The Quiet War

McAuley, Paul. The Quiet War. London: Gollancz, 2008. New York: Pyr, 2009.[1]

Reviewed by Ed Higgins in SFRA Review #290 (Fall 2009): p16.[2]

The Quiet War combines elements of space opera, terraforming colonization, future technowar, ecocatastrophe and sociopolitical fantasy [...].

A 23rd-century Earth despotically ruled by powerful family oligarchies has embarked on restoring centuries-ago ravaged environmental systems through massive technoreclamation projects employing a near-enslaved populace. [...]

The Quiet War clearly reflects a debt to such technowar novels as Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s The Forever War. There’s also a recasting of Orson Scott Card’s Ender's Game training school for young technowarriors. In The Quiet War, on Earth’s moon, specially designed boy-clones are secretly trained for subversive missions [...]. And fighter pilots are also being secretly trained using advanced human–machine interface “singleships” outfitted with special weaponry for the inevitable war.

So: Obviously relevant for familiar high-tech warfare and that "human-machine interface," but also a newer theme of "technoreclamation" for humans and machines acting on the environment.

++++++++++++++++++++

Sequel: Gardens of the Sun (Amherst: Pyr, 2010), reviewed by Ed Carmien, SFRA Review #291 (Winter 2010): pp. 18-19.[3].

Listed with primary title "Reef" in Benford and Zebrowski's Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science.

RDE, finishing, 25Feb21