1978 short SF novel. After its civil war, the Heaven system (gas giant
and trojans, asteroid belt, some very marginal planets) has split into
multiple polities, and the machinery that sustains life is gradually
breaking down. Then a ramscoop starship arrives from a nearby system…
…and it all goes to pot very fast, as one of those states attacks
the ship and most of its crew is killed. But this isn't a book about
space action; it's much more about the people and the cultures of the
various political factions (the Demarchy of the leading trojans, where
everything can be voted on by the people but there are still corporate
oligarchs; the Grand Harmony round the gas giant, a more conventional
dictatorship; the dying people of Lansing, the former capital, with
its plastic-roofed greenhouse planetoid and its strict policies on
radiation-damaged children; and the surviving starship crew, who were
hoping to trade for goods to solve their own problems). Each of these
places has its own resource shortages, some of them more urgent than
others, and each of them has a culture that's grown up round dealing
with it.
Another consideration is that everyone knows the Heaven system's
civilisations are running down (they can't fix the machines to fix the
machines), and they cope with it in different ways: ignoring the
problem, fighting to keep things going as long as possible, or
nihilistic despair.
It's grim, and it's perhaps shorter than would have been ideal, but
the people are splendid.
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