Moon of Mutiny

Lester Del Rey Moon of Mutiny (1961)
I'm unlikely to ever push expectant mothers into oncoming traffic in order to get at a Del Rey I haven't read, and I didn't really have coherent plans to read any more, but this popped up in a crappy book sale - along with Nerves - and would have been pulped in the absence of a buyer, and somehow I just couldn't let that happen. It's another juvie, as might be surmised from the title and - as with a number of Lester's other juvies - stars a plucky young space cadet who brushes his teeth and doesn't want to disappoint dad - who happens to be a space general or something of the sort. This time it's young Fred Halpern who gets booted from the academy for failing to go by the book, and whose freewheeling ways somehow end up saving the day on the moon. It would be sheer arseache under any other circumstances, but Del Rey's writing is always a pleasure, and so much so that it's fairly easy to forget that you're almost reading Enid Blyton in terms of plot. Moon of Mutiny is hard science-fiction in the Asimov sense, and Del Rey communicates some truly peculiar ideas about rocketry and lunar geology without lecturing or jeopardising his popular touch; and as always, the hokey message you're probably expecting never quite materialises in familiar form, leaving us with a startlingly original rendering of a tale which probably would have been a waste of time with anyone else sat at the typewriter.