The Pilots of Borealis

It was helium-3 that powered humanity's far-flung civilization, feeding fusion reactors from the Alliances on Earth, to the Terran Ring, Mars, the Jovian colonies, and all the way out to even distant Titan. The supply, scooped up from the surface of the Moon, had once seemed limitless. That was a long time ago, though. Borealis, the glittering, fabulously rich city astride the lunar North Pole, had amassed centuries of unimaginable wealth harvesting it. She was the first to realize that those innocent days of ostensibly endless supplies were now over.The helium-3 was running out, and the energy crisis was real.The Great Planetary Wars, having decimated the Earth's population, still left 500 billion survivors in competing Alliances to contest for their fair share of what remained. The Terran Ring, though--impossibly powerful, on the ascendant, ruthless regarding its security--was only interested in satisfying its unquenchable demand for energy, and fairness had little to do with their leaders' calculations.Earth, Borealis and the Terran Ring would discover through the indomitable spirit of an Earth-born, war-weary mercenary turned piloting enthusiast-a sport possible only on the Moon in one sixth gravity-that the most powerful force in the Solar System wasn't mined on the lunar surface, but was instead found so much closer to home.Science writer David Nabhan ("Forecasting the Catastrophe", 2010; "Predicting the Next Great Quake", 1996) crafts the intelligent foundation on which an incredibly fast-moving, highly literate, and thoroughly unpredictable view of the future is built, one that is astounding, sublime, terrifying, and more than anything...plausible.