Tag: SF

Lunar Descent by Allen Steele (1991)

This is apparently the third in Steele’s “Near Space” series.  I am very late to the party in reading it, as I’ve only read one other Steele book.  It read well not knowing about the other books.  An interesting premise, following workers on the Moon.  Lots of interesting extrapolation, although it did throw me a bit to be reading a book set in 2024 that has so little bearing on our present use of the Moon’s resources. 🙁

I liked this one well-enough that I will be continuing to search out more from Steele’s backlist.

Growing up Weightless by John M. Ford (1993)

Original Cover Growing Up Weightless This one came to me as a recommendation from a “Heinlein friend”.  Several reviews compare it to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; that alone begs a read. It also won the Philip K. Dick Award in its year of publication.

The book reads very much like a YA piece, or in Heinlein-speak, a juvenile.  That’s not an insult. It’s fairly short. One of my big complaints is that it gets to a certain point and stops, after having spent a good chunk of the book ‘on the holodeck’ with most of the main characters.  There are some tantalizing hints of the formative Luna years that I wish Ford had explored.  He passed away in 2006 and it took until 2022 for this book to come back into print.  If you can find a copy, it’s a decent read.

I just had a “smack the head” moment.  The author is the same one who wrote the amazingly funny Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet? in 1987, which was one of the best ever written.  That alone raises my esteem of the book.

Dauntless (Book 1, The Lost Fleet series) by Jack Campbell, 2006

Dauntless by Jack CampbellI’ve had several people recommend the Lost Fleet series to me.  I’m a space opera fan, and space battles/military SF is an “easy read” for me. The books have proven to read pretty quickly.

Campbell has a great hook in this series with his hero, who has to reinstill tactics and an honorable code of conduct within ‘the good guys’.  I’ve actually read the second in this series as well. The first arc goes six books and there are additional series for another fourteen books so I can keep going as long as I can find them!