Manna

Lee Correy was the pen name used by the late G. Harry Stine for his works of fiction. He was a long time proponent of Space Exploration and more importantly Exploitation.

Manna is a story set in a future where the world is split into military/economic factions, competition for energy and resources, and the struggle for people to remain free. It is a world where Stine's vision of an industrial revolution in space is well under way: routine commercial and military space flight, solar power satellites, orbital factories, bases on the moon - and orbiting laser cannon.

The story begins with ex-US Aerospace Force pilot Sandy Baldwin traveling to a job interview in a small country in Africa of which he knows little. He's been cashiered - when targeted by a Russian military spacecraft, he was the one who survived - but only because he exceeded his authority by defending himself. Now unemployable in the US, he arrives worrying about his job prospects but does really well in the interview by managing to break up an assassination attempt against the people he's come to see.

From there Baldwin begins a personal journey of discovery, finding out that the world is not what he thought it was. As his new employers begin to use his space and military skills, he finds they also need him as a leader in a war he's stumbled into. The human race is on the verge of changing the rules of the game completely. His new employers and soon adopted countrymen have begun to realize an economy based on the near limitless resources available in space; the entrenched powers that be who are still treating the world as a finite pie that can only be sliced up so many ways are determined to reign them in.

Mankind is on the verge of a new age - but the old one is loath to give up its grip. The story of Baldwin finding his own place in this new world and doing his best to make it happen is good, engrossing entertainment. The larger picture of what the world could be is engrossing in its own right. Although this book was written several decades ago, recent events make it even more timely