Name of Novel: High School Kid Who Hacks Two Schedules?

September 6, 2005 6:06 PM

Help me identify a young adult novel from the '70s: It's about a kid in high school who, through an error in the school's mainframe computer, is assigned two class schedules - one with his first name first, one with his last name. He decides that he can use this opportunity to somehow pass both sets of classes and graduate a year early! This will require crazy contortions and some hacking at the end of the year...to put both schedules back together...

There's also, of course, a love story, and, as I recall, our protagonist goes through a depressed period where he just hangs out down at the beach, in a wooden pyramid someone erected...classic teen fiction, I tell you. What's it called? Who's the author? Thanks!

posted by wavejumper to media & arts (10 comments total)

Did the character also find a machine washed up on the beach that could copy living things making clones that would die after a certain amount of time?
posted by odinsdream at 6:11 PM on September 6, 2005

odinsdream: That's a book by William Slater, but I can't remember the title and Google isn't helpful. It isn't what wavejumper is looking for, though.
posted by nmiell at 6:22 PM on September 6, 2005

I could have sworn that same book had the beach fort and the double schedules. But, yeah, I guess the whole clone thing is a pretty big plot point to leave out of the question.
posted by odinsdream at 6:34 PM on September 6, 2005

Was it the book in this thread? (Link to cached version, since the original is generating a CF error...)
posted by curse at 6:48 PM on September 6, 2005

The Mark of Conte. It's fantastically subversive for kids in the early stages of public education.
posted by cosmicbandito at 6:58 PM on September 6, 2005

odinsdream & nmiell: The book you are talking about is The Duplicate by William Sleator.
posted by the biscuit man at 7:01 PM on September 6, 2005

It also features hot punch card action. Modern kids may have a hard time understanding that part as "hackerish", since there's no sexy computer hardware, just a card-punch and a terminal.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:06 PM on September 6, 2005

No, cosmicbandito is right -- it's The Mark of Conte, which was, like, my favorite book in the 6th grade.
posted by profwhat at 7:18 AM on September 7, 2005

since you've figured out wavejumper's book, i would like to find the book odinsdream is talking about. i remember reading it when i was really young. i think there was an abandoned lighthouse/house involved? one of the clones turned out to be really mean...
posted by lotsofno at 8:14 AM on September 7, 2005

Awesome job, people. The Mark of Conte. Thanks. Yeah, I'm a big fan of William Sleator, too!
posted by wavejumper at 11:22 AM on September 7, 2005