Joan Slonczewski’s (A Door into Ocean) first novel in more than 10 years, The Highest Frontier, shows the author at the top of her game, weaving biological hard science fiction with approachable, lived-in characters and situations within a fully realized near-future world that, like all good SF, grapples with current world social and technological issues and fears.
Jenny Ramos-Kennedy, the current scion of a politically influential family, arrives for her freshman year at Frontera College--in orbit above Earth, built with media and tribal casino money, attracting the best and brightest of the current generation--already struggling, having recently lost her twin brother. Her on-and-off again boyfriend is an Amish work-study student; her best girlfriend is a polymath Parisian hacker; and her roommate compañera is introduced as an omniprosthete--a human brain in an artificial body. The Earth is in ecological collapse, the body politic relies perhaps too heavily on technology and constant polling, and the students at Frontera College must navigate their very public lives along with their personal desires and demons.
This is a character-driven novel of ideas with wonderfully extrapolated technologies in the digital and biological sciences. The ideas are well explained with minimal exposition, making Jenny and her friends and teachers come alive as they explore their new frontier habitat as well as their new status as the last great hope of humanity, hovering far above the planet, polarizing politics and culture as they do so. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor