THE ACCIDENTAL SPACESHIP

This jokey debut takes too long to get off the ground, but it does feature a few memorable notions and set pieces. Orphaned twins Vernon and Junior Smith wake one morning to find a 700-foot spaceship in their backyard—followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of menacing Pennsylvania Tax Collector Third Class Alton Webershreber, bearing a sales tax bill for $1,800,960.29, due immediately. With the help of Thinker, a vain onboard robot from the future, the twins evade Webershreber long enough to blast off in a bid to raise the money through a bit of interstellar trade. Hunt portrays the twins as expert bargainers (they quickly make a killing selling water to a drought-stricken planet), but he commits the rookie mistake of explaining too much at the beginning, and gets so wrapped up in lampooning adults that he sometimes forgets to keep the story moving along. Toward the end, Thinker makes a snide comment about how primitive humans haven’t discovered yet that Levity counteracts Gravity. This intriguing principle is certainly in operation here, but so weakly that the ride’s a bumpy one. Sequels probable. (Science fiction. 9-11)