The Descent of Anansi

The Descent of Anansi is a 1982 science fiction novel by American writers Steven Barnes and Larry Niven.

First edition (publ. Tor Books)
Cover art by Howard Chaykin

Plot summary

A space station manufactory attempts to become commercially independent from its government backers by exporting super-strong nanowire that can only be manufactured in free-fall.

Following an attempt to sabotage their first delivery and hijack the cargo, the intrepid crew realizes they can escape the hijackers. Their shuttle Anansi can become a modern-day version of its namesake, an African spider-god, by descending to Earth on a thread.

The physics of tidal forces are explained, and the possibilities of orbital tethers to accelerate payloads into higher orbits (or indeed de-orbit shuttles without retro-rockets) are woven into a hard science fiction thriller.

Reception

Dave Langford reviewed The Descent of Anansi for White Dwarf #54, and called it "Fast-moving, predictable, inoffensive."[1]

gollark: It runs over websockets and permits arbitrary CBOR data in message bodies, as well as arbitrary strings/numbers as channel IDs.
gollark: <@!490057841202298900> Hi! I found your thing here (https://forge.touhey.org/cc/thox.git/tree/docs/explain/modem.rst) describing Skynet and thought you might want more information!
gollark: You'd have to meddle with events somehow though.
gollark: It doesn't write everything to the disk, so it can handle files bigger than disk (admittedly with awful memory use) and can even download bigger-than-maximum-request-size files using HTTP range stuff.
gollark: https://pastebin.com/LW9RFpmY

References
  1. Langford, Dave (June 1984). "Critical Mass". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (Issue 54): 24.


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