Up Against It

A prescient classic of crime, politics, and emergent AI in a future human-settled solar system, Laura J. Mixon''s Up Against It is now reissued as a Tor Essential, featuring an introduction by James S.A. Corey, bestselling author of the Expanse series. Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure. Jane Navio is the resource manager of Phoecea, an asteroid colony poised on the knife-edge of a hard vacuum of unforgiving space. A mishap has dumped megatons of water and methane out the colony''s air lock, putting the entire human population at risk. Jane discovers that the crisis may have been engineered by the Martian crime syndicate, as a means of executing a coup that will turn Phocaea into a client-state. And if that wasn''t bad enough, an AI that spawned during the emergency has gone rogue…and there''s a giant x-factor