Mining the Oort

Pohl, Frederik. Mining the Oort. New York: Ballantine, 1992. Available in an S. F. Book Club edn. (ISBN 0-345-37199-2).

Most of MtO is set on the Martian colony, in a high-tech academy on Earth using VR-assisted teaching and learning, and on a space station, with a brief scene in a "fixbot" repair vehicle (259-60) and allusions to actual mining operations in the Oort comet cloud, with individuals in intimate connection with small space ships (72, 119-20). Significant for naturalizing these mechanized environments into mere settings for a story about economics, enculturation, political violence, and morality. Cf. and contrast Pohl's Gateway series and Man Plus (for the "man minus" castration motif, see MtO 72). (RDE, 20/09/93)