Astronet
Illustrator: Dominique Falla
SERIES: CRACKERS 1996
Publisher :
www.macmillan.com.au
(out of print)
ISBN 07329 4150 4
Included in the South Australian Premier’s Reading Challenge.
Back cover:
Lydia Ng lives in the twenty-first century. She’s shy and a bit of a loner. Then she finds some computer pen-pals who become her good friends. When Lydia’s Aunt Daisy, a scientist, disappears on a secret field trip, Lydia and her pen-pals go to the rescue. They learn lots along the way.
STORY INSPIRATION
Because this story is now several decades old, the technology is dated. However the theme of lonely children coming together for an adventure is age old. One of my private amusements was to have all the adults with shaved heads wearing wigs, much like the pharaohs back in Ancient Egypt. No sooner had the book been published when shaving heads became a fashion. Did this little book influence this? I will never know. The other is having the computer develop a lisp. Computers, just like we humans, are also fallible.
Opening:
“Nathaniel, my tutor comp, wakes me each day with the time, the date and the weather.
On this particular morning I hear,’Ping… ping… ping… Thurthday, May21tht. Today the temperature will reach a mathimum of twelve. Occathional hails and thquals.”