Asteroid Fever

Do you enjoy Sips, synthetic insect plasma? Or gengineered food laced with nanobots? Do Martian microbes maintain your body and give you superhuman abilities? This ecofiction sci-fi mystery is filled with characters obsessed about food, who live in a zany world of whirlys (vehicles), off-world ships, and messianic messages from a dying genius who wants to see humans thrive in space. But who will rule space, and control the asteroid mining that provides Earth with a unique source energy? Let the battle commence.

Yes, Asteroid Fever has it all. From the off I imagined a Futurama-esque universe where the Dreaming News networks makes fake news look like the BBC. This book is allegorical, in a Philip K Dick kind of way, of our current ecological and socioeconomic situation, drawn with a fresh imagination and a unique, foodie-driven perspective. Well worth the read for the cutting humour alone.

Asteroid Fever is a novel with a lot of potential, but ends up falling flat.
The biggest problem with the novel is the amount of unnecessary content added to the story and the world. There are various elements to the world that added nothing to the plot or characters (Dogland comes to mind), and seem to exist only to lengthen the story. The large cast of characters made it impossible for any of them to be developed, and makes it difficult to keep track of who everyone is.
If Asteroid Fever had trimmed the fat, it would have been a much more enjoyable book.