Rock Rats picks
up where The Precipice (reviewed
in SFRevu October, 2001) left off in Ben Bova's Asteroid Wars
series. Will the asteroids be pioneered to
provide raw materials to save the ruined Earth? To give humanity a place
to grow and survive off the planet that bore it? To fulfill the drive that
humanity has always felt to go "out there" and see what lies beyond? Not in Ben Bova's Asteroid Wars
series. Oh those factors figure in, sure
enough, but like Helen of Troy before her, it's the desire for a woman
that will launch a thousand (metaphorically speaking) spaceships
heavenward. In the end, it's all for Amanda.
Martin Humphries, the ruthless zillionaire head of Humphries Space
Systems, is still trying to create a monopoly on space commerce, from
supplying ships and fuel to owning the asteroids that those ships are off
mining. He's still determined to have another monopoly as well, to own the
affections of Amanda Cunningham, now wife of Lars Fuchs, the astro-geologist
that married her at the end the previous book: The Precipice Wars.
Things haven't worked out the way Martin expected, and
the asteroid prospectors, the "Rock Rats" are making a better go of it
than he cares for. Astro Corp. is still in business, and Pancho Lane is
thwarting his attempts to take over the Astro's board. Pancho was once
a grease monkey and space pilot, and suddenly became the heir of Astro's
founder, Dan Randolph, when he found
himself dying of radiation sickness on the inaugural flight of the fusion
drive that made asteroid mining possible.
Naturally the disaster had been staged by Humphries himself.
Now Pancho, a
stringy, feisty, Texas girl from the wrong side of the tracks has had to
learn the ins and outs of corporate intrigue while holding off Humphries'
attempts to take over Astro. Though we don't see as much of her in this
book, she's clearly coming into her own. Out
in the belt, the asteroid
Ceres has become the hub of asteroid life, and now Lars has a plan to
create a full-size space habitat nearby so that he won't have to take his wife
back to the Moon, where Humphries lies in wait. Lars is a bit buggy on the
subject in fact...or maybe it's just that the geologist never expected to
get the girl, and he's afraid it's a marriage of convenience.
Considering the number of people that Humphries is
willing to sacrifice to get what he wants, Amanda's marrying him would
sure be a lot easier on everyone but Lars though. As sabotage, murder and claim
jumping escalate in the belt, all by the invisible hand of Humphries, Lars
becomes more and more radicalized, trying to bring vigilante justice to
the high frontier, with a welding laser strapped to his hip and a mining laser bolted
to his ship. A man going to war. Poul Anderson
used to write stories like this, about lone privateers fighting the good
fight on the edge of explored space, and asteroid claim jumping has been
the meat and potatoes of space opera since Doc Smith's earliest novels.
Bova takes these classic themes and weaves them into a story in the not so
distant future, and being who he is, he makes them plausible at
the same time. This is the middle book in the
Asteroid Wars saga, and it's the place where the players grow up
and bind themselves to paths that will take another book to play out. Just
about everyone comes out of it transformed at least a bit, and the stage
set for the next story. Though Bova is noted for the science part of his
SF, this time he's gotten himself involved with some fairly deep
characters...and I'm looking forward to seeing how he works it all out in
the next book. You can read any of these books
by themselves, even though they are all part of a much larger work; The
Grand Tour series. In fact Bova isn't writing them in any special
order (as far as I can tell) so if you've read Jupiter or Venus
already you'll be gratified when you come across the seeds he's laying for
events that take place generations later. |
|
© 2002 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu sa 05.22.02 |
