Week 13 and Jumper (and Ubik)

Another week, another story. This time I wrote about someone accidentally transporting himself into a motivational poster. I took inspiration from a novel I just finished: Jumper, by Steven Gould. I got it cause I saw that the new sequel, Impulse, was on the Nebula reading list.

It’s about a guy who learns he can teleport, and all the trouble he gets into with it. There is a movie based on it which has little similarities. So if you thought the movie was painful (as I did) don’t let this deter you from the book. The character is not horrible and the plot is entirely different. The whole thing with the Paladins in the movie was apparently just entirely made up.

I enjoyed the book a lot, as I’ve always imagined how fun it would be to be able to travel anywhere I wanted with a thought. He thinks of some creative ways to use it, as well as ways to evade the NSA agents chasing him. The ebook I got also came with the sequel ‘Reflex’, so I’ll probably read that next.

I also read Ubik, by Phillip K. Dick this week. In the future there are telepath’s and precogs and other psychic abilities. These people get hired by companies to spy on other companies and so on. There are also people with the ability to block telepaths and precogs, and they get hired by companies to protect their interests. The story is about a group of ‘intertials’ the people who block abilities going on a big job.

There’s a whole bunch more weird stuff and the book is sort of unsettling and creepy, but very good and worth a read. The ending didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but was still good.

I recommend both of these books!