Circular Motion: Review
Circular Motion by Alex Foster covers the lives of several characters who become involved with a corporation that has revolutionized travel. Pods launched in suborbital arcs enable travel anywhere on the planet in minutes. Viral eateries are mobbed by people from around the world. Incredibly popular, yet somehow affordable for the masses, the travel volume grows tremendously. Unfortunately, the combined force of these takeoffs over time gradually impacts the planet in increasingly deleterious ways. At first, the increasing rotation of Earth only causes small decreases in day length. Eventually the changes become dramatic, disruptive to sleep, and eventually the structural integrity of buildings and more. Instead of stopping travel, the ever-more-powerful corporations paper over the issues and come up with increasingly complex and expensive band-aids over the fundamental problem.
This is an intriguing novel. On many levels, it is an effective critique of heads-in-the sand responses to environmental crises of our time. It also skewers large corporations which, instead of taking responsibility for societal harms, seek to gaslight their way out of them, even coming up with expensive, self-serving solutions. Unfortunately the characters in the novel sometimes didn't inspire empathy. Further, I found it unbelievable that the countries of the world didn't come together and insist that the companies causing the central harms didn't stop their destructive actions, no matter how profitable. Hopefully the author doesn't turn out to be prophetic.
Rating:
- Recommend? Only for pessimistic dystopian fans
- Buy as a gift? No
Last modified on 1 Feb 2026 by AO
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