The Silent War feels like a conclusion to the Asteroid Wars ( The Precipice and The Rock Rats ), with the war continuing to escalate to father and father atrocities with even more sides to the conflict than before ( Yamagata is back! If a bit weirdly. ). It’s a bit strange to see what feels like such a conclusion with one book left, but I guess that’s why it’s called The Aftermath ? We’ll just have to see.

Overall, The Silent War is a satisfying enough conclusion to the Asteroid Wars (as a war and as a subseries) building up both the overall conflict and one within the book itself. It’s nice to actually see everything come to a head and I think the conclusion is workable, if a little ridiculous. It really feeds into the idea that behind every powerful corporation is a handful (or one) of powerful men and women really driving things forward.

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The Rock Rats continues the story of The Precipice, following the story of humanity’s expansion into the Asteroid Belt and all the atrocities that entails.

Characterwise, this book is all over the place. Pancho is great fun, but we don’t see nearly enough of her. Lars is … kind of crazy and revenge driven, a long descent from liking him well enough in The Precipice. Amanda is pretty great, but only when she’s away from either Lars or Humpries. Of all the marriages in the series thus far, why does this have to be the one to stick beyond a single book? They really don’t make much sense together… Trite as the saying may be, she could do better.

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After the first 8 books in The Grand Tour (Mars in particular), Jupiter feels a bit odd at the start. We’re not building up to the eventual discovery of life–the fact that there’s life on Jupiter is presented fait accompli in the first chapters. And not only life… intelligent life (or so is claimed). Jupiter isn’t really about the discovery of life or even really about the idea of life on a research station around Jupiter.

What Jupiter is really about the conflict between religion and science as humanity continues to expand outwards into the solar system. The New Morality controls the politics of the Earth and is doing everything it can to control the solar system. In doing so, they send Grant Archer–a believer and an astrophysicist–to spy on what in the world is going on far out in the dark reaches of the solar system. There’s conflict between science and religion, both on the large scale with the New Morality and the small scale within Grant himself, especially as he begins to settle in and befriend those living on Jupiter station.

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The Precipice does two things rather well: it introduces technology that will change the Grand Tour universe and it makes me actually … kind of like Dan Randolph.

For the former, we finally have one possible solution to the fundamental problem of near future science fiction:

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Return to Mars finishes what Mars started–and I really feel like they might have been better as one book. There was such a huge tantalizing idea dangled in front of us in the first book–not only life on Mars, but intelligent life?–only for a rush to the ending so that we never got to actually get answers. At least we do actually get answers in Return to Mars, but in such a way that it really feels like half the same book.

Plotwise, Return to Mars does at least explore some interesting ideas in how Martian exploration may actually take shape in the future, with private backing and a profit motive, rather than as a purely government run, scientific endeavor. It’s an interesting contrast to Mars at least, even if it feels like they’ve taken a number of steps back from the first mission in effort to cut costs (one assumes).

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Moonwar finishes the story of Moonrise, really establishing Moonbase as a power in the solar system in its own right and a refuge from the growing New Morality movements on Earth–especially when it comes to developing nano-technology.

There are certainly parts of the story that are hard to believe–particularly just how much control the UN has over … well, anything, but especially the media. It’s just… strange and feels like a manufactured threat. On the other hand, the idea of a religious far right growing to power and working to completely ban ‘unnatural’ technology (like nanomachines) feels altogether too prescient.

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A bit of a jump in focus and topic from Mars , Moonrise is more similar to Privateers et al (the Dan Randolph books), with more of a focus on corporate structure over science.

Amusingly, despite the title/series, Moonrise is only tangentially about the Moonbase, despite a large chunk of the book taking place there. Really, it’s about the bizarre broken family and corporate dynamic of Masterson Aerospace and the rise of nanotechnology in Ben Bova’s universe. From what I remember of other books in the series (from more than a decade ago), the rise of technology and the idea of it being banned on Earth for religious reasons is a fairly major plot point from here on out, so it’s interesting to see how that all began.

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My favorite of The Grand Tour books so far, by a decent margin.

It’s closer to ‘pure’ science fiction than the previous three, with the exploration of Mars and the science of getting there and exploring taking the front seat, with a lesser focus on politics and character than the previous books (although there still a decent amount of both).

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In Powersat, the big bads were terrorists. In Privateers, the Russians. In The Empire Builders it’s… global warming and the mob?

Given how times have changed, it’s amusing to see the specter of a ‘greenhouse cliff’ looming over the world, with no one believing at first that such a thing is even possible. Nowdays, you’ll see arguments over if it’s happening or not (more and more rarely) and if we caused it in the first place (of course we did), but you’d be hard pressed to find too many people that have never even heard of the idea. That’s what you get for reading near future sci- fi written a quarter century ago I guess. It’s a straight forward enough plot with a few twists through politics, squatters on the moon and natural disasters and an engaging read. I find myself increasingly interested in what happens to this other Earth.

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Reading Powersat and then Privateers (the suggested chronological order given for [series:The Grand Tour|51185]) is a bit strange, given the former was first published in 2005 and the latter back in 1985.

In Powersat, the ‘big bads’ are informed by the political tensions of the early 2000s, with terrorism (especially Middle Eastern) driving the conflict. When Privateers was written, the Soviet Union had not yet fallen and the Cold War was still going, so it’s unsurprising to find that the ‘what if’ this time around sees the Soviets taking a position of political power and the United States fading to isolationism.

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