A world where free-fall is normal and gravity is a luxury you have to pay for. A world where sunlight is not available to all and even those who have the machines that produce it have to get used to full-dark hours of sun-off with no moonlight. Some even live in full-dark all the time.
Virga, life inside a Fullerene balloon thousands of miles in diameter, on the edge of the Vega solar system, is scifi author Karl Schroeder’s five-book (so far) series of swashbuckling tales. This is steampunk Victoriana where computers and other electronic devices cannot exist—unless a crucial part of the central “sun of suns” is turned off.
Great stuff, truly, though it’s not a future world I would care to actually live in, unlike the future world of Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict detective series. Virga’s hard science instructs as the romance entertains and the characters introspect, change and grow.
Well worth your time and money to read the first in the epic and don’t be surprised if you find yourself hooked. Unfortunately, they are fast reads. They go lickety-split. Having finished No. 4, a cliff-hanger, I must now wait until Valentine’s Day to receive No. 5. Sigh.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 