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Markyparky56
Since: Jun, 2024

I read this book back in the '00s when I was living in Scotland, probably mid-to-late, but I can't be exact. The book was written in English, and I got it from my local library. The target audience was Tweens, probably 10-13. It's doubtful it'd be classed as YA for modern audiences; the content wasn't mature enough.
I'm pretty sure the cover was a picture of the main character crossing swords with someone and a big flare of light at the point of impact.
I believe the name of the book was the name of the protagonist, or included their name as a subtitle on the front cover. What that title was is long lost. I was certain it was "Johnny Z" or "Jimmy Z", but having tried everything in that vein (Jimmy, Jonny, Timmy, Tommy, X, Y, and Z), I'm stumped. As far as I remember, the protagonist was named this since he was an orphan, and they didn't know his parent's last name.
The book had a very Douglas Adams feel to it with a wacky futuristic Earth post-ice caps melting, where Earth's cities float, and the culture/fashions have been toyed with by alien races (though they have since stopped messing around, resulting in the current trends). Military uniforms are covered in polkadots and transports are in the shape of starfish. The book is full of fun little asides that explain why things are the way they are, giving contexts for the absurd things which happen.
The setting on Earth is that everything is flooded, with lots of mist and clouds, with everyone living in floating cities. Later, they get a lift to an alien space station, before the MC travels back to earth briefly at the end to save it from destruction.
The book opens with the protagonist being bullied in school. Everyone has these hand-held tractor-beam things that the bully is using to hold something of the main character's out of reach (homework? notebook?). They have silly acronyms for the gadgets, and the MC's one reflects its inferior strength compared to the bully's.
The protagonist is a young boy, or early teen, whose parents are both dead. He doesn't have much going for him and gets bullied a lot.
Every year, the other inhabitants of the galaxy send Earth a message asking them to join their wider community, though Earth refuses. I remember the messages coming down the prime minister/president's chimney. Earth's leader is an important supporting character; they are kind of the MC. Their second in command/deputy is a minor antagonist who tries to seize control of Earth while the leader is away.
The aliens send a message to Earth saying they want to have a tryout for a team of youngsters to save the universe. What is threatening the universe was never revealed, only that they needed to assemble a team. 4 or 5 human children are selected, with the MC being one and his Bully being another. They take off in a space rocket, reach and orbit the moon, before being met by a fedora-shaped ship which transports them to the space station where the selection process (try-outs) will take place.
While in transit, I remember them being kept in big glass bubbles, possibly with a view out into space. At this point, MC is visited by a multicoloured furry alien who ends up being on MC's team during the trials. There is a bit about burgers and how in the future, science has achieved delicious food that tastes like fast food but is nutritious and healthy.
The alien in charge of the trials looked a bit like a kangaroo.
The human children are split up into individual groups. The team the MC ends up on includes the multicoloured furry alien from before, a big three-armed alien, and maybe two others, one of which was a (non-human) girl I think he had a bit of a crush on.
At one point, it's revealed that the space station has some kind of normalisation field which makes everyone the same size, but in fact, the furry alien is actually really big, whilst the three-armed alien is very small. I also remember a rather novel aside where, when it's revealed that basically everywhere on the station is under constant monitoring, the three armed alien gets embarrassed and asks if they were monitoring when it did a number 12 (or some such number), and the book takes time to explain that humans are rare/unique/lucky that they only have to deal with number 1s and number 2s, but doesn't elaborate on what the other 10 possible types are. Witty kiddy toilet humour, for sure. There's no way I, as a pre-teen myself could have been so imaginative to come up with that.
They navigate the station via a series of wormhole-like discs on the walls, which you have to jump/fling/catapult yourself through. Personal size is irrelevant; anything can fit through one of these. These discs come back later as the method through which the MC saves the Earth by placing a pair on either side of the planet for their spaceship to fly through to avoid destroying it.
The selection process takes the form of a series of challenges that they have to train for. I remember one being a relay race in spaceships through an asteroid. Another was a sword fight involving special swords that take 800 years to forge and are passed through the heart of a star. Each sword is the maker's life's work.
In the room where they duel and practice with the swords, there is a diving board "thing" that protrudes over a gap around the edge of the duelling ring. The further along it you walk the more your worst fear feels real. The M Cs greatest fear is the Earth being destroyed. He is told only people with great "inner laft" can make it to the end. MC sneaks in one night and walks the entire length, falling off the end, where he meets his mum and dad in some kind of vision. They talk before he returns to bed. There was some form of repercussion for this since no one is supposed to go into the training room without permission/supervision.
Eventually, after all the challenges are completed and the Bully's team are disqualified for cheating, the MC's team wins. There follows a party, something causes the world leader to have a heart attack, he "dies", but the aliens revive him with a "microwave". There's also something which causes the Kangaroo alien in charge of the whole thing to need to take a rest, and so uses some kind of time-dilation device to take a very long nap without anyone else being affected. If I recall, he then forgets to turn it off, racking up a very expensive electricity bill?
After the party, they return to earth, where the world leader confronts his deputy/stand-in who has tried to seize control and replace him as leader. The world leader ends up getting stabbed. MC then duels the bad guy using those newly acquired sword-fighting skills and beats him, but the world leader actually dies this time. Pretty sure the world leader was a widower and also took his death well.
MC places two of the wormhole discs in space to try and save the Earth from destruction, since the spaceship he and his team have to take to save the universe has to reach super speeds to reach wherever it is they are going, and to reach these speeds it requires a runway that happens to pass through the Earth.
On his return, he chats with the Kangaroo alien (I think this might be where the aside about the time-dilation bit comes up), who offhandedly mentions "laft falls" which are trust falls without anyone behind you but you trust that someone out there truly loves you and their love will catch you. MC suspects "laft" is actually "love" just mispronounced beyond recognition.
They depart, the ship doesn't destroy the earth because of the wormhole discs, and the book ends with the girl on MC's team listening to two others doing "laft falls" with pillows to cushion them (which doesn't work since they aren't trusting). She then does a laft fall whilst thinking about the MC, but it's not revealed if she hits the ground.
Other curious notes:
- There was telepathy and telekinesis. - Terrible fashion sense (polkadot camouflage uniforms was just the beginning) - Doors which required the password "shaushages" - The protagonist's parents were revealed to have been friendly with the aliens but died in some (spaceship?) crash. - I recall there was a sequel in the works/about to be released (pretty sure I found it on Amazon) I don't know if it was to be a duology or a full series
Honestly, at this point, I'm tempted to try writing this book myself and trying to get it published. At least then, even if it's plagiarism I'll have found what I'm plagiarising.
Would love to find this book again, it's driving me crazy that I can remember a story so vividly but can't name it or find it. I've probed Chat GPT and Bing Copilot but neither were any use. Amazon and Abebooks don't show anything useful for the variants of Johnny/Jimmy/Timmy/Tommy X/Y/Z.