It’s a good week for science fiction, what with the film version of The Martian coming out in a few days. Not that I am cashing in on that or anything, and the draft itself is not quite finished, but here is a first cut at the back-cover promotional blurb for Far From the Spaceports. It may well change over the next few weeks… comments welcome.

Quick wits and loyalty confront high-tech crime in space

Welcome to the Scilly Isles – a handful of asteroids bunched together in space, well beyond the orbit of Mars. They are a good home to a varied and unique group of settlers. But now, someone is accumulating credit by fraud on a large scale out here. Nobody knows how or why, and the reputation of the islands is under threat.

Meet Mitnash Thakur and his virtual partner Slate, sent out from Earth to find out what is happening, and fix it in the best way they can. Their colleagues on Earth are several weeks away at their ship’s best speed, and even message signals take an hour for the round trip. Slate and Mitnash are on their own, until they can work out who to trust. Then, as soon as they start their investigation, the threat gets personal.

For fun, here’s a NASA picture of the asteroid Ida, which to everyone’s surprise turned out to have its own little moon, Dactyl.