- Shoemaker, Martin L.
Blue Collar Space.
Seattle: CreateSpace [Old Town Press], 2018.
ISBN 978-1-7170-5188-2.
-
This book is a collection of short stories, set in three
different locales. The first part, “Old Town
Tales”, are set on the Moon and revolve around yarns told
at the best bar on Luna. The second part, “The Planet
Next Door”, are stories set on Mars, while the third,
“The Pournelle Settlements”, take place in mining
settlements in the Jupiter system.
Most of the stories take place in established settlements; they
are not tales of square-jawed pioneers opening up the frontier,
but rather ordinary people doing the work that needs to be
done in environments alien to humanity's home. On the Moon, we
go on a mission with a rescue worker responding to a crash; hear
a sanitation (“Eco Services”) technician regale a rookie
with the story of “The Night We Flushed the Old
Town”; accompany a father and daughter on a work day
Outside that turns into a crisis; learn why breathing vacuum may
not be the only thing that can go wrong on the Moon; and see how
even for those in the most mundane of jobs, on the Moon wonders
may await just over the nearby horizon.
At Mars, the greatest problem facing an ambitious international
crewed landing mission may be…ambition, a doctor on a
Mars-bound mission must deal with the technophobe boss's son
while keeping him alive, and a schoolteacher taking her Mars
survival class on a field trip finds that doing things by the
book may pay off in discovering something which isn't in the
book.
The Jupiter system is home to the Pournelle Settlements, a
loosely affiliated group of settlers, many of whom came to
escape the “government squeeze” and “corporate
squeeze” that held the Inner System in their grip. And
like the Wild West, it can be a bit wild. When sabotage
disables the refinery that processes ore for the Settlements,
its new boss must find a way to use the unique
properties of the environment to keep his people fed and avoid
the most hostile of takeovers. Where there are vast distances,
long travel times, and cargoes with great value, there will be
pirates, and the long journey from Jupiter to the Inner System
is no exception. An investigator seeking evidence in a murder
case must learn the ways of the Trust Economy in the Settlements
and follow the trail far into the void.
These stories bring back the spirit of science fiction magazine
stories in the decades before the dawn of the Big Government
space age when we just assumed that before long space would be
filled with people like ourselves living their lives and
pursuing their careers where freedom was just a few steps away
from any settlement and individual merit was rewarded. They are
an excellent example of “hard” science fiction, not
in being difficult but that the author makes a serious effort to
get the facts right and make the plots plausible. (I am,
however, dubious that the trick used in “Unrefined”
would work.) All of the stories stand by themselves and can be
read in any order. This is another example of how independent
authors and publishing are making this a new golden age of
science fiction.
The Kindle edition is free for Kindle
Unlimited subscribers.
November 2018 