The Moonbase Saga tells the story of humankind's first permanent settlement off the Earth. In the first volume, Moonrise, we saw the beginnings of Moonbase, from a cluster of half-buried shelters to a rugged underground center dug into the ringwall mountains of the great crater Alphonsus.
The U.S. government started Moonbase, but -- bowing to political pressures -- abandoned it, leaving it to the corporation that was operating the base under contract to either continue operating it or close it up completely.
Moonrise dealt with the savage conflict between the corporation's leaders, two young men who are half brothers, and how their conflict turns to murder.
In Moonwar, Moonbase is now an industrial center that is beginning to make a profit for its parent corporation. This is a view of our real future in space. The Moon will become a resource center for human operations in space because it contains the raw materials needed to build and feed industries -- and people -- off-Earth. And, since the Moon's gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth and it is airless, payloads can be launched from the Moon to anywhere in the solar system (including low Earth orbit) some twenty times cheaper than launching the same tonnages from Earth.
Low-gravity manufacturing and chemical processing, in the clean vacuum of cislunar space (between Earth and Moon), will open up entire new industries and help to move much of Earth's manufacturing plants off the planet, allowing Earth to become once again a clean, green world, fit for human habitation.
Moonbase makes economic and environmental sense, in fact as well as in fiction.
But in the novel Moonwar, Moonbase depends on nanotechnology, using virus-sized machines to produce breathable air and most of the other necessities for survival. Without nanomachines, Moonbase would be hopelessly inefficient and unprofitable.
Moreover, the head of Moonbase, Douglas Stavenger, has nanomachines in his body. They were put into him to save him from a radiation overdose when he was trapped on the Moon's surface during a solar flare. They still protect his health and well-being, like an extra and highly-efficient immune system.
But on Earth, nanotechnology is strictly outlawed. Just as the first reaction to cloning has been fear and loathing, the public's reaction to nanotechnology is equally negative. Nanomachines are purported to be uncontrollable man-made "bugs" that can inadvertently eat up everything in sight or even be turned into deadly, unstoppable weapons of war.
Fanatics fan the public's fear of nanomachines. Nanoluddites assassinate people connected with nanotech research or those suspected of using nanotechnology for health or cosmetic reasons. And the United Nations promotes an international treaty banning all nanomachine use, teaching and research.
The dictatorial Secretary-General of the United Nations wants to extend the nanotechnology ban to the Moon. He is willing to see Moonbase closed forever, rather than allowing the "Lunatics" to continue using nanomachines.
If Moonbase is shut down, Doug Stavenger must return to Earth and face assassination by nanoluddite fanatics. More than that, Stavenger knows that if Moonbase is closed, humankind will be turning its back on the new frontier of space, closing itself off from the wealth and energy that space resources can provide to Earth.
Moonbase's population consists of a couple thousand scientists and engineers. They have no weapons, not even steak knives (no steaks on the Moon!). U.N. Peacekeeper troops are on their way to Moonbase to enforce the anti-nanotech edict.
The only possible tool the "Lunatics" have is public opinion on Earth. They are the little guys who want only to live their own way in peace, a quarter-million miles away from Earth. But the "big guys" -- the U.N. Peacekeepers -- are armed to the teeth and ready to attack.
The "Lunatics" realize that if they somehow succeed in driving off the Peacekeepers they might eventually win enough public support to remain free. But if they begin to kill Peacekeeper troops, public opinion will swing against them.
How can they defend themselves against armed troops without killing any of them? Can they come up with nonlethal weapons in time to save themselves?
