I enjoy a variety of sci-fi, but I think my favorite is the near-future, highly believable, hard sci-fi style. Jeremy K. Brown's Zero Limit is a great example of this. He tells a thrilling story that is wrapped up in the science and politics of a tomorrow that people living today could experience.
Caitlin Taggart is a war hero, having acted with bravery in the Middle East. Through a variety of circumstances, include anti-Moon prejudices and anti-immigration policies that have stranded her on the Moon, she is the head of a mining crew scraping the Moon's surface and processing H3 to be shipped back to Earth for energy production. When the flamboyant owner of a mining company asks her to lead an expedition to rein in an asteroid that is mostly platinum, the promise of a chance to return to Earth and her Earth-bound daughter is too much to turn down.
Upon arrival at the asteroid, a fuel explosion destroys her ship and alters the path of the asteroid to a collision course with Earth. Cait and her rag-tag crew of miners are the Earth's only hope to avoid apocalyptic devastation. Working with crews on Earth, they dredge all the technology they can access to push the asteroid to a path that will miss the Earth. Brown pays close attention to the use of science and technology, building a very believable story, in many cases using examples of technology that exists in real-life 2018, or is close to reality.
As you might expect from a story like this, Brown includes plenty of melodrama and edge-of-your-seat close calls. Of course the first solutions they attempt won't work out that great, and there will be some major flubs and terrible losses along the way. But that's what makes this a page-turner, an exciting, old-fashioned and forward looking action-packed story that will keep you up reading at night.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
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