Science Fiction has a tendency to come down on the more liberal side of most issues. Fire Star breaks from this tradition and delivers a story with a conservative heroine/agenda. With most science fiction you get a society radically different from our own, but Flynn is able to show you today's world and make space travel believable.

In this story, private enterprise has invested deeply into a secret project to replace the shuttle. Mariesa Van Huyten and her Van Huyten Industries (VHI) are the driving force behind this project. The corporate world is in it for the profits that are promised from a single stage to orbit vehicle, but Mariesa is driven by her fears.

The cast is supplemented by the test pilots that will take the new ship up as well as students in a school system bought out by VHI for the purposes of improving education. Mariesa has her own purposes of putting hope and the dream of space into the leaders of tomorrow. The sub plots intertwine seamlessly with the main plot. The book ultimately succeeds in showing the reader how space travel could change and getting the reader excited about it at the same time.

This is a very good book. There is mild sexuality and violence, but high school level readers should be fine. Warning: This book is part of a series and may lead you to buy the other books, but it works as a stand alone. This book is a Heinlein Award winner and follows in the tradition of Heinlein works.

Pattern Recognition was a decent read. That being said, it was a disappointing attempt by William Gibson. Gibson has a certain style that he totally deviates from in this novel. It is almost as if he were trying to mimic the style of Neal Stephenson, albeit unsuccessfully.
Gibson also misses the mark with his characters. The character of Cayce is well developed, but she is the only one. Gibson created many compelling and interesting characters, but he did not develop these characters sufficiently. Gibson could have easily developed some secondary plot lines to give the secondary characters more depth.
I really liked the footage mystery though. The footage takes full advantage of the anonymity of the net. Anonymous works always inspire curiosity and interest. Details of the footage, and the cult surrounding it, seemed almost realistic and forced me into a search for Footage Fetish Forums on Google. A friend of mine suggested that the book should have had a companion website were you could view the footage.
All in all, this book was Gibson writing out of his element, trying to mimic Stephenson's recent success. The book is more mainstream and will invite non-Cyberpunk fans into Gibson's world, but the invitation just is not very good. Gibson has crossed into the mainstream with a forgettable novel.

This book follows a programmer as he tries to stop a rogue swarm of nanobots and save his marriage. Guest appearances are made by: Stinky Tech Guy, Wimpy Tech Guy, Anal retentive, does what ever the boss wants tech guy, The unfaithful wife, The talented Chinese Scientist, and the I will analyze members of my family psychologist.
I will preface this review by saying that Prey is the first Michael Crichton book I have read.
That being said, Prey is an average science fiction novel at best. The science is viable but the story lacks a real hook. The characters are one dimensional and very stereotypical. I really did not care for or relate to any of the characters. Crichton has the ability to scare the reader with the most evil potential of a technology. He has a gift to see a worst case scenario and create a character, eventhough one dimensional, that has the ability to survive this technology gone wild.
This book was enjoyable and the ending was clever. It did not get to pager-turner status until the middle to end. The book did have a nice flow and was written in an after actions report type format that was interesting. The only bog downs in the story is when Crichton is explaining some elementary techno babble (what is a nanobot anyways?).
This book may do well for fans of thrillers or as an intorduction to sci fi, but the experienced sci fi fan will see this book as lackluster. I say save your money for the movie when it comes out.