Just Finished Reading: Farside Cannon by Roger Macbride Allen

In the near future scientist Garrison Morrow is obsessed with finding the impact crater of the asteroid suspected of killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Unfortunately for him and his team of geologists an asteroid mining company doesn’t want him to find his prize. After all finding the smoking gun from a planet killer can only harm a very profitable enterprise. After a successful dirty tricks campaign forces Garrison and his colleague off world they are exiled to Farside station located on the dark side of the Moon. There he hatches a plan to build an array of communication lasers capable of destroying an asteroid destined to enter Earth orbit and threaten the destruction of mankind. By when news of the Farside Cannon leaks out both Earth and the Settlement worlds want it destroyed and both sides are willing to go to war to prevent its activation.

This was a solid if rather unexceptional novel. Tending towards the harder end of SF with plenty of references to orbital mechanics, geology, and problems of living off-world it managed to produce a believable near-future culture where the settlement worlds – Mars, The Moon and Asteroid belt – had just about begun to flex their independent muscles. Written in the late 1980’s it was not alone in missing the idea of Global Warming and barely mentioned computers except in a very roundabout fashion. But SF is rarely as prophetic as some of its fans would have use believe. Whilst not exactly a great novel or even a great SF novel Farside Cannon was entertaining enough to keep me turning pages for the 4-5 days it took me to read it. Nicely paced, fairly good characterisation and with a healthy dose of drama I couldn’t help but enjoy it.