Red Lightning (Red Thunder, #2)

#942
Title: Red Lightning (Red Thunder, #2)
Author: John Varley
Publisher: Ace
Year: 2007
355 pages

Mars's autonomy is threatened in a story that borrows some elements from the US's response to 9/11. The second book in the sequence, following Red Thunder. Similar to Heinlein's late juvenile and transitional novels in scope and tone (with more, though mostly not shown, sex, drugs, and swearing, and a lot more liberalism). It's easy to see some of the themes Varley returned to in Slow Apocalypse. There's some hard science, though it's not the focus even when it's important to the plot. The emotional centers of the book are interpersonal and societal.

I knew immediately what was in the box, but not quite how it had been managed.