DEEPDRIVE by Jablokov, Alexander - 1998

[New York]: Avon Eos [1998]., 1998. Octavo, boards. First edition. Hard SF set in the twenty-first century when planets and moons of the Solar System have been settled by eleven extraterrestrial races which reached human space with faster-than-light drives designed to self-destruct after use, taking the secret of their construction with them. When a renegade Vronnan crashes on Venus and is placed in "protective custody," a group of mercenaries, thrown together by chance and failure, determines to break him out and learn his secrets for themselves. "DEEPDRIVE (1998), Jablokov's last work before he ceased writing seriously for at least half a decade, engages very fully in the intricacies of the new space opera of the 1990s, with a complex quest plot and a passel of Alien races who activate the longing for exogamy typical of recent authors in this mode; the writer whose influence is most visible here -- and who may also have prefigured some of the novel's furious interactions between Sense of Wonder action and metaphysics -- may be James Tiptree Jr." - Clute, SFE (online). Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-561. A fine copy in fine dust jacket. (#93420)