Thousands of years in the future, Paula Mendoza, an adventurous woman diplomat from Earth, takes on mutant space pirates in an effort to bring peace to the solar system. Devious and practical, she plunges herself into the mutant world, where people like her are slaves and brute force is everything, and triumphs by her wits. Cecilia Holland’s Floating Worlds, first published in 1976 and heavily influenced by the Cold War, still reads like right now, in the clash of personal ambition and cultural values, the underhanded politics and the threat of a collapsing environment.

RC