MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

HarryT · 01-25-2012, 05:11 AM

An SF mystery/thriller by one of my favourite "hard SF" authors.

The book, written in the 1980s, is set in 2017, when the Soviet Union, about to celebrate the centenary of the October Revolution, is building a large orbital space habitat. They say it is for entirely peaceful purposes, but US intelligence suspects that it may be a disguised battle platform, and sends two agents, in the guise of journalists, to the station, to investigate.

This is an excellent thriller, with a real "twist in the tail". Obviously its political basis is now entirely undermined (who would have predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s?), but it's still a very good book. My only criticism of it is that it occasionally lays on the politics a bit thickly, and has a very simplistic "Soviet Union = bad, USA = good" viewpoint, but that doesn't detract from the story.

Well worth reading. Available as a very reasonably-priced eBook from Baen.

I'd give it 4 stars out of 5.

01-25-2012, 05:11 AM	#12143
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,557 Karma: 93980341 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Endgame Enigma by James P. Hogan An SF mystery/thriller by one of my favourite "hard SF" authors. The book, written in the 1980s, is set in 2017, when the Soviet Union, about to celebrate the centenary of the October Revolution, is building a large orbital space habitat. They say it is for entirely peaceful purposes, but US intelligence suspects that it may be a disguised battle platform, and sends two agents, in the guise of journalists, to the station, to investigate. This is an excellent thriller, with a real "twist in the tail". Obviously its political basis is now entirely undermined (who would have predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s?), but it's still a very good book. My only criticism of it is that it occasionally lays on the politics a bit thickly, and has a very simplistic "Soviet Union = bad, USA = good" viewpoint, but that doesn't detract from the story. Well worth reading. Available as a very reasonably-priced eBook from Baen. I'd give it 4 stars out of 5.