Norby

Rating:
Summary: The first in The Norby series for juveniles.
Review: This is the first volume in a series of short science fiction novels for young teenagers about a 14-year-old Space Academy cadet, Jeff Wells, and his unusual robot, Norby. Norby has skills that other robots lack, apparently due to the incorporation of alien parts in his construction. In this first book of the series, Jeff and Norby foil a plot of a villian to take over the Solar System. Norby discovers he has "anti-gravity" capabilities as well as the ability to travel through "hyperspace" and great distances. [Isaac Asimov, in another book, apologizes for using antigravity in this series: he felt that it represented poor science.] The second book in the series is "Norby's Other Secret," published in 1984. These two books were latered reissued as "The Norby Chronicles."