Fallen Angels (science fiction novel)

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Fallen Angels (1991) (ISBN 0-7434-3582-6) is a Prometheus Award-winning novel by science fiction authors Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. The novel was written as a tribute to science fiction fandom, and includes many of its well-known figures, legends, and practices.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story features a future in which the environmentalist movement has gained control of the earth's governments, imposing draconian luddite laws which, in an ironic effort to end global warming, bring about an even greater environmental catastrophe in the form of an ice age. Against this backdrop, two marooned astronauts from the space stations of Peace (the Russian Mir), and Freedom (which collectively form what amounts to a rogue state), flee the radically green American government with the aid of science fiction fandom (the last remnants of a pro-technology underground in the U.S.), in an effort to return home in orbit. The novel takes aim at several targets of ridicule: Senator William Proxmire, environmentalists, and mystics, such as one character who believes that one cannot freeze to death in the snow because ice is a crystal and "crystals are healing." It also mocks the usage of environmentalist ideas in science education, which greatly helps the main characters (for example, one government "expert" cited in a news article believes that the astronauts must be superhumanly strong, based on a photograph of a weightless astronaut easily handling heavy construction equipment).