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Nocturne is a tidally locked, synchronously rotating planet in close tow to its companion sun. It was colonized in two waves -- an initial expedition of scientists and a subsequent one of pioneers (both the product of generation ships from Earth), who settled on Nocturne's terminator, the narrow rim between perpetual sunlight and freezing darkness. Largely forgotten by Earth, Nocturne has created a highly centralized society whose structure resembles the bureaucracy of a vast corporation, with divisions and departments, a powerful CEO (a.k.a. the elected head of the highest of Nocturne's three governing councils), and a pronounced status differential between the equivalent of blue-collar workers (such as the staff of the Agriculture department, who produce all of Nocturne's food) and those who perform more abstract or theoretical tasks (such as the employees of the Aptitude department, who slot people into appropriate jobs). Over time, this culture has begun to outgrow its setting. Two separate factions in the government, the expansionists and the resourcists, advocate pushing settlement outward -- though they have very different ideas of how to do so. They are opposed by the status quo faction, which doesn't believe expansion is politically or economically feasible.

As often happens, social differences coincide with geography. Jefferson and its residential district, Grosvenor, are the seat of government, housing the more prestigious departments and divisions. Agriculture is based in Kaettegut, a large landmass across the bay, while mining and manufacturing take place in the Back, located on the dark side of the terminator. White-collar Jeffersonians/Grosvenorians look down on blue-collar Kaettegutans and the workers of the Back, who over time have evolved distinctive cultural variations. Yet, as in most class systems, a potent fear lies at the foundation of social prejudice, for Jefferson/Grosvenor could not exist without Kaettegut's food or the Back's factories. Awareness of this interdependence, and resentment of it, stitches a thread of suspicion through interactions at all levels of society -- though in general, the mistrust is implicit rather than expressed.

But that's about to change, with the suddenness of natural disaster. An explosion damages one of Kaettegut's food storage units, injuring several members of an audit team from Jefferson, including its leader, Jenning Crote. Accident? Sabotage? As the media speculates, Chauncey Benner, Agriculture's department head -- and thus the de facto governor of Kaettegut -- tries to uncover the truth, an effort complicated by Jefferson's suspicion of all things Kaettegutan, and the disloyalty of some of her key staff. Meanwhile, in Jefferson, the questions surrounding the explosion bring the differences between the three political parties into sharp relief, and pose frightening questions: have the needs of Nocturnian society evolved beyond the capacity of the existing social system to meet them? Have the system's intrinsic inequities wrought divisions much deeper than anyone realized? As alliances shift at the top of the power structure, and tension builds among ordinary Nocturnians, Jenning Crote struggles to maintain her influence and position, in part by forging an uneasy alliance with Chauncey Benner. And Graham and Kellan, two young Kaettegutan office workers, find themselves swept up into the middle of the political upheaval, pawns in a battle they don't really understand.

Like Ursula K. Le Guin in The Dispossessed, Jus Neuce isn't concerned only with telling a tale of people and events, but with painting a portrait of a society that's fundamentally unlike our own. This she does with impressive depth and consistency. Nocturne, a sort of corporation-without-walls whose rules and protocols are just odd enough to be alien and just recognizable enough to make sense, feels both genuinely unfamiliar and completely authentic. Also like Le Guin, Neuce is interested in exploring the philosophical and moral dilemmas that arise from putting social theory into practice. Though embodying very different ideals from Le Guin's Anarres, Nocturne too is an artificial, planned society, in which the needs of the individual are subordinate to the requirements of the whole, and the individual ignores or opposes those requirements at his or her peril. Again like Anarres, the pressures of the environment and the reality of human nature have caused this social construct to evolve away from the original ideal, often in ways that those living in the society don't consciously recognize. No matter how meticulous the original plan, no matter how faithfully it's put into action, plan and practice inevitably diverge, for such is the unpredictability of human need and human nature. This pivotal understanding is articulated, late in the book, by a character whose political maneuverings have resulted in an unexpected outcome:

He had wanted order, order for the glory of humanity, but without humans gumming it up. Humanity in the abstract. He had been wrong. The humans gumming it up weren't the process, they were the destination. The glory of humanity, right there, in all its self-interest and faults: what truly made them, as a race, unique.

Victoria Strauss is a novelist, and a lifelong reader of fantasy and science fiction. Her most recent fantasy novel, The Burning Land, is available from HarperCollins Eos. For more information, visit her website.