This is both a very solid science fiction novel and an utterly ridiculous example of bad science fiction (and bad fiction) habits of the 1960s and 1970s. So the bad habits here is this bizarre attention paid to sexuality and gender in a book in which the sheer finite numbers of hours could prove to be the difference between humanity’s survival and its destruction is so silly and distracting it’s almost embarrassing for the book. So the book is about a satellite whose mission has […]