Lunar Descent

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF ALLEN STEELE

“An author with the potential to revitalize the Heinlein tradition.” —
Booklist

“The best hard SF writer to come along in the last decade.” —John Varley, author of
Slow Apocalypse

“One of the hottest new writers of hard SF on the scene today.” —
Asimov's Science Fiction

“No question, Steele can tell a story.” —
OtherRealms

“The master of science-fiction intrigue.” —
The Washington Post

“Allen Steele is among the best.” —
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Steele writes with a spirit of exuberant, even exalted, optimism about our future in space.… Intelligent, literate, and ingenious.” —
Booklist

“[Steele's writing is] highly recommended.” —
Library Journal

“A leading young writer of hard science fiction.” —
Science Fiction Weekly

Orbital Decay

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel

“Stunning.” —
Chicago Sun-Times

“[Steele is] the master of science-fiction intrigue.” —
The Washington Post

“Brings the thrill back to realistic space exploration. It reads like a mainstream novel written in 2016 A.D.” —
The New York Review of Science Fiction

“A damned good book; lightning on the high frontier. I got a sense throughout that this was how it would really be.” —Jack McDevitt, author of
Cauldron

“An ambitious science fiction thriller … skillfully plotted and written with gusto.” —
Publishers Weekly

“A splendidly executed novel of working-class stiffs in space.” —
Locus

“Reads like golden-age Heinlein.” —Gregory Benford, author of
Beyond Infinity

“Readers won't be disappointed. This is the kind of hard, gritty SF they haven't been getting enough of.” —
Rave Reviews

The Tranquillity Alternative

“A high-tech thriller set against the backdrop of an alternative space program. Allen Steele has created a novel that is at once action-packed, poignant, and thought provoking. His best novel to date.” —Kevin J. Anderson, bestselling author of the Jedi Academy Trilogy

“Science fiction with its rivets showing as only Steele can deliver it. This one is another winner.” —Jack McDevitt, author of
The Engines of God

“With
The Tranquillity Alternative
, Allen Steele warns us of the bitter harvest reaped by intolerance, and of the losses incurred by us all when the humanity of colleagues and friends is willfully ignored.” —Nicola Griffith, author of
Ammonite

Labyrinth of Night

“Unanswered questions, high-tech, hard-science SF adventure, and action—how can you fail to enjoy this one?” —
Analog Science Fiction and Fact

The Jericho Iteration

“Allen Steele is the best hard SF writer to come along in the last decade. In
The Jericho Iteration
he comes down to a near-future Earth and proves he can handle a darker, scarier setting as well as his delightful planetary adventures. I couldn't put it down.” —John Varley, author of
Slow Apocalypse

Rude Astronauts

“A portrait of a writer who lives and breathes the dreams of science fiction.” —
Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Clarke County, Space

“Lively … engaging.” —
Locus

“A really gripping tale … This stuff is what I love the most about science fiction!” —
The Texas SF Inquirer

Lunar Descent

“A well-balanced blend of hard science, adventure, and thoughtful extrapolation.” —
Science Fiction Chronicle

“A triumph of the individual human spirit … excellent.” —
Starlog

Time Loves a Hero

“Not only a story about time traveling and multiple worlds, but also a look at how science fiction inspired scientific endeavors … [
Time Loves a Hero
] demonstrates Steele's growth as a writer.” —Steven Silver's Reviews

Oceanspace

“Steele's descriptions of the ocean depths and the unknown possibilities down there are first rate.” —
The Denver Post

“Steele's account of the undersea research facility that is the real star of this book is so thorough you'd think he had visited the place. The plot is complex and the characters real. There aren't many people writing fiction grounded in realistic scientific explanation. Allen Steele is among the best.” —
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The closest thing in years to [Arthur C.] Clarke's
The Deep Range
. Steele has done his technical homework thoroughly and he writes with an eye to pacing and dry wit. Hard SF adventure doesn't get a whole lot better than this.” —
Booklist

Lunar Descent

Allen Steele

For my mother—

who let me skip school to watch the Apollo moonwalks

Introduction

Lunar Descent
was my third published novel, following
Orbital Decay
and
Clarke County, Space
. It was also the third in a thematic trilogy set within what I was then calling the Near-Space Series; in terms of the series' internal chronology, though, it takes place between the first two books. There's a reason for this.

Clarke County, Space
was written largely because I'd stalled on
Labyrinth of Night
, the novel that was originally intended to be my follow-up to
Orbital Decay
. It was the first volume I delivered of a two-book deal made with Ace shortly before
Orbital Decay
was published, and I'd hoped that, by the time it was finished, I'd worked out my problems with
Labyrinth of Night
. But
Labyrinth
was a tough nut to crack, and since I still owed Ace another novel, it meant that I had to fill in the gap somehow.

Lunar Descent
was the solution. Midway through writing
Clarke County
, I realized that I'd left open a sizable hole in the future history I'd found myself creating: What was happening on the Moon all this time? Thinking about this, I decided that I wanted to write a novel about Descartes Station, the lunar mining base I'd briefly visited in
Orbital Decay
through the persona of my first-person narrator, Sam Sloane. Sam was no longer around, but perhaps I could go back to this place and see what had happened there in the years following
Orbital Decay
, and also show how they influenced the events of Clarke County, Space. So although
Lunar Descent
was written and published after those two books, it became the glue that binds them together. However, it's not necessary to read them in any particular order; in fact, all three can be read independently.

It's usually difficult to pinpoint an exact moment when a story comes to me, but
Lunar Descent
is an exception. My favorite band, the Grateful Dead, was doing a show at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. My wife and I were in field box seats off to the right side of the stage; night had fallen, but I could see small, flickering lights moving through the audience on the stadium floor and on the upper-level seats on the opposite side of the field. Such was my frame of mind that it seemed to me that I was looking at a mining operation on the surface of the Moon, with the lights being those of workmen and their vehicle prowling through the lunar night.

Then the Dead swung into the classic Willie Dixon song “Wang Dang Doodle,” and in that instant I knew what
Lunar Descent
would be about. This scene occurs in chapter eleven; the novel was built entirely around that.

Although this novel tackles some serious issues involving labor rights and the relationship between corporations and their employees, it's lighter and more satirical in tone than the two books that preceded it. That threw some readers and critics when it was published in 1991, and I imagine that it may still have that effect. On the other hand, some readers say
Lunar Descent
is their favorite of my novels. I was surprised, many years later while attending a space business conference in Los Angeles sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation, when the president of LunaCorp told me that
Lunar Descent
occupied a place on his office shelf as a reminder of the sort of future on the Moon he'd like to help build. I took that as a supreme compliment.

It's been nearly twenty-five years since this novel was published, and more recent events have made the timeline and some of the technology obsolete. Nonetheless, I'm very pleased to see this book become widely available again, and I hope you'll enjoy it.

Allen Steele

Whately, Massachusetts

November, 2014

DESCARTES STATION: GENERAL LAYOUT

Sketch courtesy of Skycorp Engineering Group

A McGuinness International Company