Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn
Jodi and the kiddo and I are out East, visiting the family for a real live vacation. Before leaving, I raided the bookshelves of a family friend, and came away with a couple of pulp sci-fi novels - perfect airplane reading.
One of my choices was Fallen Angels by , , and (Wikipedia link).
From the synopsis on the back of the book, I was only mildly interested, but it looked readable. What I found was a fascinating “hard sci-fi” novel with a humorous conceit.
Fallen Angels is set in a future where runaway environmentalism has brought on a new Ice Age. Glaciers are advancing south into the U.S. and have taken over most of the northern and northern midwestern states. Society is crumbling, the White House is now a set of huts on a floating platform in the Sargasso Sea, and most technology has been outlawed by the totalitarian Earth-“loving” activist government.
As the tides of society were turning, a group of scientists took the opportunity of the last successful shuttle launch to bring as many families as they could with them to the orbiting U.S. space station Freedom. Joining with the Russian space station Peace, the space habitats became the last holdout of technology.
possible spoilers follow - turn back now
The central conceit of the book - which is an unapologetic tribute to die-hard sci-fi and fantasy fandom - is that after two pilots from the space habs crash-land on Earth, they are rescued by members of the now underground and persecuted “technophile” sci-fi fan community. References to sci-fi literature both popular (meaning I recognized it) and obscure (most of the references) abound, as the protagonists begin a Quixotic quest to get the two pilots back into space.
end likely spoilers
Fallen Angels was orders of magnitude better than I expected. The hard sci-fi take on things added a sense of weight and history to the story that made it even more moving than it might have otherwise been. Ironically, in the story sci-fi is derisively called “escapist” literature, while the scientifically consistent writing here turns it much more into something that makes you think about reality rather than escaping from it.
If you’re a sci-fi fan, take some pleasure in this tribute, and don’t be surprised if at the end you’re a bit teary eyed and wonderous at the depth of spirit these authors convey.
out of 5, um, whatevers. (Reviewed July 17, 2006)