The Summer Queen

By: Joan D. Vinge

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Synopsis: Volume 3 in the Snow Queen Cycle The long-awaited sequel to Vinge's enormous The Snow Queen (1980), an interstellar tug-of-war between the far-from-benevolent Hegemony and the backward-but-indispensable planet Tiamat. It is now Summer on Tiamat; the Hegemony has withdrawn, leaving the planet in the hands of the Snow Queen's clone, Moon. Numerous--too numerous--subplots get underway. Moon's former lover, BZ Gundhalinu, will be sent to World's End, where a wrecked Old Empire ship has spilled semi-sentient stardrive plasma; if Gundhalinu can control the plasma, faster-than-light travel will again be possible, ending Tiamat's periodic isolation. Elsewhere, Reede Kullervo, a researcher with a rebuilt brain, addicted to his own supercharging designer drug, will be ordered by the leader of the supercriminal Brotherhood to seek the immortality elixir whose only source is Tiamat. Meanwhile, Moon struggles to control Tiamat's rebellious factions, knowing that the planet's intelligent sea-dwelling mers'' are the source of the elixir, and that the ancient computer that links the galaxy's clairvoyant sibyls in an information network lies buried under Tiamat's chief city, Carbuncle; she dares not permit the Hegemony to control either the sibyl network or the elixir. Pledged to forever end offworld exploitation and save the mers, the Lady of Tiamat, also known as Moon Dawntreader, finds her job made difficult by Summer tribes and the treacherous Winters.