Line #46 Literature/Jumper


1	''Jumper'' is a 1992 ComingOfAgeStory sci-fi story by Steven Gould about a teenager, David Rice, who finds out he can {{teleport\|ation}} and his experiences with the consequences and limitations of his ability. After escaping his abusive drunk of a father, he takes some less than savory measures to reestablish himself in New York City and begins a relationship with a woman named Millie while establishing jump points around the globe and a safe house in a desert sinkhole. After a tragedy during a hijacking, he gives focus to his ability by interfering in other attacks in an effort to find a particular terrorist, attracting the attention of the NSA, who is extremely interested in someone who can get from Washington DC to Algeria in the time it takes to watch a movie. Constitutional violations ensue and the NSA gets shut down by the courts after harassing Millie and nearly capturing Davy, while he comes to terms with his father and the terrorist in a heated confrontation with both.
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3	In 2004, a sequel called ''Reflex'' was released where Davy (now moonlighting for the government 10 years later after reaching an understanding) is kidnapped by a sinister conspiracy that has deeply penetrated the government. Millie must track him down and find allies, but first she has to get out of the safehouse, which ends up revealing that she has 'caught' the ability to teleport as well. David finds out new aspects of his ability thanks to the scientific testing by his captors, who are none too pleased with his insistence on morality no matter how much they torture and condition him to obey. Millie helps him escape and they capture the man who seems to be the head of the conspiracy, but it turns out it goes much deeper than they realized.
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5	Inspired [[Film/{{Jumper}} a 2008 film]], and the author of the series wrote a companion novel, in the film canon, ''Griffin's Story''.
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7	Two more books were released in 2013 and 2014 to complete the series from the perspective of their 15 year old daughter, Cent. After she demonstrates the ability to jump [[DieOrFly during an avalanche]] in ''Impulse'', her parents give in to her desire to try the high school life in New Mexico. She finds a boyfriend and friends, but has difficulties due to the seclusion of her previous life (she and her parents participated in lots of humanitarian aid, but home was one safehouse or another), her intelligence, the local criminal element, and her inability to stay out of trouble. The conspiracy hones in on her, and the family has to retreat.
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9	A couple years later, ''Exo'' wraps up the series with 17 year old Cent now pursuing a space program using her ability to teleport to skip the whole "needing a spaceship" thing. She still needs a spacesuit, though, and assembles a crew of former and new friends to operate one, and run test flights while being insistent about terminology like 'womanned spaceflight'. Space Command turns out to be marginally more chill than the NSA was about the new person in space that keeps moving weirdly and has a very small radar return, and eventually requests her assistance in getting a cosmonaut with a medical emergency off of the International Space Station. In doing so, she ends up going public as a teleporter and begins business moving anything she can carry into space, eventually establishing her own space habitat. The conspiracy is also interested, of course, and makes some final moves that get their plotline wrapped up.
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11	On Jun 6, 2018 an adaptation of the story called ''Series/Impulse2018'' was released as a full-length series by Platform/YouTube Red.
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14	!!''Jumper'' contains examples of:
15	* AbusiveParents: A major subplot of the book. Davy leaves his abusive father and has to come to terms with how the abuse had affected his and his mother's life. Leaving home was why he even Jumped in the first place!
16	* TheArtifact: The NebulousEvilOrganization really have very little to do with the plot of ''Exo''. They interfere at a distance, shoot a missile to [[spoiler: destroy the Rice home]], then show up [[spoiler: and are taken out within a couple of chapters]] essentially to avert WhatHappenedToTheMouse. ''Exo'' is instead about Cent's space program.
17	* AccidentallyRealFakeAddress: David Rice is on the receiving end of this. He's waiting for a scheduled phone call from his Missing Mom, and starts getting repeated calls from a man looking for a woman he met at a club who gave him "her" number (i.e. a fake one that happened to be David's). David tells him twice that he's got the wrong number, but the man doesn't get the hint. The third time the man calls, David affects a deep, drunken voice and tells him the woman is dead, which gets the calls to stop.
18	* AnonymousPublicPhoneCall: Davy makes a few calls to his girlfriend Millie from payphones in an attempt to make it difficult for the government to track him, even at one point paying a homeless woman so that she can call Millie in his place.
19	* AttemptedRape: Davy, by a trucker. It's the second time he Jumps.
20	* AuthorAppeal: At one point in the novel, a former classmate who tried to seduce Davy while drunk later hawks Alanon (Alcoholics Anonymous... for the affected family and friends). Davy is a complete teetotaler, and often [[NiceToTheWaiter tips generously]] or tries to help out those who are less fortunate. Apparently becomes something of a character ''weakness'' in the sequel, ''Reflex'', but it's still heavily present.
21	** In later books, the protagonists are heavily involved in humanitarian work - mildly in ''Reflex'', where Davy places tight constrictions on what jobs he'll do for the NSA and personally intervenes in multiple homeless peoples lives, then with dedication to larger causes after TheConspiracy precludes government work. A short story shows David and Millie intervening in a drought stricken area, and multiple stories have them move supplies, resources, and people to where they're needed.
22	** In the last two books, Cent serves as a mouthpiece for the author's opinions on various identity politics debates.
23	* CallingTheOldManOut: After spending the whole novel afraid or resenting his father... Davy Jumps the old man to his mother's grave, [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech tells him why he sucks]] and Jumps him to a residential treatment facility with the bill pre-paid. It is left realistically unclear whether he'll sober up for good.
24	* ContagiousPowers: One of the requirements for learning to teleport is to have been teleported several times by someone else.
25	* CutLexLuthorACheck: Davy ''starts'' by robbing a bank[[note]]he tries to get a legit job, but is underage with no high school diploma, birth certificate, or social security number[[/note]], but later on gets legitimate work doing jumps for the NSA that pays even better than disappearing money from the bank. He still doesn't miss the opportunity to pocket a bit of bad-guy cash when the opportunity presents itself, though. This is deconstructed when a conspiracy sets its sights on him, since they conclude there's no way they could simply hire him to do their dirty work due to his ethical restrictions and copious cash, and jump straight to kidnapping and murder. Even if you can use your powers legitimately, they can still have many ''illicit'' uses, and criminals [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse aren't big on being told no]].
26	* DarkActionGirl: Hyacinth Pope, a FemmeFatale working for the NebulousEvilOrganization, is one of these.
27	* DieOrFly: David first Jumps to escape a beating from his father.
28	** In the second book, ''Reflex'', Millie learns to Jump when she falls off a hundred-foot cliff.
29	*** In the third book, ''Impulse'', their daughter, Cent, learns to Jump to escape an avalanche.
30	* DiscOneFinalBoss: In ''Reflex'', [[spoiler:Lawrence Simons looks for most of the novel to be the BigBad but at the end is shown to have an implant himself, making it clear he was just a decoy figurehead for the NebulousEvilOrganization]].
31	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: In ''Impulse'', we learn everything we need to know about Cent before we even meet her based on this note she pastes on her bedroom door.
32	--> Help! I'm being held captive by two teleporting aliens. Please send friends. Will accept ice cream.
33	* FuneralBanishment: After David's MissingMom is [[spoiler:murdered in a terrorist attack]] shortly after they reconnected and started repairing their relationship, his abusive father who drove her away shows up at her funeral. David is furious, jumps him back to his house, and then returns and tells anyone who asks that his dad "left".
34	* GenreDeconstruction: The first book is a takedown of the {{Superhero}}. An ordinary gifted-but-abused teenager given fantastic powers would not put on a costume and fight crime; he'd steal himself a pile of cash, live a comfortable life, try to get laid, and make a bunch of mistakes that nearly get him tossed in jail. He only later gets into superheroics (first to punish a wife-beater, then to stop airplane hijackings) for personal reasons. Furthermore, when the GovernmentConspiracy tries to capture him, he attacks them as much through the legal system as by being impossible to catch, and they eventually come to a mutual understanding. The series moves away from this in later books.
35	* GiveGeeksAChance: Davy, having grown up in second-hand clothes with no money for social activities and a father who expected him home to do chores, is not exactly the most popular or socially adept guy, but he still spent every spare minute reading even when it risked a beating. When he finally hooks up with lovely college student Millie, she is impressed enough to question whether it's really his first time. Davy replies that he's ''very'' well-read.
36	* GovernmentConspiracy:
37	** In the first book, the NSA acts a lot like this. It's played fairly realistically - the NSA are an ordinary government intelligence agency that want to understand how the heck David is teleporting and force him to work for them (or neutralize him as a potential threat), and are stepping outside of their constitutional authority to make it happen. Also, going to the courts is in fact a reasonable response to their illegal activities (assuming you have someone on the outside who knows that they've done something).
38	** In the later books, government agencies are more benign or actively helpful, with their size and hierarchy instead exploited by a business conspiracy for its ends. Two prominent NSA agents who were antagonists in the first book are outright allies in the second book, with one dying attempting to protect Davy, and the FBI is treated as largely incorruptible (to the point that they only back off when the White House Chief of Staff orders it and the Agent In Charge and her boss are set up). Dozens of agents from the NSA and FBI are deployed in a sincere effort to back up Millie, but as leaks occur and the NSA as an organization eventually turns on her, people on the ground and other organizations are still benevolent.
39	** In the third and fourth books, the government still gets used by the conspiracy, but there are severe consequences when it happens, with intensive investigations launched when a [[spoiler:Predator drone from Italy destroys their house in Canada]]. In the third book, the conspiracy uses local criminals because they can't use the government to do their dirty work. Much of this can be ascribed to the real world evolution of the government and the authors perspective, from 1992 to 2005 to 2013 and 2014.
40	* HighAltitudeInterrogation: Overlaps with NotTheFallThatKillsYou. Davey does this to [[spoiler:the terrorist who killed his mother]] but in a particularly nasty way. Davey can teleport, so he teleports the guy to the top of the World Trade Center, drops him, and teleports down to catch him just before he hits the ground. Then he does it again, and again, letting him get closer to the ground with each drop...
41	* HomoeroticSubtext: Hyacinth's actions can be interpreted as her being ''really'' [[PsychoLesbian into Cent]] in ''Exo''. Cent certainly interprets them that way.
42	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: OneWordTitle: ''Jumper'', ''Reflex'', ''Impulse'', and ''Exo''.
43	* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Hyacinth Pope, previously TheVamp in ''Reflex'', indulges in this in ''Exo'' with Cent, to the point of coming across as a PsychoLesbian. Cent helpfully notes this by pointing out to readers her captor's "hungry posture" and "the creepy way she leaned toward me".
44	* IJustWantToBeNormal: Once she's able to jump, Cent puts her foot down and tells her parents that she is going to go to school and be a regular teenager [[IJustWantToHaveFriends with regular friends]]. By the end, the "normal life" part doesn't work out, but she does manage to make some friends. [[BrickJoke She's still waiting on the ice cream, though]].
45	* InertiaIsACruelMistress: Averted. Every time Davy jumps, his momentum is cancelled.
46	** In the third book, ''Impulse'', Davey's daughter, Cent, figures out how to ''un-cancel'' this momentum, granting her very temporary boosts of SuperSpeed and SuperStrength.
47	%%* {{Intangibility}}: It's discovered that whenever Davy jumps he opens a gateway for about a fifth of a second. Taken to the next level in book 2 when he works out how to "twin" himself, basically opening a Davy-shaped hole between any two locations.
48	* KarmaHoudini: A recurring theme for Hyacinth Pope, who escapes the consequences of her villainy completely scot-free in ''Reflex'' and ''Impulse''.
49	* LatexSpaceSuit: In ''Exo'', Cent uses the family's money to invest in the development of one of these to fulfill her dream of space flight. The main sticking point is that the suit is impossible to get on in the first place. [[spoiler:Cent can teleport into it, though.]]
50	* MagiciansAreWizards: Davy goes to see a magician who he suspects is another teleporter but he turns out not to be.
51	* {{Masquerade}}: Not strictly applied, but Davy tries to keep a low profile. It doesn't work very well - the government figures out that something's up almost immediately. [[spoiler: In ''Exo'', Cent decides to abandon secrecy, and goes public as Space Girl.]]
52	* MenAreStrongWomenArePretty: Cent's ever-observant mind objects to the [=YouTube=] comments about how hot "Space Girl" is, because of this trope. It doesn't matter that she's a female astronaut lifting satellites into orbit; because she's a girl, her attractiveness is ''always'' relevant.
53	* MissingMom: Davy's mom leaves father and son because of the abuse. Just when she and Davy are starting to get reacquainted, [[spoiler:she is killed in a terrorist attack]].
54	* MundaneUtility:
55	** Davy uses Jumping to travel the world and make moving faster. After the TimeSkip before ''Reflex'' he has an off-the-books job with the US government inserting intelligence agents, and in ''Impulse'' he and Millie perform deliveries to refugees and victims of natural disasters in the Third World.
56	** Cent applies this trope with ''style'', using her power to become a one-woman space program. This overlaps with {{Magitek}}, as Cent uses teleportation instead of rocketry to launch satellites.
57	* NebulousEvilOrganization: One goes by various names and tries to kidnap and brainwash the Jumpers in the later three books. They're in competition with the NSA, but unlike the latter, aren't really answerable to the courts because they officially don't exist. Their goals are never revealed, but they want Jumpers who can pull off assassinations for them (and really don't like Davy's pacifism). [[spoiler: They go down like punks once they kidnap Cent.]]
58	* ObliviouslySuperpowered: ''Jumper'' kicks off with Davy unconsciously using his teleportation powers to escape being beaten by his father. However, because he only Jumped into the fiction section of his local public library, Davy initially thinks he just suffered a [[MissingTime trauma-induced blackout]] and simply walked to the library before he regained awareness. He immediately follows this up by running away from home, so he doesn't realize the truth until two weeks later, when a truck driver he was hitchhiking with [[AttemptedRape tries to rape him]] - and Davy instinctively Jumps all the way back to the library, well after closing time, making it abundantly clear to him that this wasn't a blackout.
59	* ObstructiveBureaucrat:
60	** Subverted. General Sterling in ''Exo'' is introduced as a bit of a pompous ass, trying to muscle in and force Cent to play by "the rules" in orbit, but he's having a reasonable reaction to some unknown player making space launches using what appears to be stealth technology, and Cent isn't doing herself any favors by operating in such secrecy. Once he knows who she is, how she operates and that she's not going an enemy agent of some kind, he mellows out significantly.
61	** Sergei is a Roscosmos apparatchik who wanted to be a cosmonaut, and takes perverse pleasure in coming to America just to tell Grebenchekov that he's not allowed to go into space again. Cent dumps him on his backside.
62	%%* OlderSidekick: Millie, sort of.
63	* PhraseCatcher: Cent repeatedly gets "This is no way to run a space program!" from exasperated authority figures.
64	* PowerProfitPotential: Davy ''starts'' by using his teleportation powers to rob a bank vault, though he has the excuse of being a newly homeless teenager with no legal identity. He later gets a legitimate, very lucrative job doing jumps for the NSA. This works against him when a criminal conspiracy sets its sights on him: he has no financial reason to join them, so they resort to AnOfferYouCantRefuse.
65	* RandomlyGifted: As far as he knows, Davy is the only jumper in existence. [[spoiler: At least until book 2.]]
66	* TheReliableOne: In ''Exo'', Cory Matoska fits this role for Cent. Cent is a bit of a MadScientist who prefers to fly by the seat of her pants, and Cory's the one who makes sure that she follows the checklist and does her math when she's doing something new.
67	* RestrainingBolt: Part of an ongoing arc beginning in ''Reflex''; an unnamed NebulousEvilOrganisation implants Davy with a ShockCollar that ''[[AgonyBeam directly stimulates]] [[BrownNote his synpathetic nervous system]]'' on command or when he Jumps outside safe zones - which doubles as an ExplosiveLeash as continued stimulation could easily kill him. [[spoiler:Davy discovers that every member of the [=NEO=] has similar implants - and are [[TwoPlusTortureMakesFive pain-conditioned to believe they requested the implants as proof of loyalty]]. This extends even to the old man initially assumed to be the BigBad - who is killed in the final confrontation of ''Reflex'' [[FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer without naming his superiors]]. They're still at large in ''Impulse'', breaking out the FemmeFatale who nearly seduced Davy in ''Reflex'', who proceeds to challenge Cent.]]
68	* RussianGuySuffersMost: Alluded to obliquely. When chatting with Flight Engineer Grebenchekov, Cent says that she could have taken ObstructiveBureaucrat Sergei to Australia, but the weather there is too nice. Grebenchekov asks her if she's ''sure'' she's not Russian.
69	* ShameIfSomethingHappened: Used word-for-word when Cent talks about the possibility of de-orbiting government spy satellites, costing the United States billions of dollars. Cent is much more active and aggressive about keeping the [[GovernmentConspiracy alphabet soup]] honest than Davy was, since she knows from her father's experience that government agencies behave about as well as they're forced to.
70	* ShockingMoments: InUniverse, Cent's first sight of the International Space Station is described essentially as a religious experience.
71	* ShownTheirWork: The author knows quite a bit about the current state of space travel, and that knowledge (along with speculation on how teleportation would help) is important to the plot of ''Exo''.
72	* StrawFeminist: Cent is rather aggressively feminist, to the point of halting conversations to insist on womanned, not manned, as a term for her ventures and insisting that her first interview be with a woman reporter, but was not deliberately written by Gould to be one of these. Whether she comes across as a reasonable subversion of this trope or an unwitting example of it depends largely on the reader.
73	* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: Davy ''studies'' the jumping power and how it works, and he and Millie gradually figure out new applications through the use of "what happens if I try this?" Cent, TeenGenius that she is, puts her own spins on the ability.
74	* TapOnTheHead: How David gets mugged shortly after arriving in New York.
75	* TeenGenius: Cent is able to develop new teleportation techniques while in high school, and at eighteen, is able to work alongside ''real'' Ph.Ds to launch a space program. She's not just doing grunt work, either - Apex Orbital is her show, and she makes knowledgeable decisions on all aspects of it.
76	* TeleportationWithDrawbacks: Jumper and its sequels are about a man, David Rice (and, in the ensuing decades, his wife Millie and daughter Cent, because apparently teleportation is catching) who can teleport to any location he can remember clearly. He remains unclear on why he can do so, despite willing and unwilling participation in research of his ability, but the initial trigger appears to be an extreme fight or flight experience (in order by person, rape, falling, and avalanche). Other nuances also come into play, such as the preservation of momentum through 'jumps', the RequiredSecondaryPowers that allow them to jump with them anything they can lift (therefore leaving things they 'can't' lift as potential restraints) and the utilization of the hole in space created to pour water, air, sand, and vacuum from one place into another. It also explores the ethical implications to a limited degree, as David and family have a strict no killing policy, but he initially uses his powers to rob a bank and later uses them as a one man infil/exfil team for the government (with, again, tight restrictions).
77	* TelevisionPortal: Variation, David has to watch videos of places he hasn't visited in a while if he wants to teleport there.
78	* ThinkingUpPortals: Watching videos of David teleporting frame by frame shows that he makes a "David shaped doorway" that moves around him.
79	* ThouShaltNotKill: Davy is unwilling to kill anyone. Even terrorists, NSA agents, or his dad - though he comes really close with Dad. Millie largely follows his lead. Cent? Nope. When she's [[spoiler:captured by the NebulousEvilOrganization]] and she and Joe are threatened, she almost ''immediately'' uses deadly force to free herself.
80	* TookALevelInBadass: Davy himself.
81	* TheVamp: Hyacinth attempts to seduce Davy in ''Reflex'' and starts acting like a PsychoLesbian in ''Exo'' when she has Cent at her mercy.
82	* VillainDecay: The NebulousEvilOrganization introduced in ''Reflex'' [[spoiler:are dismantled in frankly ridiculous fashion to sell Cent's LittleMissBadass credentials]].
83	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Granted, it's 3 books and nearly 30 years later, but no one mentions Davy's promise to give a reporter from the first book the exclusive if and when teleporting goes public after Cent very publicly saves a cosmonaut.
84	* WifeBasherBasher: David in the book. Though it's a very personal example because his father used to beat him and his mother.
85	* YouKilledMyFather: When Islamic terrorists kill his mother, Davy is inspired to start fighting airplane hijackers in hopes of finding the man responsible for her death.

Context Literature / Jumper