My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Macmillian- Tor/ Forge for this reissue of a science fiction nove that was thought lost to time and legal issues.

The thing about being a teenager is that everywhere else is always better. Somewhere there are good times, never here. Things are happening over there, not here. The lights are brighter, life is sweeter and gravity might be stronger. Capturing the way teens think, speak to each others, and grudgingly to adults is very hard. A popular meme of actor Steve Buscemi with a skateboard asking his fellow kids how they do comes to mind. In Growing Up Weightless, the late science fiction writer John M. Ford captures not only the life of teens, but teens of the future, with their lingo, role playing games and feeling that life on the Moon isn't as fun as it should be.

Matt Ronay is a son of privilege, born and raised on the Moon, or Luna as they call it, in a colony that has been left behind by the new FTL drive that is opening up the universe. The colony is more of a stopping off point, where time seems to stop, nothing exciting happens, and life is safe and boring. Matt has reached the age, or hours as the call it, that he can look for jobs off colony, if only someone would accept him as crew. Until that happens he spends his days with his friends, and having an adventure on the other side of the colony. However under the surface there are problems with both the water supply, outsiders, and the luna colony's unhappiness with being passed by. Events are happening, events that might effect Matt's future in a big way.

The story is at once simple, yet a whole lot more. There is a big learning curve as Ford skips the wading pool and throws the reader full tilt into the ocean of the story with explanations gradually given. The lingo can be a little tough to decipher, and there are no real chapter breaks, or even spaces when the point of view of the characters change. However, the work is worth the journey. The world is very rich, and is more real than most futures seem to be. Matt and his friends are real people, with problems and ideas that seem so big to them, and yet in the grander scheme, are not. Decisions are made, with real repercussions, for Matt, his family and friends. Not just a great science fiction novel, but a great piece of fiction that should be more popular than it is.

I knew John M. Ford for his Star Trek novels, and his reference books, which were funny, and brilliant, and funny and true to the source material, and funny. I've read a few others, and I still find him one of the great authors who never seemed to find an audience. Well except for some of the biggest authors around now, like Neil Gaiman. A really good science fiction story that has been lost for far too long.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read.

Honestly this book really shouldn't work. It's so full of lacunae it was like reading the second or third book in a series and not having the information to fill in the gaps. Another issue is the formatting, although I suspect that's a matter of it being an e-ARC: there are sections where the POV suddenly changes but it's not indicated by an extended break or anything like that. And if that's an artistic choice rather than a formatting thing... well, I don't particularly like it, but it did make me work harder and pay probably closer attention, so maybe that's what Ford wanted for me. And thirdly, it's not exactly a grand story. No explosions, no dramatic twists of fate for society, no incredible revelations.

And yet.

It shouldn't work, but it does.

It's not a grand story: it's an intimate one, a growing-up story - as the title suggest, 'growing up weightless': it's set on the moon, not all that far into the future but far enough that there's a settled, indeed governmentally independent, colony. And as children have done since time immemorial, some of the children of the moon are unsettled, feeling like they don't fit in and want more/different/other. And they're also playing games: surprisingly substantial parts of this story are the kids playing a role-playing game, as outlaws in Sherwood Forest (do I love the idea that this milieu could continue to be attractive for coming generations? yes I do).

Matt, the main character, is born into an important luna family, and is feeling the pressure to figure out what he'll do as an adult; he basically knows, but he's afraid to tell anyone else. He loves his friends, and acting, and the role-playing game they've had going for many hours now; his relationship with his family is a bit fraught. The moon is somewhere that teens can travel around quite safely, especially within their own domes; there's excellent train networks, so you can travel between domes too - and so they do. This is pretty much how the main action happens, such as it is. This is, on reflection, a fairly claustrophobic story, as befits one set on the moon.

Along - or perhaps slightly behind - Matt's story is his father's, and this is where even more lacunae exist. Albin's relationships with various figures, the decisions that need to be made for the moon's future, even how he feels about anyone - all of this is very shadowy. Which mirrors how Matt feels about his father, really, so again maybe that really makes sense and I'm only realising as I write this just how clever and deliberate Ford was.

It probably shouldn't have worked, but it did, and I am once again grateful that Tor is re-publishing Ford's work, so that people like me get to appreciate it.