THE MOON DETENTE

In Policastro’s SF novel, a powerful international enterprise tries to position itself as a stabilizing force on Earth as the planet edges toward tyranny and conflict.

The story unfolds in the late 2030s. Q Corp is a quantum-computing colossus of a company, founded by visionary Jacob P. Slake; it’s described as so vast and powerful that if the U.S.A. (now an amalgamation of the U.S. and Canada) went to war against it, the corporation would win. Against a backdrop of opportunistic nations rising (China) and falling (Russia), Jacob engineers “Project X” as a paradigm-changer for a world that seems to be heading for destructive international conflict. Meanwhile, Jacob’s son, Alfred, brokers a deal to buy Russian torpedo drones. On the moon, a giant habitat is under construction that’s meant to house a permanent colony-city and safeguard a vast data center. Jacob’s wife, Jayne, inherits the title of president (corporate as well as political) when the great man dies after being wounded in a terrorist attack. “Jared,” a digitized AI spawned by Jacob’s mind, is downloaded into her head via an optical data port, making her a living software key. A beautiful Turkish American hacker working for a detective agency ferrets out intel on Project X and the missing Alfred…and so it goes, very wordily, on a variety of international stages and battlegrounds described in granular detail. The debut author, a scientist, delivers prose dense with technical terms and descriptions: “Sir, ESM detects ground-based emitter, bearing twenty degrees, range twelve hundred fifty meters, identified as 42S6 Mortfey SAM.” The complex intrigues may remind some readers of John le Carré; SF old-timers will be prompted to think of early Robert Heinlein and his fearless, principled Libertarian heroes using resourcefulness, tech savvy, and interplanetary travel to surmount fascist despots. Policastro himself seems to suggest a comparison to Mikhail Sholokhov’s Soviet-era epic And Quiet Flows the Don (published serially 1928-1940), a brick of a book Alfred starts to read for tranquilizing purposes during a long Russian land voyage that winds up both captivating and frustrating him.

A dense, compelling take on the geopolitical skullduggery of tomorrow.