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Summary
Summary
This is the first book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy.
Johnny Maxwell is just an ordinary boy - not smart, popular or rich.
But he does love video games.
And as his parents argue themselves out of a marriage, Johnny plays at becoming humanity's last hope, shooting invading aliens out of a pixelated sky.
Then comes a message from the last remaining alien spaceship- We Wish to Talk.
And suddenly Johnny is thrust into the very real world of the video game, and comes face to face with an alien race that needs his help.
Only Johnny can save them. And this isn't a game anymore . . .
Author Notes
Terry Pratchett was on born April 28, 1948 in Beaconsfield, United Kingdom. He left school at the age of 17 to work on his local paper, the Bucks Free Press. While with the Press, he took the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency class. He also worked for the Western Daily Press and the Bath Chronicle. He produced a series of cartoons for the monthly journal, Psychic Researcher, describing the goings-on at the government's fictional paranormal research establishment, Warlock Hall. In 1980, he was appointed publicity officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board with responsibility for three nuclear power stations.
His first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. His first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. He became a full-time author in 1987. He wrote more than 70 books during his lifetime including The Dark Side of the Sun, Strata, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Truckers, Diggers, Wings, Dodger, Raising Steam, Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Tales, and The Shephard's Crown. He was diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007. He was knighted for services to literature in 2009 and received the World Fantasy award for life achievement in 2010. He died on March 12, 2015 at the age of 66.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Released in Britain in 1992, just after the first Gulf War, the launch title in Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell trilogy reaches American shores in the midst of current conflicts in the Middle East. A whimsical but ultimately unsettling "war game" conceit drives the book: what if video games weren't just games? Teenager Johnny plays video games (pirated copies from a friend) to escape the "Trying Times" that his parents are going through and the bombs dropping in the Middle East every time he turns on the television. But one afternoon while Johnny is playing the game Only You Can Save Mankind, the alien ScreeWee fleet from within the game surrenders to him, an action that is outside the game's parameters. The hero begins to dream himself into the game space and pledges to help give the ScreeWee safe passage to avoid slaughter by the human gamers. Johnny has less success convincing his friends of what he's doing, except for a proficient gamer, Kirsty, who is motivated to win at all costs. Pratchett's wartime allegory is apt, if frequently heavy-handed ("Do you think the pilots really just sit there like... like a game?... We turn it into games and it's not games"). Still, the compelling premise and Pratchett's humorous touches (such as the aliens' frustration with human attackers who "die" and just keep coming back) may well attract fans to this trilogy. Ages 8-up. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Much like Pratchett's Discworld heroine Tiffany Aching, insecure Johnny Maxwell has hero-hood thrust upon him. While the twelve-year-old is playing the videogame Only You Can Save Mankind, the enemy aliens surrender to him and ask for safe conduct to their home world. After a quick check with his hacker friend Wobbler, Johnny learns that this is not part of the game. Despite his friends' doubts, Johnny takes up the challenge, and the alien fleet disappears off the screens of gamers around the globe. Meanwhile, the first Gulf War is being played out in the news, and Johnny sees disturbing similarities between the blips on his spaceship's view screen and the blips on Stormin' Norman's televised battle plans. With the help of overachiever Kirsty, Johnny succeeds in saving the ScreeWee race. If Gandhi and Monty Python had collaborated on Ender's Game or the junior novelization of The Last Starfighter, this quirky and timely knee-slapper would have been the likely outcome. Published in Britain in 1992, this first in a trilogy of very different adventures is still fresh, engaging, and thought-provoking. Readers with a taste for British humor will be clamoring for the sequels. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Johnny Maxwell's life is full of conflict. His parents are going through trying times, and the 1991 Gulf War is raging on his television every night, looking more like his computer war games than a news broadcast. A new game, provided by his hacker friend, Wobbler, is not what he expects. Only You Can Save Mankind is supposed to be an adventure-packed game of killing aliens, but on the first play, the game's newtlike female ScreeWee captain surrenders to Johnny, asking for safe conduct for aliens across the game borders. Now other gamers find only empty spaces when they fire up the game; there's nothing to kill. Johnny's heroic endeavors to save the aliens is a wild ride, full of Pratchett's trademark humor; digs at primitive, low-resolution games such as Space Invaders; and some not-so-subtle philosophy about war and peace. Readers will recognize some of the gamer types--among them, Johnny's sidekick Wobbler, who never plays computer games, preferring instead to crack the codes. There's also Johnny's feisty girl pal, Kirsty (whose dialogue is printed in italics and whose game name is Sigourney). One hopes that when Johnny returns for subsequent adventures, they will be along for the ride. --Cindy Dobrez Copyright 2005 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Johnny Maxwell, 12, thinks he's a loser. People don't seem to notice him, his parents are threatening to split up, and he's not very good at the shoot-up-the-bad-guys computer games that he and his friends are always playing. But after his hacker buddy, Wobbler, gives him an illegal copy of "Only You Can Save Mankind," strange things happen. The captain of the alien fleet that Johnny is supposed to shoot up surrenders to him-unheard of in a computer game-and soon after that all of the aliens from all copies of the game have vanished. Players looking for someone to shoot at sail through light years of empty space and return the game to the store, demanding their money back. Johnny also discovers that he is able to enter the alien ship in dreams and grows convinced that the aliens are somehow real, and are actually dying when human players shoot at them. And soon the day arrives when the humans can resume their shooting. The story is told against the backdrop of the 1991 Gulf War, in which many of the battles were fought with the help of PC screens, and the antiwar message of the story soon becomes a little too heavy-handed and obvious. Although the storytelling here is not as polished as it is in Pratchett's The Wee Free Men (HarperCollins, 2003), the humor is sharp and the story is great fun to read. This is the first in a trilogy published in England; U.S. editions of Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb will soon follow.-Walter Minkel, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An author's note explains that this volume, the first in the "Johnny Maxwell" trilogy, was written during the first Gulf War, though this is its first publication in the U.S. Johnny Maxwell is like many boys, spending his time after school busily blowing up alien ScreeWee fighters in his new computer game. Until one of the ScreeWee talks to him. She is Captain of the ScreeWee fleet, and she has asked Johnny for safe conduct back to ScreeWee space, because "[w]hen we die, we die. Forever." Juxtaposed against Johnny's inexplicably real involvement in a computer game--when he dreams, he enters game space and can wake up only when he "dies"--are the televised events of the first war in Iraq, when the nightly news showed missile's-eye views of the remote bombing of Baghdad. This offering doesn't pretend to subtlety at all, but the premise is so very intriguing, and so well-presented (in characteristically wry Pratchett fashion), that Johnny's cry for the essential humanity of all to be recognized, whether English, Iraqi or ScreeWee, loses none of its poignancy--or timeliness. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.