April 11, 2005
Cold As Ice by Charles Sheffield
This is one of the books that I discovered was connected to The Ganymede Club after I finished that book. Fortunately, it turns out the connection is pretty loose. Cold As Ice was published before Ganymede but takes place after. They have one character in common, but there's no dependency of understanding between the two books. Not to say the books aren't similar. They are. Very. And not. This one starts off with a ship at the end of the Great War (the interplanetary one, not our puny WWI) trying (in vain) to evade a smart weapon set on destroying them. The ship manages to send the children in their crew away in escape pods with little hope that they will be recovered in time to survive. The rest of the book takes place many years later and introduces a bunch of different characters who seem to be completely unconnected until they all start to collide and interact in interesting ways that all converge on Jupiter's moon, Europa. There's lots of fun sci fi stuff along the way (a very very very large array telescope (elements accross the entire inner solar system), submarine exploration of the oceans of Europa (and Earth), human genetic engineering) and the characters are engaging enough to make you want to find out what happens to them. It's a fun read and I'll keep working through Sheffield's stuff.