If I only could give one reason why the Science Fiction Book Club rocks, I’d have to go with the exclusive anthologies it cranks out. They’re huge, dense volumes put together by the best editors in the field. One of the most recent ones, ESCAPE FROM EARTH: NEW ADVENTURES IN SPACE, edited by Jack Dann and Garder Dozois, is no exception.

The theme of ESCAPE FROM EARTH is science-fiction adventures for teenagers, in the vein of Robert Heinlein’s canonical “juvenile” works. That’s a high bar for anyone, and the editors wrangled up, for the most part, an excellent spread for kids of all ages to feast upon.

Things start off with a bang in Allen M. Steele’s “Escape from Earth,” which goes beyond simple wish-fulfillment and puts a teenager in some very tough situations, as a kid with a single mom and a pothead brother has to contend not only with his status as a school outsider, but a potential alien incursion.

Ably following this great story are Kage Baker’s “Where the Golden Apple Grows,” a grass-is-always greener tale of extraplanetary colonization and Geofrey A. Landis’ “Derelict,” in which curious kids learn the a simple, crucial truth about living in space. Orson Scott Card’s “Space Boy” fails to hold up the quality of the works going before him, but Walter Jon Williams picks up the pace with a superbly imagined “Incarnations Day.”

The last two stories of ESCAPE FROM EARTH live up to all of the premise’s potential: “Combat Shopping” by Elizabeth Moon deals with the likely fallout and victims of populating the galaxy, and Joe Haldeman wraps thing up with an especially Heinlein-esque tale, “The Mars Girl.”

To tell the truth, if this book hadn’t been assembled by the SFBC, it most likely would’ve been crap. Big-name authors would’ve phoned it in, stealing a theme or two from Heinlein and trying to come up with a couple stupid words of high-tech teen slang. Instead, SFBC members get a treat for them and their teenagers, and Dann and Dozois have assembled a great, contemporary take on every teenager’s greatest desire: to rise above the mundanity of existence and truly escape, if only for a moment. To adults, it seems hyperbolic, but ESCAPE FROM EARTH can make us all remember when it was all too serious. –Ryun Patterson

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE CHILDREN OF THE COMPANY by Kage Baker