High Justice, by Jerry Pournelle

[Omphalos]

Jerry Pournelle is best known these days as the long-time collaborator of Larry Niven. Together Niven and Pournelle in the 70's and 80's wrote some of the biggest, block-buster SF novels of all time, many of which can be found in this list that I am creating. Pournelle was also well known as contributor to Byte Magazine, as their science & technology and products review editor, then as an important editor at Baen Books. But Pournelle also produced a decently sized body of SF on his own. Most of it centered around a common concept, the CoDominium, which was a star-faring empire of humans based on a mixture of the Roman, American and Russian empires, and which focused mainly on political, sociological, naval and military themes. The story of the CoDominium is one of trepidatious cooperation: The United States and the Soviet Union cooperated long enough to put together a viable FTL drive (the Alderson Drive) which allowed people to escape Earth before the inevitable war between the two superpowers broke out. The story related in this week's review of Pournelle's High Justice is of the breakdown of society that led to the US's and the USSR's cooperation...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..