The Star Fraction series - pertinent entertainment of a gloomy future?

[Brad DeLong]

>I've had a fun time over the last few weeks reading through a British
>science fiction author who, until about 6 weeks ago, I'd never heard of.
>
>He paints an alarmingly possible picture of the 21st century world of
>rampant marketeering, one dominated in the next 20 or so years by a
>malevolently chauvinistic and (most importantly) space-weaponed USA,
>utilising proxy forces to maintain fine grained "order" in
>localities around the world - much of which activity is via is execution
>squads etc. of locals put onto the list via intelligence gathering in a
>porous informational world. Charming.
>
>But worth a read as this only provides the backdrop, many of the other
>themes are very broadranging, indeed, ahem, "universal"...
>
>The first of the series is the Star Fraction, followed by The Stone Canal,
>then The Sky Road, and the Cassini Division (all from Orbit in the UK,
>dunno about the US).
>

Ah. Ken MacLeod. There's also one called _Cosmonaut Keep_, that I 
have not read. He's buddies with the excellent (but unbalanced) Iain 
M. Banks, whose science fiction universe--the Culture--is a 
socialist-libertarian-cornucopian anarchy...

Brad DeLong
GSV The Existence of Money Is a Sign of Poverty