This is my first read of Ben Bova, and considering other people's comments about his books, expectations were high. I had not had any exposure to Bova, except that he is famous and considered a big gun in sci-fi literature. "The Precipice", the first of the "Asteroid Wars" novels, is really the lead in to the next novel, though it can certainly be enjoyed alone. The plot itself follows the machinations of Astro Corporation's boss, Dan Randolph, and Martin Humphries, of Humphries Space Systems, in their attempts to outdo each other and open up the asteroid belt for exploitation. Both men are motivated by very different causes.
The story takes place in the relative near future, when the Earth has been savaged by a series of human-caused natural disasters that have resulted from Earth reaching a greenhouse gas "climate cliff". Massive floods have radically altered the landscape, with many cities underwater, the economy, with the collapse of a lot of infrastructure, and the population, with millions dead. In this setting, humanity's ventures into space are still fledgling and in their infancy. The moon has people living there and there are bases on Mars. That is it.
