Bassoe
Well-known member
Nicholas Sansbury Smith's Hell Divers and everything to do with the character of the primary human antagonist of books two and three, Captain Leon Jordan, especially the portions written from his unreliable perspective is a spectacular parody of technocratic tyrants with messianic complexes who unshakably believe that only they can save the world by seizing total control over it. He checks all the boxes, trying to Year Zero all records of the surface world available to the population of the airborne generation ship, weaponizing control of the food supply to murder his opponents with starvation, wasting resources on ideological censorship and spying to prevent others from wasting resources, reclassifying the insects used in reclaiming waste biomatter into fertilizer for actual crops as a foodsource (but only for the underdeckers, not him), increasingly killing off everyone competent for doubting him then being surprised when everything fails, etc.
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