I'm sure this book was considered to be breathtakingly visionary back in 1985 when it was published, but today the book's extrapolations of missile defence systems and "inevitable" war when USSR falls behind in the technology race and can't catch up just seem quaint, robbing the book of its most striking impact. What's left is fairly standard semi-hard science fiction, with boring characters, "inventive" aliens (is there anything more boring...) and the usual Bear phenomena of massive scale undertakings.