Fallen Angels

by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Michael Flynn

Book Overview

Two Space Hab astronauts are shot down over the North Dakota glacier by the new totalitarian government given carte blanche to control the greenhouse effect.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067172052X
• ISBN13: 9780671720520
• Release Date: June 1991
• Publisher: Baen Books
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

I have owned five copies of this book...

And I've given four of them away to friends, who all liked it. You can get the story from other reviews. While the Greens are the "enemy" in this story, it's really aimed at anyone who would rather follow an emotional cause than think for themselves. While the argument over global warming is far from settled (despite the popular press), the "dumbing-down" of our society is not in question. Science is a mystery to the vast majority of Americans, and nobody trusts anything mysterious for long.... This book is not about politics. It is about a small, intelligent, educated, and devoted group (of sci-fi fans)outsmarting a country of mindless followers (of environmental socialism). While the details are a departure, the basic theme is not new. Frankly, my favorite parts of the book are the actions of the Greens, and how apparent they are in today's society: A Federal officer arguing how his gun is "appropriate technology"... the infighting on the committee in charge of finding the "Angels"... the focus on process over results throughout the pursuit.... I see this behavior more and more since first reading this book.Final word: Don't let the word "politics" scare you from an enjoyable book. Read it and decide for yourself. If you're a sci-fi fan, you'll get the inside jokes and obscure references (some of which are explained). If not, there's plenty of material inside for you, too.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Good entertaining speculative fiction with a surprising and unusual perspective!OK, this book is not great Sci-Fi. It reads like an old StarTrek episode, or even more like Galaxy Quest! I was inspired to write because of the negative reviews about this book. A writer accused anyone who likes this book as being "Braindead" and a "Rush Limbaugh dittohead".Yes, in this book, the environmentalists are the bad guys.Unfortunately, most people in the environmentalist community act more on feelings than science. Worse yet, most of our environmental POLICY is shaped by feelings and not science.This book is science fiction. It offers the scientifically sound POSSIBILITY that the environmentalists are wrong. In real life they often are. Many people are.If your strong political feelings make you take offense at a work of fiction that even suggests that you might be wrong, then you are not a good candidate to read or criticize speculative fiction. In fact, interesting unexpected possible futures are what real science fiction fans are usually curious about.To the writer who called Pournell fans (that's the rest of us reading this) braindead Rush Limbaugh dittoheads- what are your credentials? Here are the credentials of Fallen Angels author Larry Pournelle (copied from the Science Fiction Book Club) - Pournelle boasts a fleet of degrees from the University of Washington: a B.S. in psychology and mathematics, an M.S. in experimental statistics and systems engineering, and PhD.s in both psychology and political science. An energetic proponent of technological progress, Pournelle serves as chairman of both the Citizen's Advisory Council on National Space Policy and the Lunar Society, Inc. He worked on human factors for the early space program, creating proposals that led to the development of on-board computers and more. The Air Force Academy still uses his nonfiction 1970 work, The Strategy of Technology (co-written with S.T. Possony), as a textbook. Always a trailblazer, Pournelle was one of the first authors to use a computer (as far back as the late 1970s) for his fiction and nonfiction writing; his first personal computer, EZEKIEL, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "Chaos Manor," his column of computer punditry, was a monthly mainstay in Byte until the magazine folded in 1998.

Way better than I expected

Over the years we've come to expect great things from Niven/Pournelle collaborations, their track record has been so good that you can't help but want more from each sucessive novel. But for some reason I had low expectations for this, the concept just didn't seem that interesting . . . in a nutshell two astronauts crashland into the middle of a future US where most technology has been outlawed in favor of an extremist form of environmentalism . . . without reading it my first reaction was "yawn" and I settled down to plug away at it and get it over with. Little did I know. This has to be one of the most entertaining SF experiences I've read in recent years . . . the authors (I'm not sure what Michael Flynn added to the affair, being that I'm not up on his work . . . but heck he could have just sat there and smiled for all I care) throw in all sorts of interesting stuff . . . their take on the environmentally friendly United States is both mildly amusing and utterly chilling, a world where science is seen as just another form of magic rammed down everyone's throat by "white, heterosexual males" (hey!) and superstition and "conservation" are the order of the day. You sit there and chuckle about the characters are acting so silly . . . until you go read the newspaper and hear the latest reaction to the latest research. It's scary. For kicks they throw in an upcoming Ice Age and blame it on the efforts to halt global warming and that adds a nice backdrop to the whole affair. But the cap to the already fine novel is the portrayal of the SF fan community . . . with science all but outlawed and SF seen as the "wrong" kind of reading, fans have to hold conventions in secret, pretend to have "mundane" jobs and basically go underground . . . the authors show the community as not only a closely knit group of utterly unique individuals who aren't nerds that sit around discussing which Star Trek captain was the greatest, but as resourceful and quick thinking. Apparently some of the characters are based on real people and this is probably SF's greatest love letter to the fans that make it all worthwhile, the authors definitely feel an affection for these people. The plot moves swiftly and turns in all the right places, even in the darkest hour everyone seems to be having a fine time and when you're done you'll fine you have little to complain about. So ignore the garish cover and lackluster writeup on the back cover, just get it and dive in, if you consider yourself in any way a "true" SF fan, you need to read this.

George Orwell Revised

Fallen Angels is perhaps the most chilling dystopian tale of the future since Orwell's "1984"; but only if you're a pro-technology, pro-human creature. It portrays a future in which the objectivity of "materialist" science is "an invention of heterosexual, white males," and owning an unlicensed computer is a crime. While the anti-techology views are hyperbolized for dramatic purpose, the hyperbole is becoming closer to to reality as time goes by. The ice age portrayed in the story is not a result of measures taken to combat global warming, but is a result of the fact that global warming never happened. The dumbing down of the general populace, particularly among the civil service, will be familiar to anyone who's had to deal with the gov't in recent years. The story admirably demonstrates the silliness of political correctness, and the difference between tolerance and structured thinking. If you're still considering buying this book, buy two. Send the 2nd copy to a friend, a relative, or better yet, your Congressman.

The Elite Become the Hunted

In the year 2025, Luddites and Greens have taken over the United States. Excessive heating is abolished; people are forced to burn alcohol in their cars. Technology having long-since been made taboo, science-fiction fans/writers have either been brain-washed, been forced into hiding, or exiled to Austrailia. Meanwhile, 200 miles above the Earth, the descendents of the last astronauts and cosmonauts fight a continual, losing battle for survival. Having only a small Moon base, the Space Stations Mir and Freedom, a pair of STS External Tanks, the Space Shuttles Buran and Enterprise-II, and four NASPs, they have been reduced to eating algae, mining the Moon for oxygen and building materials, and using the NASPs to 'scoop-dive' the upper-atmosphere for nitrogen. However, during a scooping mission, one of the NASPs is shot down over the North Dakota Glacier, the two astronauts being rescued by Sci-Fi Fandom. Falling Angels is the subsequent story of how the fans struggle to find a way to return the 'Angels' back to orbit.