Jumping off the Planet by David Gerrold (novella vs. novel)

The novella first appeared in Scott Edelman's SF Age, and was up for a Nebula, Locus, HOMer awards. The novel won the Golden Duck (for YA SF) and the Gaylactic. 

Charles "Chigger" Dingillian, thirteen, and his brothers (8 year-old Bobby "Stinky" and 17 year-old "Weird") are on a vacation with their father who takes them up the "Beanstalk" [the space elevator] and off Earth on the elevator up. The boys all have their problems which they attribute to their parents. Their mother always yells at them and their father, they realize belatedly, is trying to kidnap off the planet.

When their mother finds out, she will try to put a stop to it... with the aid of some unlikely allies.

The strength of these two works is the description of the beanstalk seemed the most realized I've read. The narrative developments were largely intriguing.

Discussion with Spoilers:

With Gerrold's The Martian Child, I advocated reading the novel over the original novelette even though it received the most attention (due to the novel's better scenes and closure than the story).

Here, though, the novella has the edge. It does explore the family in more detail, but I'm not sure that it is to the novel's advantage. I had anticipated them getting off the planet to somewhere, but they don't. That's fine, just a little disappointing. I'd hoped for the same kind of momentum in the novel as the novella although backing up did seem to make relevant points. Also, some of the arguments went on too long and seemed to be repeating themselves.

The conclusion was hard to swallow. The parents are problematic but should they be divested of their children? Would a seventeen-year-old make a better guardian than one or both parents? Possibly, but we really need more of both parents to understand where they're coming from and why they're incompetent parents. The father we hear from, and it seems that everyone agrees with his decision to take the kids off planet (excepting his wife). He himself feels regret at taking the boys away from their mother but gives them the choice. The boys' anger seems out of proportion to the father's behavior--not that that's uncommon for children, but it is strange that the judge votes in favor of the children's independence.

It's interesting that the beanstalk becomes the backdrop in this piece about domestic and legal issues that might arise with the advent of the beanstalk. There's a macguffin here, stuffed in the robo-monkey, but maybe it plays a larger role in the rest of the series. We have a mysterious agent, too, who is from Mexico supposedly but says, "Mucho importante" leading me to wonder who he really is (or if this was a mistake--purposeful or not). Again, maybe the rest of the series explains this.