Silver Tower - novel

[nitebot]

Did a forum search but no results so has anyone ever read the novel Silver Tower by Dale Brown? Although an early 90s tale, its account of laser toting space stations, space planes and shuttles is a good yarn for those interested in military space technology.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silver-Tower-Dale-Brown/dp/0586202692

Also anyone read John Nance's Orbit? Low orbit space tourism gone wrong. I understand a film is to be made of it. Be interested to hear anyone's views.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orbit-John-J-Nance/dp/074347662X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266778220&sr=1-1

 

[RyanC]

I read silver tower many times when it first came out. It remains one of Dale Brown's strongest novels; before his novels denegerated into crap.

 

[nitebot]

I'm glad to hear that Ryan. It seems that many of the technothriller authors have steered clear of military action in space but Brown was happily blowing up billion dollar space planes. I hope that we see a few more now that there are several manned space programmes under development to join the established ones.

 

[RyanC]

The thing is, even in Silver Tower; even if it's pretty good; you can still see the germs of his later storyline problems -- a *single* outpost/aircraft manned by brave plucky volunteers, manages to defeat the evil jihado/commies/reds/chinese/anarchists singlehandedly by the end of the book.

E.G, like in one of them, a single pass by a three cell formation of EB-52s wipes out a major armored formation -- I think division size. While that is actually feasible with modern smart munitions, and the bomb capacity of the B-52; it totally left out the fact that a major ex-soviet / near soviet formation would have it's own organic air defense assets -- and while the EB-52 is much harder to kill than a normal B-52, due to it's self defense capabilities -- it can shoot down incoming missiles or aircraft (Bomber Defense Missiles for the B-70 are still very much classified since a lot of the work went later into BDMs for the B-1A program, before the B-1 was terminated); and has much greater jamming capability, it's very much still a B-52, only slightly more stealthy; and vunerable to many modern air defense networks.

That's a key point Brown missed.

If the enemy shoots down 25-30% bombers inbound with their air defense on a conventional mission, it's a disaster for the attackers. If the bombers are carrying nukes, it's a disaster for the defender.

 

[Byeman]

I read silver tower many times when it first came out. It remains one of Dale Brown's strongest novels; before his novels denegerated into crap.

I think the degeneration started with Silver Tower. Brown is totally ignorant of orbital mechanics and optics. There wasn't anything plausible with the ops internal and external to the station.

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Hey you want another space techno-thriller? Go read FREEFALL by the Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Rather far-fetched, puts a whole new spin on the Apollo Project, but right along the same subject of military space ops.

 

[AlertOne]

May I add my two cents [or two pennies here in the uk...]

A rather Good techno thriller is Cobra by Daniel Stryker, published back in 1991. It is out there in its concepts but still realistic to my mind [I am a scifi buff...].

 

[nitebot]

Ok thanks for those suggestions guys. Will investigate. I've also been told about Storming Intrepid a late 80s/early 90s space based technothriller by Payne Harrison.

Edit: Also heard good words about a more recent novel Red Moon by David Michaels. Similarities in plot to Freefall. Apparently a well researched alternate history about the Soviets landing on the moon first but it gets covered up by the American and the Soviets until a near future mission looking for Helium 3 shows up.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0979692946/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

 

[Nick]

I just finished reading Silver Tower and have to say that whoever proof-read it should have been taken out and beaten with hardback copies of the book.

The USS California starts as a 58,000ton Nuclear powered Battleship and transforms to a 11,000ton cruiser in the space of 80 pages. England and Scotland have separate goverments and Scotland has a Governor (actually, a Governor-General is not that implausible in the event of full independence under the same Crown).

I think Silver Tower was the first book Dale Brown wrote but Old Dog was the first published, as I understand it. I think the series worked for me up until Fatal Terrain then it really started getting unbelievable.