We could easily spend this entire page arguing if ABLE ONE, the latest from the ever-reliable Ben Bova, is science fiction or a techno-thriller using slightly extrapolated hardware. It’s a bit of both, actually. But, bottom line: It is one of the most suspenseful, insightful, can’t-put-it-down-for-long novels you are likely to read this year.
A seemingly typical day goes wrong when truck drivers and other commuters notice that their GPS devices are suddenly no longer working. Then, TV and radio stations find themselves off the air. Most phone lines and, yes, even the Internet is down. Before long, the heads of state discover that damned near every source of electronic communication is no longer working, and global commerce is brought to a near-total standstill.
NORAD headquarters traces the source of the breakdown to a nuclear missile that exploded in space, destroying the world’s satellites. The missile belongs to a rogue North Korean faction, but the surviving intel reveals that there are at two additional ones being readied for launch from the same site. In the Situation Room in Washington, D.C., the president and military commanders conclude that the dismantling of the communication satellites was an apparent first strike, and the world is suddenly poised for thermonuclear war.
The United States’ only means of defense from the threatening missiles is ABL-1, or Able One, a modified 747 jet plane fitted with a high-powered laser gun intended to knock out missiles in flight. But the system has not been fully tested. In fact, it was due to make a trial run with a minimally experienced flight crew and a group of scientists and technicians.
Among those slated for the test run is Harry Hartunian, chief designer of the Able One project. He has a lot riding on the project, as a previous experiment resulted in a huge explosion that resulted in the death of his close colleague, and nearly Harry as well. But now his career — and, indeed, the fate of the entire company that built the project — rests on the results of this run.
But nobody expected it to suddenly become an actual defense mission. Now, Harry, his fellow laser technicians and the skeletal fight crew are faced with the task of possibly preventing the onset of World War III.
A story like this obviously requires no small amount of background on the technology that is involved and relied upon. Bova knows this and dutifully obliges. He knows how jets, missiles and lasers operate.
But more importantly, he also knows how fiction operates. What sets ABLE ONE apart from similar techno-thrillers is not the hardware, but the human dramas that envelop and drive the narrative from start to finish. We come to know Harry and the devotion he has for his research and his job — and how it cost him his marriage and nearly his life. We also get to know Col. Karen Christopher, the pilot of the 747, and how her once-promising military career was derailed.
In perhaps some of the most memorable and downright scariest scenes of the novel, we learn of the many and various petty jealousies, prejudices, affairs and assumptions within the men and women of political and military authority who run the entire show while Able One carries out its mission in the air.
ABLE ONE is another milestone in Bova’s prolific and distinguished career of milestones. Do not allow yourself to miss this one. —Alan Cranis
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