Pallas is a terraformed asteroid on which there are two contending groups. One is a colony founded by the United Nations, the other is a colony founded by the entrepreneur who terraformed Pallas. The back flyleaf claims in the novel Smith is "carrying on the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein's Libertarian Science Fiction tradition" and that's not unapt, especially given his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, although Heinlein doesn't strike me as quite as enthusiastically uncritical of anarcho-capitalism as Smith. This is definitely libertarian pornography that, unlike the case with Heinlein, I doubt would appeal to a more mainstream science fiction readership. That's OK with me, since I do consider myself a libertarian, and in a lot of ways this is a crackingly adventurous and imaginative tale, but I admit it's sometimes a bit much in ways that I can't imagine rereading this. His pro-gun stance gets to me. I read a review (on Amazon I think) from someone who said he's a NRA member and it was too much for him. It's not simply that Smith supports gun ownership, in this book he makes a fetish of hunting--positing that what's wrong with the world is that we don't all go out to hunt and butcher our meat ourselves. ( )

ZB5