The Fleet of Stars

In Fleet of Stars, Poul Anderson brings back the wildly colorful Anson Guthrie, his iconoclastic hero from Harvest of Stars. The staid, somber people of Earth are not only dependent on technology, they are all but ruled by machine intelligence. Suspecting a conspiracy to suppress humankind's last vestiges of freedom, Guthrie begins a dangerous journey across the realm of the comets, the asteroids, and the stars themselves--willing to risk his life to preserve humanity's ability to roam the universe.

Poul Anderson marks the 50th year of his science fiction writing career with the conclusion of his Harvest of Stars series (Boat of a Million Years, Harvest of Stars, The Stars are Also Fire, Harvest the Fire). While the writing is leisurely, the action bounces between the solar system and the stars as Anson Guthrie returns to action once again (or at least his downloaded consciousness does). It seems the artificial intelligence that half support and more than half control the Terran system are hiding something from humanity, and Guthrie is determined to find out what that is.

In the fourth installment of Anderson's "Harvest of Stars" series (e.g., Harvest the Fire, LJ 10/15/95), Anson Guthrie returns from the distant planet Amaterasu to investigate fragmented rumors about what solar lenses have found in deep space. On Earth he joins Fenn, a former Earth policeman, and his Terran girlfriend, Kinna Ronay, to learn why the cybercosm thinks it's too dangerous for humans to resume space exploration. This hard-science novel effectively explores the relationships between men and machines, cultural differences, and rebellion. Highly recommended for sf collections.
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