Series

Near Space

Allen Steele · 5 novels · 3 novellas · 10 novelettes · 11 short stories · 1 collection · 1988–2013

Allen Steele's Near Space novels are near-future, blue-collar hard SF set during the early decades of space industrialization, following working astronauts, engineers, and colonists rather than explorers or soldiers. Orbital Decay follows construction workers on an orbital satellite-assembly project who stumble into an espionage plot; later entries such as Clarke County, Space and Lunar Descent move outward to an orbital colony and a lunar mining operation. The loosely connected novels and story collections share a plausible, unglamorous near-future setting that predates Steele's later Coyote sequence.

Summary by Loreful, from public sources

Reading order

The order the books came out.

Best read in the order they were published.

Map

Near Space at the centre, 2 subseries around it, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.

Stats

By decade

1980s3
1990s18
2000s2
2010s7

Shape

5 novels · 3 novellas · 10 novelettes · 11 short stories · 1 collection

1 author

reads like:science fiction space colonization space near future tense adult

Mood

This series sits where the catalog sits — its mood is the corpus average.

grim · intensebright · intensegrim · calmbright · calmtenseadventurousdarkeeriechallengingmysteriousemotionalfunnywhimsicalinspiringhopefullightheartedrelaxinginformativereflectivebittersweetsadcatalogthis series

this series · the catalog · one dot = one book17 of 30 works carry a tone