The Rock Rats
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4.1 • 16 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Visionary space industrialist Dan Randolph is dead-but his protégé, pilot Pancho Barnes, now sits on the board of his conglomerate. She has her work cut out for her. For Randolph's rival, Martin Humphries, still wants to control Astro and still wants to drive independent asteroid miners like Lars Fuchs out of business. Humphries wants revenge against Pancho-and, most of all, he wants his old flame, Amanda, who has become Lars Fuchs's wife.
Brimming with memorable characters and human conflict, rugged high-tech prospectors and boardroom betrayals, The Rock Rats continues the tale of our near-future struggle over the incalculable wealth of the Asteroid Belt, the richest source of raw mineral wealth known to humankind. Before it ends, many will die-and many will achieve more than they ever dreamed was possible.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Noted space expert Bova returns to his planetary future history (Moonrise, etc.)in a hard-charging continuation of the battle for the Asteroid Belt begun in The Precipice (2001). Positing an Earth on the brink of eco-catastrophe, a recently independent moon and a frontier filled with prospectors and claim-jumpers out among the asteroids, it is a story that at first appears to be very familiar. But mixed in with the high-tech optimism and libertarian good faith are the darker elements of an older dramatic tradition. Keeping his themes classical love, jealousy, greed Bova gives his tale energy and focus through a love triangle that evolves into a vendetta. Lars Fuchs finds that he and new wife Amanda can't escape from the attentions of Martin Humphries, his rival for both Amanda and the Belt's mineral wealth. Trying to establish a home on Ceres, Lars and Amanda, with their fellow prospectors and miners, are threatened by increasing attacks on their property and lives. Ultimately, Lars must duel Dorik Harbin, the gunslinger sent to kill all who refuse to sign contracts with Humphries Space Systems. As in Greek tragedy, from which the author openly draws, there's no happy ending, only deception, gory murder, exile and planned revenge. Archetypal rather than well-rounded, characters suffer more from their own fatal flaws, hubrischief among them, than from each other's actions. Ambitiously juggling elements of space opera, western and Sophoclean drama, Bova keeps the pages turning. (Apr. 11)FYI:A past SFWA president, Bova has won six Hugo Awards.
Customer Reviews
Love me not
This was the fourth of Bova's books I've read and my least favorite. He's clever and imaginative as usual in the twists and upheavals in plot, but this novel has a little too much cheesy love stuff going on. I wouldn't mind it so much except that I don't think he's very good at it (who says, "darling"?).