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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Conflicted Love, October 29, 2006
This review is from: Powersat (Hardcover)
Powersat (2005) is the first SF novel in the Asteroid Wars series by internal chronology, although the latest published. The author has revisited this series to fill in the back story of Daniel Hamilton Randolph. This is one of the clearest portrayals of the differences between politicians and engineers to date.
In this novel, Dan Randolph goes to work for Yamagata Industries Corporation, helping to build a prototype Solar Power Satellite delivering twelve megawatts from low earth orbit. Once this prototype is operating, Dan returns to the US and founds Astro Manufacturing Corporation. Using the Japanese success to convince a consortium of American and Western European investors of the potential of this technology, Dan starts building a full-sized SPS in Geostationary Orbit.
While the SPS is nearing completion, the reusable spaceplane project suffers a major setback: the prototype breaks up during reentry from orbit, killing the pilot. Dan's company has already spent billions on the SPS, but this disaster reduces public confidence in Astro Manufacturing. Saito Yamagata offers to buy him out, but Dan refuses this proposition.
Unknown to Randolph and Yamagata, the spaceplane crash was not an accident. A secret group of Near Eastern terrorists has sabotaged the craft. They consider sabotaging the SPS as well, but Asim al-Bashir, a Tunisian oil magnate, suggests another use for the satellite.
Meanwhile, Jane Thornton is working for the presidential campaign of Morgan Scanwell, presently governor of Texas. First she interests Denny O'Brien, her campaign manager, in the man. Then she tries to recruit Dan to the campaign team under the cause of energy independence, but he needs immediate help rather than long term fixes.
Dan finally contacts the FBI office in Houston, telling of the recent deaths of Joe Tenney and Peter Larsen and his suspicions that they were murdered. After hearing his story, the SAC asks why he didn't report everything at the beginning. Dan points out that the FBI didn't seem to be doing anything about investigating the crash. Besides, everything is still speculation without a shred of proof.
In this story, the FBI start digging deeper, but don't find anything definite. Dan's executive assistant, April Simmonds, becomes involved at the request of FBI agent Kelly Eamons and finds herself threatened by a Latino ex-con who, unknown to her, has already killed two other Astro employees.
The author is probably the most politically orientated SF writer of the current crop. His previous works are heavily oriented toward the political aspects of future technology. In this work, he clearly underscores the limitations of political power.
On the Day of the Bridges -- a terrorist incident even larger than 9/11 -- Dan and his US Senator ladyfriend cannot agree on a common course of action. He wants to build the SPS, thereby liberating the US from energy dependence on the Near East, but she wants to be reelected to work toward energy independence. She just cannot see that politicians are incapable to creating new technology; their only function is to remove *political* obstacles to such technology. Moreover, she just doesn't understand why Dan cannot just wait a year for the politicians to support his efforts.
Technology cannot be created in a vacuum; it requires the right people working as a team with the right tools to produce an effective product. Politicians are much like managers when it comes to technological progress; managers are useless without the workers and politicians are useless without technological innovators. Congress can provide incentives to build railroads, but they do not design the locomotives nor do they lay the tracks.
Recommended for Bova fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of technological progress, political intrigue and more than a touch of conflicted love.
-Arthur W. Jordin
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful message of hope, January 30, 2005
This review is from: Powersat (Hardcover)
My review, enclosed below, was recently published in the Huntsville (AL) Times.
Now in his early 70s, Ben Bova has been writing classic science fiction for over 40 years. His novels are usually set in the 21st century, chronicling adventures in humanity's early expansion into the solar system. Now, of course, the 21st century has arrived. Rather than becoming depressed that we're still stuck here on Earth, Bova seems to be energized, particularly by events of the last few years.
In his latest novel, "Powersat," Bova gives us a "prequel" for Dan Randolph, the idealistic businessman hero of Bova's Asteroid Wars and other stories - and Randolph looks a lot like a younger version of SpaceShipOne's Burt Rutan. In an almost-believable near future, Randolph's struggling company has sunk billions into something he believes will revolutionize the energy industry: a solar power satellite. But completing it and maintaining it affordably depend on a reusable space plane project, grounded at the last minute.
Those who extract wealth from oil, including a group of Arab terrorists, feel threatened by Randolph's project. Putative supporters come from all directions - but which ones can he trust? Through a surprisingly complex mix of characters, including some major ones who die along the way, Bova builds a predictable but intriguing plot to a suspenseful climax.
"Power" here means more than energy: The power of politics is explored, and the conflict between a man and a woman, sacrificing happiness together in the pursuit of independent ambitions. The ending is well done, but bittersweet.
This novel sometimes feels like a throwback - I suspect at least partly in self-parody - but the conflicts in love, lust and power are eternal, and Bova devotes much more space to them than to the technology the story is nominally about. A memorable page-turner, "Powersat" also provides a powerful message of hope for the future.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Near Term Space Sci Fi at its Capitalistic Best!, January 11, 2005
This review is from: Powersat (Hardcover)
In the vast amount of pages shelved in the local bookstore's "science fiction" section, most is fantasy and what's left is mostly indistinguishable from fantasy. Once the staple of science fiction, the near-term space novel is an endangered species today. Thank goodness for Bova. His "Grand Tour" series is a monumental, if relatively uncelebrated, journey into the human adventure in the solar system that could take place in our lifetimes.
Of course, predating Bova's "Grand Tour" there was Dan Randolph, Bova's industrialist hero in Privateers and Empire Builders. Powersat is a prequel to both Privateers and Empire Builders and in a sense can be seen as the beginning of the Grand Tour series.
Powersat describes the beginning of Astro Manufacturing Corporation, Dan Randolph's attempt to open space to humanity, make America and freedom stronger, and (of course) make billions of dollars in the process! Randolph's first project, a solar power satellite to eliminate American dependence on oil, gives the book its title. The story shares much with Bova's earlier Randolph books... coroprate intrigue, terrorism, boardroom meetings, political philosphy, a pro-space pro-business message, and a good deal of action.
Powersat is, in my opinion, one of Bova's best works. The story is solid, fast-paced, and rewarding stand alone. However, if you have read any of Bova's earlier books on Randolph (Privateers, Empire Builders, or The Precipice) you'll also enjoy scenes played out that are merely alluded to in the other books, including Dan's relationship with Jane, how Scanlon becomes president, the "alliance" between Yamagata and Astro, and the very first hints that Astro may have to move to Venezuela, among others. What is striking is how Bova pulled it off. In Dan's first book he was fighting the Soviet Union's monopoly on space (which looks, uh, unlikely to happen anymore.) Powersat uses the present reality of the war on terror as its historical backdrop. However, past occurences in the earlier books are written first hand in this book and are perfectly consistent with the complete change in geopolitical situation. Not a trivial feat.
Randolph's story is a truly heroic one. Not many science fiction heroes live's may truly be lived. However, there is no reason that someone reading Powersat now may not one day build Astro Manufacturing and serve space, freedom, and the pocketbook in the same way Dan does!
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