Steven Gould Books In Order

Publication Order of 7th Sigma Books

Publication Order of Jumper Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Steven Gould is a young adult, fantasy, and science fiction author best known for the “Jumper” series of novels. Gould is the son to James and Carita Gould and was born in Arizona in the small town of Fort Huachuca. As a child born to an Army officer, he moved around a lot though he still remembers their life in Hawaii when he was a teen as it was at this time that he became a proficient scuba diver. Once he was done with high school he went to Texas A&M University hence the reason he sets much of his works in the state. As a university student, Gould went to many writing conventions but he fondly remembers attending College Station’s Aggiecon, his first-ever science fiction convention. He went on to undertake a leadership role as director of the convention in 1975. His first ever piece of fiction was a short story that was rejected by Ben Bova the editor of Analog who nevertheless asked to see any writing he did in the future. In 1979 he submitted to Aggiecon “The Touch of Their Eyes” his second short story. Theodore Sturgeon who was one of the editors attending the convention loved it so much that he read it aloud and recommended that Gould submit it to the then editor of “Analog,” Stan Schmidt. Schmidt accepted the story that then appeared in the 1980 edition of “Analog.”

After publishing his first novel, he grew in leaps and bound and between 1986 and 1989 was the south/central director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He was also a guest tutor at Texas A&M and served as SFWA president between 2013 and 2015. Over the years, he has won many awards including the Hal Clement Young Adult Award for Science Fiction for the novel “Wildside” that also got a Prometheus Award nomination. He has also been nominated for the Nebula once for his short stories and for the Hugo twice. Steve has always loved martial arts from when he was a teenager and is a practitioner of aikido which he also teaches. He has included the martial art in his novels Helm and 7th Sigma in which his protagonists become masters of the aikido. Given his experiences in scuba diving, he also includes it in some scenes in “Blind Waves” and “Greenwar.” Steven Gould has had his fair share of controversy as his debut novel “Jumper” made the list of the 100 most banned titles of the decade by the American Library Association. Despite the ban, the novel went on to become a huge success and was even made into a feature film named “Jumper” that featured Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Rachel Bilson, and Jamie Bell as the leads. “Impulse” the third novel in the Jumper series was also adapted into TV series that debuted on YouTube Red in 2018. This was not the first time for Gould to work on TV since he was approached to write five sequels to the Avatar movies by James Cameron. He is also contracted to write the five novels and provide creative direction for the movies. He currently lives with his wife and author Laura Mixon and his two daughters in New Mexico.

The “Jumper” novels are about a teenager who finds out that he can teleport whenever he feels like being somewhere else. Steven Gould had always been interested in teleportation and asserts that it is the one paranormal ability he would love to have if he ever had the chance. He hates the wait times for delayed flights and canceled flights at airport terminals and hence the novels are about his desire for escape. As such, teleportation is a metaphor for leaving and escaping unendurable situations. Similar to Davy, the lead of the series, Gould grew up with an alcoholic father as a teenager and has to live with emotional abuse that he so desperately wanted to escape but could not.

“Jumper” the debut novel of the series introduces Davy, a child that has been physically and verbally abused by his alcoholic father all his life. His mother had left the marriage, fed up with the constant abuse. Abandoned by his mother and left with a violent man, Davy is hopeless until he discovers that he can teleport or Jump anywhere he had ever been as long as he can picture it in his mind. He teleports away from his father and tries to start over in a new city. But with no identification or money, things are not so easy for the seventeen-year-old boy. Desperate to survive, he decides to use his paranormal powers to rob banks for money though he promises to pay it back when his circumstance improve. He soon meets a girl and falls in love with someone that he can share his story with, and finally release the pent up emotion inside him.

In the 2004 published “Reflex,” Davy has been taken captive by a mysterious cabal. They are not interested in hiring him and appealing to him for help in their quest for power is a hopeless cause. But they are determined to own him as they intend to use his abilities to further their needs. As such, they start conditioning and brainwashing him since they found a way to prevent him from teleporting. But they are oblivious of one thing and not even Davy is aware of it. The secret is that a person can become an experienced teleport if they are teleported over and over even if they did not have the ability. The only person that has teleported to nearly the same degree as Davy is his wife Millie. She had once been facing imminent death when she suddenly discovered that she had left the scene and found herself home. If she can harness this ability once more, she can just travel to Davy and rescue him from the cabal.

“Impulse” the third novel of the “Jumper” series by Steven Gould is set several years after the events of the first novel of the series. Davy and Millie are a young family with a daughter named Millicent. Cent just learned that she also has the ability to teleport. The family lives in the Yukon as Davy never got over the kidnapping experience thus preferring to live in the remote lands of Canada. From the Yukon, he can jump back and forth with his wife and child and do humanitarian work or travel anywhere around the world. Their daughter Cent is a homeschooled child that has turned out to be a very intelligent girl who travels the world meeting new people and learning new things. She believes that she has experienced everything except for high school in small-town America. She convinces her parents to buy a house in the US and take on new identities so that she can live the life. Cent aces her admission test but decides to study with her peers rather than skip ahead as recommended by her new teachers. This starts a new adventure that includes the usual teleporting and the obligatory high school drama.