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Only You Can Save Mankind

Only You Can Save Mankind

FantasyScience Fiction
Pages
240
Published
2005
Language
English

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell is playing a computer game in which he shoots alien spacecraft — until the aliens in the game contact him and surrender. They do not want to be destroyed any more. Johnny must escort the fleet to the edge of the game so they can escape, while navigating a world that thinks it is entirely normal to celebrate the Gulf War on television and shoot fictional aliens until breakfast. A children's novel about what it means to be good in a world full of games where the consequences are not supposed to count.

Prose complexity
2/10

Vibe

FunnyThought-ProvokingAdventurousSatirical
Reluctant HeroQuestSurvivalComing of AgeFirst Contact

Genres

Fantasy Science Fiction Young Adult Humor

About the author

T
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English author best known for the Discworld series, a sequence of forty-one comic fantasy novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Across four decades, the Discworld grew from a parody of sword-and-sorcery fantasy into one of the most sustained works of social satire in English literature, examining politics, religion, science, gender, race, capitalism, and the nature of stories themselves. Pra...

Characters

Johnny MaxwellProtagonist

An ordinary twelve-year-old who takes fictional aliens seriously in a world that does not, and discovers this is harder than it sounds.

The ScreeWee CaptainSupporting

The alien commander who makes the decision to surrender — asking for something the game was not designed to allow.

KirstySupporting

Johnny's schoolmate — competitive, capable, and more useful in the game than Johnny when she gets there.

All characters in Only You Can Save Mankind

Frequently asked questions

  • Is Only You Can Save Mankind a Discworld novel?

    No. It is the first book in the standalone Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, set in the contemporary real world with no Discworld connection.

  • When was it published?

    First published in 1992 by Doubleday. The novel is partly a response to the Gulf War (1990–91) and the televised nature of that conflict.

  • What is the Gulf War connection?

    The novel was written during and immediately after the Gulf War, when news coverage presented military action in a way that Pratchett found uncomfortably similar to video game visuals. Johnny's home life includes a television that is always showing the war. The parallel between shooting game aliens and watching real conflict is central to the book's argument.

  • What age group is this aimed at?

    Middle grade to early young adult — roughly 10–14. The themes (media violence, moral seriousness in play, dealing with parental separation) are handled with unusual depth for the genre.

  • Does Johnny appear in other books?

    Yes — Johnny Maxwell is the protagonist of three novels: Only You Can Save Mankind (1992), Johnny and the Dead (1993), and Johnny and the Bomb (1996).

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