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I have been trying to recall the title & author of a juvenile science fiction novel I borrowed from my public library in the early 80s.

The protagonist had or wanted a backpack flying wings and houses were equipped with some kind of anti-gravity tech and people could move anywhere.

The closest I found was Bob Shaw’s Vertigo but can’t find even an excerpt to verify the floating homes or describe the wings to see if it stirs memories. It was also "juvenile", as I was in 6th or 7th grade (11-13 years old). I know I read Anderson’s Shield around this same time.

I had thought it was Andre Norton, but I might be mixing recall of novels. Norton had been the author of a story of a young man that traveled between dimensions to a world that seemed in ruins, in winter, and there had been a large animal stalking him.

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  • Hi, welcome to SF&F! Lots of detail here, but please check out the suggestions in case they can help trigger any additional memories to edit in.
    – DavidW
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 4:45
  • Vertigo has not wings, but antigrav backpacks. There are no floating houses, but there is a hotel on a tall stalk. It's not a juvenile. Commented May 25, 2019 at 12:17
  • Also, there was a short version of Vertigo (or maybe a prequel?) called "A Little Night Flying". You can read it online here: archive.org/details/1974-08_IF/page/n27 and see if that sparks any memories. Commented May 25, 2019 at 13:20
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    Thanks, will check into. I sherlocked that Vertigo had flying but was more adult oriented and the characters I can recall were young. I wispily recall that one character was wanting to get wings like another had so there must be another method to get up to the houses.
    – Tc Bows
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 14:42

1 Answer 1

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The book you describe matches One on Me, by Tim Huntley--with one huge caveat, which I'll get to in a moment.

One on Me was published by DAW in 1980. It's got spherical flying houses, and personal flying suits with anti-gravity lifters and wings. The main character is a teenager who desperately wants his own wings. Well, read the blurb from the back cover:

I was the last kid born on Earth - and an embarrassment to my mother. I grew up on a diet of Tri-D serials, wild parties, and screwball "uncles". All I wanted was to get my own wings and have the endless ball that everyone was entitled to in that air-borne Utopia.

But since Mom hadn't registered my birth with the computers, that was a problem. So she made a deal with me - agree to get a real education and I would earn my flying wings and all the rest.

However there was the usual catch. The end product of my eccentric schoolmaster, of the primitive girl who taught me even more, and of the relics of the past that were coming to life around me was a cosmic joke. On me, sure, but what the playboy world didn't know was that ultimately the joke was going to be on them. And it wouldn't be funny!

Check out the cover art. It's a pretty accurate depiction of the story. You can see the floating houses and the people wearing wings.

Cover art for One on Me by Tim Huntley: two humans wearing winged suits flying above a green forest, with spherical floating houses behind them, and a red sky in the background

The big caveat is that this is not a juvenile. Not even close. There's child abuse and rape and incest and vomiting and defecating and it's just one big stream of vulgarity and obscenity.

One On Me is an exercise in shock and disgust. It revels in perversion, abuse, and neglect. It glorifies the depraved and indecent. It celebrates the scatalogical. (Huntley tells in stomach-churning detail about the character's bowel movements--not once, but multiple times.) This book is vulgar and gross, not progressively transgressive.

...

Marcus Aurelius Hornblower, aka Mark, is the victim of the morally bankrupt Free Market. He is the first child born in hundreds of years. He's a mistake, and unwanted. His mother can't kill him--that would earn her a few minutes of public shaming on prime time TV--but she abuses him. From the time he's a baby she keeps him confined indoors, often locked into a large bathroom. He's denied friends. He's denied human touch. When he's very young his mother refuses to speak to him for years at a time, caring for him only through computers and robots. Later his mother and aunts and uncles sexually abuse him. He's forced to watch pornography. Terrorized at night. Tortured and mock executed for the amusement of adults.

At nineteen years old he can't read or write. He can scarcely speak. Never been to school. Never left his home. Is completely dependent upon his abusers for his every need. He's unable to control basic bodily functions: he defecates and vomits everywhere.

Mark's mere existence is a burden and shame to his family, and he knows the only reason his mother didn't murder him is because it's a crime that would bring her embarrassment.

When he's nineteen, his mother and uncles abandon him in a empty field in North America.

...

Fortunately, [Mark] quickly stumbles across a young woman. Her name is Synthetica, and her upbringing was similar to Mark's, with one exception: her father raised her outdoors and taught her survival skills. Like Mark though, she was deprived of human companionship and sexually abused. She was forced to be her father's lover. As a result, she's got issues: she's impulsive and promiscuous and, well, it's all obscene and vomit-inducing.

Possibly if a person only looked at the cover and read the blurb on the back, they could mistakenly assume it's a YA book--the main character calls himself a kid and talks about his mom and his uncles and about going to school. But there's no way--no possible way--a young teenager could read One on Me and mistake it for a YA book.

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    Interesting. Could this be the answer to this question? scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/216461/… Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 16:32
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    Yes, absolutely. It matches that question almost perfectly.
    – Kenny
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 16:48
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    Having read the link your provided, I agree. I remember his strange Uncle Theo, who, if memory serves, had his body modified to make himself a more natural flier. Well, then, please write it up as an answer and I will check it off. Another lost book found! Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 17:27
  • Excellent. I'll write it up this afternoon after church.
    – Kenny
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 17:50

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