While fun and educational to read as a whole, Unwise Child has technical problems that dilute its strength as a novel. It is an uneasy marriage of too many mutually-exclusive elements; it attempts to simultaneously be a hardbitten detective story, a philosophical piece about man versus machine, a science fiction adventure for juveniles, and a romantic story of true love. Any two of these elements taken together would make a challenging basis for such a short novel. Four major changes of locale, from New York City to the Antarctic, then to shipboard for a long interstellar journey, to land on an exotic planet, is again too much. Add to this an invented future history and futuristic hardware and there is enough subject matter for three novels of Unwise Child's length.

The punchy writing style and simple vocabulary are appropriate for the juvenile level, but the philosophical questions raised...