Privateers
By Ben Bova
3.5/5
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About this ebook
In Ben Bova's award-winning Privateers, America has ceded the heavens to the Tyrants--and the Renegades.
The U.S. has abandoned its quest for the stars, and an old enemy has moved in to fill the void. The potential wealth of the universe is now in malevolent hands. Rebel billionaire Dan Randolph -- possessor of the largest privately owned company in space -- intends to weaken the stranglehold the new despotic masters of the solar system have on the lucrative ore industry. But when the mineral-rich asteroid he sets in orbit around the Earth is commandeered by the enemy, and his unarmed workers are slaughtered in cold blood, the course of Randolph's life is changed forever.
Now cataclysm is aimed at the exposed heart of America -- a potential catastrophe that Randolph himself inadvertently set in motion. And the maverick entrepreneur must use his skills, cunning, and vast resources to strike out at his foes hard, fast and with ruthless precision -- and wear proudly the mantle that fate thrust upon him: space pirate!
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Ben Bova
Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008. Dr. Bova was President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction’s Hugo Award six times. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more. In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.
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Reviews for Privateers
54 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A required stop on the Grand Tour. Luckily, the tour gets much better as Bova writes additional books in the series.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Going back more to the roots of The Grand Tour, Bova describes how Dan Randolph wrestles control of mining for certain ores in space out from the dominant Soviet empire. This is kind of the forbearance of Randolph setting up his Astro Manufacturing company where he will begin to help explore and colonize the solar system in future novels. Bova's earlier works in this series tend to be better written, so this one falls into the very good category...fun to read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting book in Bova's Grand Tour. Written in 40 years ago, during the cold war, depicts a world in which the Soviet Union won the Cold War forcing the nations of earth to abandon their space faring aspirations. On that assumption, the characters...familiar in the Grand Tour, interact like so many spies. The end, predictable, involves a fight to the death by the two main characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In later work, Ben Bova proved himself in the sci-fi thriller arena, however early on Bova was the equivalent of a sci-fi Cussler. Privateers is a hokum sci-fi actioner with plenty of hijinx on terra firma, the Moon and in-between. It's a wildly speculative alternate future, with the central character from PowerSat (no previous reading required) in a James Bond style role - women, confidence and a large does of heroic courage. Privateers is an entertaining read, not Bova's later style, however a page turner none-the-less.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just about he best of Bova's work. the USA has crumbled to the USSRs doominece in space but the third world nations resist and eventually rally around the american hero's daring action to regain control of the advantages of industry in space.