Windriders by Timothy Maguire
Posted: June 02, 2004, 02:50:14 PM
Wow! This is an excellent action story with (as far as I can tell) a seamlessly-convincing tech background. There are elements of Heinlein's The Menace from Earth (flying suits, although in this case they've been crossed with Mobile Infantry suits from Starship Troopers) and Fritz Leiber's A Specter (or Spectre, spellings vary) is Haunting Texas (the exoskeleton to provide support for an elongated low gravity body); Kirsten and Celine would be at home in the former story, while Liz and the Windriders could have come from a Dale Brown technothriller.<br><br>The "tent" setting (apparently a superfabric dome -- or, yeah, pressurized tent -- spanning a section of one of Mars's canyons) is a great concept, allowing for a much more open (and flight-friendly) environment. AIs and gengineered humans and ornithopter (or chiropters? what would you call a flapping-wing aircraft modeled after a dragonfly?), oh my.<br><br>If Mr. Maguire goes pro (in between building rockets?), he may well earn the title "the next Allen Steele" (Allen Steele, of course, having been called a successor to Heinlein).