Grisham's DC street lawyers and tort billionaires, like Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn and expeditions to unusual planetary systems, are literary expressions of the dynamic society inhabited by Grisham and Anderson alike. Rich lawyer's private jets flying from Washington to New York in forty minutes are exact equivalents of van Rijn's hyperdrive ships flying between planetary systems faster than light.
Grisham, like Anderson, describes spectacular wealth but values basic humanity. Anderson additionally values knowledge of the universe, with serious scientific speculation about stellar and planetary evolution. We need fiction about contemporary society and also about our place in the cosmos.
