Energized

By Edward M. Lerner

No one expected the oil to last forever. How right they were….

A geopolitical miscalculation tainted the world's major oil fields with radioactivity and plunged the Middle East into chaos. Any oil that remains usable is more prized than ever. No one can build solar farms, wind farms, and electric cars quickly enough to cope. The few countries still able to export oil and natural gas—Russia chief among them—have a stranglehold on the world economy.

And then, from the darkness of space, came Phoebe. Rather than divert the onrushing asteroid, America captured it in Earth orbit.

Solar power satellites—cheaply mass-produced in orbit with resources mined from the new moon to beam vast amounts of power to the ground—offer America its last, best hope of avoiding servitude and economic ruin.

As though building miles-across structures in space isn't challenging enough, special interests, from technophobes to eco-extremists to radio astronomers, want to stop the project. And the remaining petro powers will do anything to protect their newfound dominance of world affairs.

NASA engineer Marcus Judson is determined to make the powersat demonstration project a success. And he will—even though nothing in his job description mentions combating an international cabal, or going into space to do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781429947503

Edward M. Lerner

Edward M. Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president, for much of that time writing science fiction as a hobby. Since 2004 he has written full-time, and his books run the gamut from technothrillers, like Small Miracles, to traditional SF, like his InterstellarNet series, to, with Larry Niven, the grand space epic Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels.   Ed’s short fiction has appeared in anthologies, collections, and many of the usual science fiction magazines. He also writes the occasional nonfiction article, on topics as varied as asteroid deflection, privacy (or lack thereof) in the Internet age, and the role of communications in SF.

Reviews for Energized

[rondoctor · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first half of the book was rather trite and trivial. I almost gave up on it. However, I'm glad I kept reading. The rest of the book redeemed it and actually became a good story. The theme is relevant to near future development of energy supplies. One of the key messages is that no matter how "safe" we believe a new technology to be, no matter how many safeguards are built into the technology, no matter how much "defense in depth" (as nuclear power buffs like to contend they have) the technology features, there always will be a way that the supposedly beneficial technology can be turned into a catastrophe. There is no perfect technology. We always must be prepared to deal with consequences of catastrophic and massive failure.