This is nothing but a has-been boomer's attempt at being PC and woke. And fails utterly at both.
While Hella's backdrop of, well, Hella is very interesting, it's not used beyond "Hella is bad for humans".
Gerrold spends a lot of time berating the trope of autistic people as dry, unfeeling automatons. His first blunder is that he writes his main character Kyle as a dry, unfeeling automaton. While he do sprinkle some emotion on the character through the first half of the book, by the time of a major event in the middle you have exactly zero empathy for the character to even care.
His second blunder is that he spends a lot of time mentioning something called "the noise". Besides calling it an implant a couple of times, he doesn't actually tell you what it is. So I'm going to tell you; it's a neuropathic brain implant that connects to the internet.
Which leads to the third blunder: Hella can't communicate with Earth. But apparently Kyle can connect to the internet on Earth with his implant. Yet nobody knows what's going on back home.

And then there's the fourth. The biggest one.
Everyone is bi. Nobody is really male or female. You're a dude and want to be pregnant? Go to the medics and swap out your penis with a fully functioning set of female reproductive organs. You're a woman and can't pull off those cargo shorts? Just grow a penis. Easy as that.
When Kyle gets a "boy friend", which is what Gerrold calls a boyfriend (and what the rest of us calls a male friend), Kyle literally says "Do you want me to be a girl? I used to be a girl. I can change back."
And people having multiple spouses as if the mormons took over the galaxy.
Gerrold tries to please everybody, and fails at everything. ( )

The main character is an autistic boy with a chip in his head that helps him navigate the world—which is a giant planet on which everything grows bigger than it does on Earth, though that doesn’t turn out to be as significant to the plot as you might have thought because the colonists are trying not to interact too much with the ecology for fear of disrupting it. But some colonists want to start colonizing and capitalizing, driving the conflict of the book, which also includes the protagonist starting to date and considering whether to transition back to being a girl. It felt like a bunch of interesting ideas both about humanity and about what “colonizing” really means were being squished under the YA format. ( )

I received an ARC of this book through the Goodreads giveaway program.

Not recommended. This book was a huge disappointment, the first book by David Gerrold that I've read and probably my last. There isn't much of a story: the book is part biology textbook and part political treatise. As such, it consists of one lecture after another, making for stilted, awkward conversational interactions between characters and long passages that contribute nothing to the story. The writing is poor (dangling modifiers abound, but maybe the editors will clean that up before the book is finally released). There are illogical plot points that I might have been willing to overlook for a good story, which this is not. There's lots of telling with sparse showing. Characters are so flat and dimensionless that I didn't care at all what happened to any of them, not even the narrator, Kyle Martin.

Kyle is supposed to be neurodiverse, but the author has not done enough research into "neurodiversity" to depict a convincing character; apparently Gerrold believes that a "neurodiverse" child is distinguished only by temper tantrums and an aversion to being touched. This is not just a lost opportunity, it is insulting -- the author could have made the story truly outstanding if only he had delved deeper into Kyle's character, including exploring how his atypical mind works. But in the end, it turns out Kyle is just a prop for the plot because Gerrold needed a character with a computer chip in his brain in order for his staged plot resolution to work.

This book fails the The Fries Test on disability representation in literature, a critique based on the stereotypes and ways that authors have depicted and used disabled characters in the past. It is problematic that the main character is "cured" of his disability by the end of the book; it turns out that Kyle is not really neurodiverse because he has either grown out of it or been "fixed" by the computer chip implant.

Who is the intended audience for this book? Kyle is supposed to be 13 yrs old, but I doubt any middle grade reader would have the patience to slog through this book. Adult readers? They would have more patience, but would likely give up before the end because there is so little storyline to reward that patience. Lovers of biology/ecology studies/conservationism? They would get much more out of a textbook than a description of this invented planet. Sci-fi fans? There are much better books out there, ones worth your investment of time. People interested in gender fluidity? Although the characters in this book can change genders completely and easily (to the point where a trans-woman can bear children in her own womb), there's no sense of gender identity. For example, a little girl decides to become a boy so she can have a penis like her brother -- it's not that she felt like she was a boy or that she felt that a boy's body would be truer to her self.

Another missed opportunity and disappointing dismissal of so many real people's truths.

I could go on, but I've made my point. This book is not worth reading.

~bint ( )

The unique combination of a lighter gravity and increased oxygen density has allowed everything on Hella to grow into supersized proportions. The dinosaurs and their herds achieve monstrous sizes while the flora can reach over a mile high. The weather is even more harsh and unpredictable than Earth's which is why the colonists are forced to retreat twice a year. Once to Summerland to avoid the heat so intense it can cause raging wildfires, then to Winterland to avoid brutal winter storms with winds that can be 300+ mph and snows that refuse to melt for months.

Kyle Martin is a very unique young man who just happens to be neuro-atypical, struggles with emotion and has brain implant that allows him instant access to the network that runs the colonies. The star-ship Cascade arrives ahead of schedule and the occupants are forced to stay aboard the ship, Kyle is tasked with bridging the gap between the colonists and those seeking the refuge of Hella. The colony on Hella is still in its fledgling stages and barely able to perform at optimum. Will the addition of over a thousand new people break the tenuous balance the colony has been able to build?

Kyle finds himself unwittingly in the center of the storm and in possession of a perilous secret. A political conspiracy threatens to entangle him and his once subdued emotions might win over his logical nature but he is hoping that he can utilize the uniqueness the colony tormented him over to prevent their own downfall.

The author and family of Kyle do not actually specify Kyle's condition but from the descriptions it sounds very similar to at least some aspects of Autism. Some people may have a hard time with Kyle as the narrator of the story because he doesn't "get" people and therefore doesn't connect with them very well. What he does connect with is nearly everything else - and I found myself enjoying Kyle's narration even if he does get bogged down with over information. Like many kids who are different than "ordinary", Kyle suffers from the comments and behaviors of others. Below are three quotes that really hit me regarding Kyle, one from his mother and two from his own thoughts. Marley is one of the people in the colony that is constantly harassing Kyle and his brother.

Kyle's character is very unique and interesting - the way he thinks and what he thinks about and the book's characters also see this (at least some of them). Hella is littered with puns, jokes and nuances that Kyle doesn't understand but the other characters and the reader most likely would. I feel a very close connection to the truth of Kyle's "conversation" - the truth in himself that HARLIE and his friends help him discover. I too wish that I could live in a world that doesn't pillage the planet for everything valuable and is at peace with becoming a part of the symphony of life that exists upon it's surface. Hella is haunting and sad in the sense that the issues the colonists face in the book are the beginnings of what destroyed the Earth. We are seeing portions of this now - and I can only imagine all of the things that we've missed out on because of human nature. What I wouldn't give to be able to see the Earth as it once was and wonder what it could've been had we not taken the courses of action that we did. It always seems that the people like Layton and those that agree with his ideology vastly outnumber those that think like Kyle, his family and friends.

I've never had to resist the urge to not highlight and share swaths of text before and I have so, so many quotes that mean quite a lot to me that I would love to share with you. Hella covers a vast variety of societal, moral and political issues (and many more) that will be very similar to our own daily lives. Kyle really got me with the politics and people quote below, it's how I feel most of the time. Actually all three of the political quotes that I picked really highlight how I feel most of the time and my thoughts being so similar to Kyle's really helped cement how I felt about his character and this book.

The world building is top notch - I can imagine what the environment and beasties could look like. The description of Hella's flora and fauna remind me of some of the card artwork that I've seen for Magic the Gathering. I highly suggest looking at these if you don't know what I'm referencing, quite a large portion of the artwork seen on the cards is nothing short of stunning and if I were to pick a group of artists to draw what was described in Hella, it would be them.

The portion near the end of the book at the trial really really got me - that's all I can say without a spoiler but... damn. Going into this book I was not expecting to love it this much - even though it would be fraught with danger and exceedingly hard I kinda wish I could join Kyle and the others on Hella. Even just the trip through words is worth it - I am very glad that I requested this book to read through this quarantine. A Hella-sized thank you to David Gerrold for writing this book, DAW Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a digital ARC of Hella. ( )

A slow reading delight for science fiction fans liking a new world story. Hella's bigger than Earth in almost every way, planet size, creatures, seasons, weather, trees (a km. tall) and days. The colony there has been on planet for 40 Hella years and is about to receive 1200 new residents in from what might be the final voyage from a planet that has, or is about to experience complete ecological collapse.
Kyle is almost 5 in Hella years, close to 13 in Earth ones. He has a unique condition that's never clearly spelled out and has a neural implant that helps him by leveling him as well as giving him access to all data in the colony at lightning speed. There's dissension among those in leadership roles and that is at the core of this story, but is by no means all of it. The way colonists can change gender, more than once id they so choose, the description of the flora and fauna, as well as why and how the colonists must migrate from a summer encampment to a winter one, complete with a great description of one such journey, provide readers with more than enough to satisfy their reading interest. A bang-up book! ( )