. The shadowy “BGs” that run the ship and stay largely to themselves have their own issues, and the ship itself shows sign of being poorly constructed.
The fascinating part of Kea’s flight isn’t the science, although it is nice enough and has enough big words and likely sounding concepts to be beyond reproach. The fascinating part here is the human aspect; watching Kea and her friends learn and grow and interact. There is a humanity to these characters that makes you really feel for them and root them on. They are misfits, told that they are misfits, and yet they are expected to form a society when they arrive at their destination. It’s the society that forms while they are en route that truly matters, however.
I enjoyed this book and recommend that you buy it. There are some areas that drag a bit, but watching Kea and her friends as they struggle to discover their humanity is worth the price of admission. Erika Hammerschmidt and John Ricker hit a home run with Kea’s Flight.
