Just Finished Reading: Saturn’s Race by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes (FP: 2000)

For recent University graduate Lenore Myles it was a dream come true. She and hundreds of other top flight students were being hosted by Xanadu, one of the new floating islands spanning the Earth helping the population of the planet to cope with famine, pollution and the effects of global warming. Things became even more perfect when she was offered a job on Xanadu by the grandson of one of the original IT pioneers – Clarence Kato III himself. How could she possibly refuse? But she has questions, lots of questions and some of which Chaz himself cannot answer. But Lenore has been under supervision for years and Chaz knows that she is one of the brightest of the brightest. The only way to convince her to join his team is to trust her. Given her a copy of his security pass he lays down a challenge: Go anywhere I can go, see what I see and then decide if you want to stay. I have, Kato proudly states, nothing to hide. Unfortunately for Chaz other people on Xanadu do have something to hide – something that Lenore stumbles upon. Something called Project Kali. Putting two and two together she discovers the horrible truth behind so much good being produced by the islands. The discovery is, however, itself discovered and an intelligence only known as Saturn takes a sudden and keen interest in the activities of Ms Myles. If project Kali is to proceed as planned that Lenore must die. But that’s something that Kato cannot allow to happen and a fight for Lenore erupts that puts the whole world in danger.

It’s been years since I’ve read anything by these authors so I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with their work. After a slow start things became very interesting as move and counter move by Saturn, Kato and Lenore moved the narrative forward. The identity of Saturn was cleverly kept hidden until almost the end of the book although I did manage to work out part of its identity. The world that Niven and Barnes built was, by and large, believable in a messy, shades of grey kind of way and it was interesting that one of the heroes of the tale turned out to be an eco-terrorist (of sorts) financed by governments with built-in deniability. The near-future world was a mess on the cusp of recovery but still prey to all of the greed, revenge and other dark forces alive and well in the real world. There are plenty of nicely set out scenes (as well as a few clunky ones) and a strong narrative flowing throughout the book. I even liked the kind of open ending which was more than satisfying. All in all a creditable piece of science-fiction. Not top drawer but definitely worth the reading time.

Up next in Fiction: Ten 20th Century classics in publication date order – because why not?