Skip to main content

story identification - Science fiction book about an alien boy with two hearts


I was reminded of this when reading the title of Is the Doctor's Second Heart artificial? of a book I read as a child, somewhere in the late 1980s to the early 1990s in Ashland, Kentucky. It was a paperback, checked out from the library, that I think had a young boy on the cover, maybe with black hair, with lightning flashing in the background. It was of a pretty typical length for a paperback, somewhere between 100 and 200 pages.


The premise was that an alien boy is taken in by a family on Earth. I don't remember why he was on Earth or how he got there. I want to say he had dark hair with a white streak. His main peculiarity was that he had two hearts, something that I believe was verified in the book by them listening at his chest and hearing both beating. I think he had some ability to control electricity, part of what was depicted on the cover. Something happens which makes his heart stop (possibly tied to the aforementioned lightning) and they think he's dead, but then the second heart starts beating and he comes back to life).


Unfortunately, the only other thing I remember is a vague idea that the title was something like "The Boy with Two Hearts", but there's no such book on ISFDB, and it's not this one, which comes up when I Google search for that title.




Answer



The Boy Who Saved Earth by Jim Slater.


Summary:



He came from another planet. Unfortunately he did not come alone… When evil alien forces attack Earth and intend to destroy it, Marcou – the 14-year old from outer space – must use his telepathic powers and ultra ray secret weapon to try to stop them.



One of the Goodreads reviewers says:



I remember reading this as a kid back in the 90s. Although I don't remember much about the plot anymore (except that he saved Earth, of course), I remember enjoying reading this book and giving me a taste of what sci-fi has to offer and for that I always appreciate this book. This is probably out of print now but I was prompted to look up this book here on Goodreads after seeing a picture of two hearts in an alien somewhere on the web because the alien boy has two hearts! I also, for some reason, have never forgotten the last line of this book which is "grass might grow on Gundra (the home planet of the boy)."




And the cover from Amazon fits perfectly!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...