You recall a few days ago that I mentioned I’m interested in whatever James Cambias wrote next after A DARKLING SEA. Well, it turns out that his newest title just hit the shelves yesterday.
CORSAIR looks like a near-future thriller:
In the early 2020s, two young, genius computer hackers, Elizabeth Santiago and David Schwartz, meet at MIT and have a brief affair. Elizabeth dreams of technology and space travel and takes a military job after graduating. Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows for international thieves, and Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy. Robotic mining shipments from space are dropped down the gravity well into the oceans. If David can nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there first and claim it legally in the open sea. When Elizabeth loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. International piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players. And both Elizabeth and David end up in a world of trouble.
I am not, as it happens, super-interested in near-future thrillers . . . except for Patrick Lee’s books . . . and I am disappointed that there are (probably) no alien species in CORSAIR. Still, I am interested to see what Cambias has done with this book.
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Very kind of you to mention it. I hope you enjoy the book!
Let us know. I am also not entirely sold on near-future fiction…mostly because the predictions almost always turn out wrong.
Actually, I’m fine with predictions not coming true, because I read ’em as strictly fiction with the future written as it is just for the story. For me it’s just that the setting lacks interest, so the story has to be stronger.
Oh, except that I am so over eco-catastrophe as component of any near-future setting. Very overdone.
As I understand it, CORSAIR is an attempt to write a novel that combines 1) hard SF with strict attention to scientific and technical plausibility and 2) space piracy, with as many pirate tropes as he could figure out how to include. Combining them is an interesting exercise, but you’re certainly not the central section of the target audience.
Actually, knowing that makes me want to read it sooner rather than later. It will be really entertaining to watch Cambias work in the pirate tropes. Do you suppose someone has an eye patch? I will laugh myself silly if there is a parrot. If *I* were trying to maximize the pirate tropes, there would definitely be a parrot.
I read a lot of stuff, of course, so I wind up on the penumbra of a lot of different books for which I’m not actually part of the core audience. That would be true for THE MARTIAN, too, since I’m not really a tech type. Also for the cozy mystery I’m reading right now.
Hmm. “maximizing the pirate tropes”. Arrrrr! A bit like Karen Memory, which maximized the “wild west steampunk tropes.” I guess I WILL try it.