FIRESTAR

Part one of an ambitious near-future multivolume saga from the author of Country of the Blind (not reviewed). Rich heiress Mariesa van Huyten has developed plans to save the human race. She sets up Mentor Academies, an educational foundation, and contracts to take over part of the crumbling New Jersey public school system, hoping to find among its hopelessly drug-ridden or sociopathic or cynical populations some sparks of creativity—talents that will be vital in the near future if humanity is to transcend its self-imposed limits. She also prepares the Prometheus project, using political, industrial, and economic pressure to develop a sustainable space program. Once established in space—where raw materials need only be gathered and processed; where there's nothing to pollute; where power from the sun is free and inexhaustible—humanity can expand and prosper without constraint. There is, however, a cloud on the horizon: one Cyrus Attwood, a reactionary who will use religion and violence to stop Mariesa and her progressive notions. Not quite a Libertarian party tract, but call this a textbook, retitle it How to Save the World, in Umpteen Very Large Installments, and you'd be close. A dense, vastly overstated yawner.