Oath of Fealty

Prometheus Award Hall of Fame finalist and one of the 100 best science fiction novels from 1949-1984 as selected by critic David Pringle.

This classic of libertarian science fiction explores how the citizens of a near-future Los Angeles wrestle with poverty, privacy, and technology when faced with a choice between corporate feudalism and government dysfunction.

In a dystopian future, where pollution, overpopulation, and violence overrun Los Angeles streets, a Utopia flourishes. Todos Santos is thousand-foot-high arcology, a self-contained single-structured city that rises above the festering skyscrapers to offer its privileged residents the perfect blend of technology and security in exchange for their oath of allegiance and vigilance.

But is this orderly city elevating humanity, or shackling it? There are those who feel the constant video surveillance oppressive, rather than inclusive, or that the city is monopolizing hard-earned resources, and taking money away from the poorer Angelinos.

Connected through neural implants to MILLIE - the AI that runs all of Todos Santos' systems - Art Bonner and Barbara Churchwood work with a team of dedicated staff to protect the city against the FROMATEs ("Friends of Man and the Earth"), who are a group of anti-technology zealots dedicated to destroying everything they have built. When three youths break into the city, to see if they can exploit its weaknesses, the repercussions of their actions threaten to bring one of humanities most ambitious projects to its knees...

Published in 1981, Oath of Fealty is one of several works by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, including The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and Lucifer's Hammer (1977).

About the Author
Niven, Larry: - Larry Niven is an American science fiction writer. His
best-known works are Ringworld (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and
Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and Lucifer's
Hammer (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him the
2015 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is
primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical
physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure
stories. His fantasy includes the series The Magic Goes Away, rational fantasy
dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource.He is a great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon
who drilled the first successful well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field in
1892, and also was subsequently implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. He
briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn
University in Topeka, Kansas in 1962. He also completed a year of graduate work
in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. On September 6,
1969, he married Marilyn Wisowaty, a science fiction and Regency literature
fan.
Niven has written scripts for three science fiction
television series: the original Land of the Lost series; Star Trek: The
Animated Series, for which he adapted his early story "The Soft
Weapon"; and The Outer Limits, for which he adapted his story
"Inconstant Moon" into an episode of the same name.
He has also written for the DC Comics character Green
Lantern, including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as
universal entropy and the redshift effect.
Pournelle, Jerry: - Jerry Pournelle was an American polymath: scientist in the
area of operations research and human factors research, science fiction writer,
essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s and early
1970s, he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his
writing career. In an obituary in Gizmodo, he is described as "a tireless
ambassador for the future."

His hard science fiction writing received multiple awards.
In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators
including Larry Niven. Pournelle served a term as President of the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer
industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early
1990s, he contributed to the computer magazine Byte, writing from the viewpoint
of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, "We do this stuff so you
won't have to." He created one of the first blogs, entitled "Chaos
Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology,
space technology, and science fiction.

He held paleoconservative political views, which were
sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens'
Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of the Reagan
Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what
would become the Strategic Defense Initiative.