Frontera

Frontera

Frontera Book Review

As we know today, we have currently been unable to colonize any of the many planets that surround our own.   In the novel, Frontera, our imaginations are spurred by the possibilities of this endeavor in the future.   As we take the technology of space travel, exploration and colonization further and further, we begin to realize that it may not remain science fiction for too much longer.   Will it be possible to live on another planet in the future?   Maybe Earth will become too overcrowded and we will need to look elsewhere for real estate.   Could we rely only on the resources of a foreign planet to survive?   Is the question will we ever see the day or when will the day come?   These questions are very important as we look toward future space exploration and colonization.
Frontera, written by Lewis Shiner in 1984, was a science fiction novel that looks at the idea of colonization on a planet other than our own.   The book began by explaining that NASA has gone bankrupt and their many space programs were deadlocked.   One of these programs was Frontera.   Frontera was the first permanent space colony on the planet of Mars.   When NASA went belly-up, many of the Frontera residents refused to take the last space shuttle to Earth and decided to stay for good on the Martian surface.   Ten years later, the giant conglomerate Pulsystems put together the first space flight since NASA broke up.   It was thought by many that Frontera was a ghost town.   However, what the recovery mission found, headed by a man named Kane, was not what was expected.   The colony was thriving!   And more importantly, they had developed a device that was very valuable - an anti-matter transporter device.   Pulsystems knew this and had secretly implanted a chip inside Kane's body programming him to bring the technology back to Earth.   They were in a race against the Russians who had also been tipped off of its existence.   Whether Kane liked it or not, he was a puppet being controlled...