THEMES / CONCEPTS

• RELIGION: Gridfriend: "God of the global electronic Grid. The Grid gives TV, the news -credit, which transslates into food and shelter. Pray to Gridfriend and the power company's computers lose your bill..." [p.14] Religion attached to digital mediums.

• ORBITAL SOCIETY: The Colony: A six-mile cylinder floating in space --there's an off-world theme going on here as well. Not exactly a utopia, but originally intended as a way out for the less fortunate.

• SPRAWL: The Strip: An area on the Colony. Much like the Sprawl, in the sense that semi-legal operations take place here with what some consider less-than-savoury characters. [p.35] Evidently every city needs a place like this.

• POST WAR: WWIII: Perhaps it is redundant to mention this. Shirley maintains that this trilogy is not post-war but pre-war, but I think his mysterious statement had a different war in mind (a war against fascism and government control). Time and again this theme appears in the genre.