Republic of Luna

     Lazarus Sheffield is a man on the edge. A high level analyst in the Department of Homeland Security, he's finally had enough and decides to bolt to the Moon, a place of freedom in his mind. The year is 2092.

   -- Ken Murphy, Texas

 Published in 2007 by Writer's Cramp Publishing, it weighs in at 315 pages. Some errors, mainly the homonym kind that spellcheckers won't pick up on. Manors for manners is one example.

He quickly falls in with the lovely Lindsey on the way to orbit, who shows him the more delicious side of microgravity, and who turns out to be an important person on the Moon. Terrified of what he knows, he finally confesses to her his fears - thousands of known International Brotherhood terrorists have gone missing from DHS radar and Lazarus believes they intend to set off nukes on the Moon.

Lunarian technology has advanced considerably over the last fifty years, while North American Federation technology has stagnated under the repressive fundamentalist government. Everyone on the Moon wears visors that use lasers to display images directly to the eyeball, allowing amazing visual wizardry. In essence, holography the easy way. Everyone on Luna also constantly communicates with the central computer of the Republic, known as Magi. Luna is an amazingly open and free-thinking society, and Lazarus has trouble adapting at first after his indoctrination on Earth. But he wants to immigrate to Luna and help them avert what could be a huge tragedy.

In crater Alphonsus (13.4S, 2.8W) is the vast marvel of the Republic of Luna. Surface facilities work at providing resources, while underground are vast excavations housing hundreds of thousands of Lunarians. The networks and visors and other technologies have created an open society living in a seeming paradise.

A paradise threatened by dark forces from Earth. Forces bent on destruction and conquest. Evil men and women who seek to undo what has been created against their wishes.

This is a complex book. It takes a very strong position, and one that does not look kindly on fundamentalism, be it Christian or Islamic or Jewish. The author espouses strongly atheism and secular humanism. Lunarians believe strongly in the sanctity of all life, human and otherwise, and therefore cannot comprehend the wanton destruction wrought on the biosphere of Earth in the name of 'God/Allah/G-d'.

The book also seems to draw on a vast reservoir of inspiration in classic sci-fi fiction. Lindsey's set-up at the orbital station 'Heaven's Gate' harkened back to a similar seductive trap in Norman Spinrad's 'Russian Spring'. The laying out of the cultural differences of the Lunarians is reminiscent of the fantastickal travelogues of the historical Moon stories of prior centuries. The visors remind me of the ones in 'Growing Up Weightless'.

The action builds to a hot and heavy pace for the 'Battle of Nell's Valley' climax. The basic premise is that our development as a civilization is threatened by the potential to fall into a 'titanic clash of competing theologies on a global scale', where the totalitarian fundamentalism uses societies to achieve its goals. Even Lunar societies.

The book is quite forward in decrying fundamentalism, and this may throw off some readers. If you don't like your theology being questioned / threatened / derided, then this book is not for you. For more tolerant folk, this is quite a story that keeps building and building to the climax. There is a lack of real denouement, so one wonders as to whether the author has more of the story in mind.

A well-wrought story, I'll give this one a waning Full Moon.

--- Ken Murphy, Dallas, Texas, Lunar Library