Valerio

Sorry, but this turned out to be a BIG disappointment.
Part one: starts off with good pacing, excellent science (Asimov, no sillies!), a believable context, and well-characterized characters. And as the science reveals to us what dangers are inherent in the newest technology changing the world for the better, there goes that sense of menace, of ambiguity. Do the inhabitants of the para-Universe know what they are doing? Are they our benefactors? Or do they have a monstrous plan?
And throughout all of this, the protagonist is powerless, he knows what he wants to do but doesn't know how, he is alone. Wonderful! A real uphill road, lots of stuff....
...And then it all comes crashing down like the Tower of Sauron at the end of the film. WHATTHEFFFFFFF?!?
Part two: the para-humans, as alien as you can get. Asimov the scientist does a painstaking job of introducing us to an utterly alien species and at the same time making them familiar. These creatures are incomprehensible and fascinating, it makes you want to know more-but, alas, there is too little space in the book, and since they will never interact directly with us, they remain an exercise, a boutade. So much so that, to justify the events in the first part, the author has to invent a crisis of conscience, so randomly, that of course it is taken to be the coming out of a ‘hysterical female' (ah, good old unintentional sexism) and ends there. De bang, meaningless. We won't see them again.
Part three: leap forward in time. The protagonist of part one has disappeared into oblivion. Earth civilization has advanced, the Moon yearns for independence, lunar tourism is cool, and Selenites are easy.
HUH?!!?
The third and final part of this novel presents us with a situation so utterly unrelated that it could easily be another book! Asimov starts from scratch with a scenario to be re-learned from scratch, throws in a love story that not only was not felt to be needed, but seems just put there to fill pages. So much time is wasted behind the exploration of Selenite society, time wasted, because the new protagonist wants, and rightly so!, to save the world, and the solution they find is...anticlimactic. Yes, it's good science, but the feeling is of ‘that's it? Couldn't they have gotten there sooner?' A solution that serves only to benefit the Selenites, who will be able to take advantage of it to turn the Moon into a spaceship and get away from ‘suffocating Mother Earth'-without being told why, just like that. We good Earth bad duh!
Isaac Asimov, in my opinion, tried to put together three drafts to cram together, in order to grab some easy change. I even claim the right to speculate how this idea might have worked:
1) As in the first part. Discovery, development of benefits, discovery of great impending danger, loneliness of the hero.
2) THE ALIENS ARE NOT EVEN SEEN. It would have been great if we hadn't seen even a shadow of these creatures, if they had remained ambiguous presences separated from us by every possible barrier, leaving us only a few and equally ambiguous clues to their plans. Leaving to us to explain the whys and hows.
3) The hero succeeds in arriving on the Moon, the ONLY place where he can try to prove amidst a thousand difficulties but without political interference, indeed with the help of the Selenite rebels, the validity of his theory mocked by all. In this context, you present the lunar society in stages, instead of starting with a tourist guide's textwall!
It was painful to get to the end, because from a great master of science fiction I hoped for better.

Nothing memorable. A YA novel where everything goes fine for the protagonists -to the point that even during some crisis, it's always dealt with nochalance, no real sense of danger, no true stakes.
Basically, there is no conflict, and it is comprehensible: Back in 1952, the future was a bright horizon filled with promises, science fiction an unchartered territory of wonders and you didn't want to impress young readers with dark or overdramatic stuff.
As a result, this novel is a constant telegraphing of the next solution in favor of our heroes, it doesn't even care to create a true sense of suspence, of scare, of tension in the group -for example, despite the fact that Chuck, protagonist and stoaway, has automatically reduced, with his presence, the survival means of the marooned crew...well, nothing comes out of it, nothing!

Si può dire che, nonostante certe scene di violenza e la caratterizzazione di certi personaggi che AMI odiare fino in fondo, questo libro sia alla fine adorabile?
Penso di sì. Volendo appiccicargli un'etichetta, questa è una commedia, una commedia degli equivoci e delle sfortune in cui tutto ciò che può andar male al maggior numero di persone contemporaneamente andrà malissimo!
Non si può neanche dire che esista un protagonista, se non il fato cinico e baro, e che con un sinistro senso dell'umorismo lega a sé le vicende di persone che tra loro non potrebbero essere meno correlate. Ne esce fuori una trama velocissima, scorrevole, da leggersi d'un fiato, cinematica, dove ognuno fa la sua parte e la fa bene.

Quasi perfetto! Quasi, perché questo è un romanzo di crescita, un percorso alla scoperta del mondo e di sé, dove la protagonista, in un mondo dove alcuni felini sono dotati di intelletto e parola e fanno i mandriani, Ratha fà una scoperta esaltante e terribile -e ne pagherà lo scotto con l'esilio, durante il quale crescerà fino a realizzare il proprio destino, che lo voglia o no!
Quasi perfetto, perché è molto difficile seguire la sua crescita fisica. Il libro inizia con lei che è poco più che cucciola e poi tutto procede ad una tale velocità che quando arriva la maturazione si rimane spiazzati! Manca, a livello psicologico, quello sviluppo del personaggio che ne farebbe meglio apprezzare l'evoluzione. Ma per il resto, un ritratto come un film di Don Bluth bello maturo dovrebbe essere!