A review of Jupiter Project by Gregory Benford 1975, reprinted recently $5.99 Avon/Eos 195 pages IBSN: 0-380-79057-2 A smart, hard-working boy comes of age in a strange, stifling-yet-freeing environment. No, it's not high school, it's space---a floating space station around Jupiter. Avon has been reissuing Benford's earlier works recently to coincide with his excellent new book _COSM_. That's good news for a more recent generation, but SF fans with gray hair will already know Benford's _Artifact_ and the reviewed selection which is an even earlier work called _Jupiter Project_. _Project_'s protagonist, Matt, is the son of one of a small cadre of research scientists who, under the domain of an international scientific organization ISA, have set out to study Jupiter. They live in the Can, which is a research station that just barely clings to life in orbit around Jupiter. Matt tours much of the station as the story progresses, as well as the life-dome on Ganymede; his story is part travellogue, part life lessons. As time passes, ISA takes out its politcal failures on its projects---soon the scientists are called back and tensions are running high about whether to fly back to economically depressed Earth or stay in the Can and fight it out. Meanwhile, another teenaged girl on the station is suddenly attracting Matt's attention. The story is familiarly Benfordesque---scientifically-savvy character explores his environment while discovering both new things about the universe and himself. It's handled well, much better than the rougher _Artifact_. However, this story is no depthier than the plot of a short story if it weren't woven with a fairly clear reification of a Jupiter research colony. For me, it's interesting to compare this to the realities 20+ years later. His space station has the ring of truth about it even if some of his technology predictions haven't quite come true yet (like superconductors and fusion power). I suppose 7 years after man walked on the moon, it seemed likely that he was going to be out to Jupiter in the not-to-distant future. Moreover, a space station near Jupiter is highly unlikely in comparison to a base on the Moon or Mars---Jupiter, if you pardon my French, is way the heck out there. Like, *way* out there. Since without heavy automation, it takes around 5 astronauts to grow food for 4, it's completely impractical to send anyone to Jupiter. Benford's guess at human-computer interaction is wildly wrong; he fails, as would I in 1975, to see the stunning rise of microcomputers and micro-microcomputers. I always love it in vintage SF when heroes whip out clipboards and papers in space to do some calculations---it's like no one dreamed a digital calculator could ever be small enough to fit on your watch, or considered a tool like Mathematica. I got my wish---our hero Matt grabs for the dead trees and ink when he needs to do some figuring. (The moment when Matt's buddies reveal some home-grown computer porn is particularly funny; as if porn *wasn't* one of the first things to find its way on the Internet, including the sort of "Virtual Valerie" program mentioned here.) Benford's vision for global economical collapse, which only appears at the periphery, is also one out of date. "Big Iron" computers, like the IBM 3081s and other room-sized monsters, required medium-to-large bureaucracies to operate; compute time was expensive and monitored down to the second. Thus, in Benford's future, the number of government-funded "paper-pushing bureaucrats" exceeds the number of people producing useful economic stuff. I can see where that prediction came from. Now, boundless computing power is available for stunning creative projects that are being created in Silicon Valley almost faster than they can be named, and a global marketplace is forcing even bloated government bureaucracies to slice their numbers of faceless functionaries back. And, of course, paper is disappearing and being replaced by email, so soon there will be much less paper to push. The glaring prediction that Benford fumbled, however, was not in the economics, tech, or science, but his total failure to guess at the success of the women's liberation movement in both space programs and on Earth. In this book, women are sort of skilled extras---they generally aren't scientists but wives who have followed their husbands on the grand adventure to Jupiter, though the smart ones have found ways to contribute to the running of the station. Matt's understanding of women is all about the Unshakeable Rift Between the Sexes and how society drags boys and girls into entirely separate societies. In the 90s, we have the WNBA, female space shuttle pilots, and my parents encouraging me to move in with my girlfriend (now my wife) at the tender age of 21. Also, the idea that a woman would be sent in space more for the mental stability of her husband than for her contributions is preposterous in the 90s. I know numerous PhD husband/wife scientific or technical pairs, both in cross fields like biology and physics and in esoteric space-based technica as two pairs I know who are radio telescope designers. Just about all of them would leap at a chance to go to Jupiter. Shannon Lucid currently holds the record for longest American in space---a woman who separated from her family for years to make her career in space happen. The social scene on the Can reminded me of Princeton's grudging position statement when they reluctantly allowed women into the undergraduate body in the mid-1970s, citing something to the effect that without women, the campus is ineffective in attracting "the best students," which means smart men. Well, at least Benford learned; his heroine in _COSM_ two decades later is a headstrong female physicist very much like the ones I know. All that said (and my liberal rantings aside), it's a good read, if a little like a good Heinlein juvenile. I like to see people thinking about space and about living in space mostly because I want to live there too, and this book delivered the goods quickly and cleanly. Teenaged SFers (especially boys) will cotton to the storyline a little more than older fans. I think the story aged well because it's about characters in motion at its heart, and though technology and society might change, people sure don't.