Arkwright - Allen Steele
It’s getting harder and harder to be a science fiction fan. For one thing, the library and bookstore shelves that used to be filled with space operas are now jammed with vampire tales. For another, there just don’t seem to be any more Asimovs, Clarkes, Sturgeons or Silverbergs coming down the pike (Charlie Stross, perhaps, excepted). To make matters worse, fans have recently been subjected to a slew of long novels that read more like soap operas than space operas – some fairly good (Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves) and some not quite so good (the John Sandford and Ctein collaboration, Saturn Run). And then there’s the just plain bad: Allen Steele’s Arkwright.
