no way

I feel the absolute units have crossed some kind of threshold

I remember this early-1990s SF novel that was like the leftists tried to solve global warming and sent us into the glacial age it had been saving us from

and there was a space station in orbit but the greenie bureaucrats resented it, but it could recharge its stores by sending this atmosphere-skipper craft down to scoop nitrogen

but then something broke and in order to maintain future-orientation they had to connect with some groundbound SF fans who rehabbed a museum rocket to rendezvou them in orbit for replacement

and in the last scene as the rocket took off the harpy head bureaucrat demanded a gun from her aide to shoot it down

but he (who still had the spark of future somewhere in him) made sure to tediously clear the weapon and eject the mag first, ‘elf & safety

(this whole sequence I suspect was influenced by Wings of Honneamise)

Anyway, the SF fans, clearly audience stand-ins to be flattered, at one point the orbiteers suggested they were maximizing their volume:area ratio for icefield heat retention by being so spherically fat

That was the same era as the story that became Children of Men, “oh no what if antinatalism”, and this one story I remember where the careerist scientress visits to condescend to the mommy track sister she stole her breakthrough ideas from only to learn that the real cure to the AIDS-alike she has was “having a kid before 30”

The early 90s: more reactionary than you remember!

(plus all the Kim Stanley Robinson “okay science and pacifism and postcapitalism but still, we fuck 9th graders in public baths)

Why not say Fallen Angels? It’s apparently in the Baen Free Library too, so available to any readers who might wish to read.