Nipped through the book in spare hours this weekend. I thought of Red Witch of Mercury (1945?; no prizes for guessing why I know it): pacey space opera politicking springs from a long stem. Of course, I don't read tonnes of this stuff, so I speak from ignorance, but sometimes interlopers gain broad insights that evade the acculturated.

Attitudinally, though, we stand in a different spot to the '40s, and attitude matters, as does the tertiary degree's worth of thought put into sociocultural detail.