Those readers wishing to be unspoiled in their reading of this book be alert, as spoilers may follow.
Bova’s Precipice is book one of a series called the Asteroid Wars, though no armed conflict rises in this part of the story. The story focuses on developing new technologies to save the Earth from a “greenhouse cliff”—where the world has gone to hell in a hand basket because we failed to get some environmental measures up in time, and now the world is a mess. Using fusion rockets, Dan Randolph and a small group of people go out to the Belt to claim asteroids for use by their company so that they may use them to save the world.
Bova uses characters and setting material set up by his earlier works (Moonrise, Moonwar; and I think Venus) to help Randolph along—using the nanotech (“nanobugs”) from Moonrise-Moonwar to build the rocket and eventually help destroy what was built.
The story is also about Randolph’s partner/antagonist Martin Humphries, a man who desires control of Randolph’s Earth-based businesses. Humphries pulls in several minor characters to help destroy the plan that Randolph builds, managing to sabotage the rocket flight while on route to the Belt.
Precipice brings a classic science fiction feel to bear, with minor descriptions of what the characters are and their motivations, we mainly get to see the strange vistas of the Moon and Asteroid Belt while picking up some science lessons along the way—also a good amount of speculation about what landing on an asteroid would be like for space-suited men.
Precipice also builds in a lot of politic rhetoric: the greenhouse effect going rampant, the possible end of the dot-com era, and a sect of religious zealots who hate space exploration. Sometimes this comes across good, and sometimes bad—while I wouldn’t doubt that a man would be so greedy that they wouldn’t want to save the world at cost, I doubt that they would kill to try to take over a failing Earth-based company, as Humphries does towards the books end.
I enjoyed the book despite my misgivings about the Humphries characterization. Even considering the depth of the science involved, others can easily enjoy this book.
