andygates

There's nothing worse than one of these, except for "my bicycle is making a noise", but this itch has been tickling the inside of my skull for months now. 

There's a novel.  I think it's hard SF -- I'd have read it back as a kid in the 80s, along with my steady diet of Clarke and Asimov (travelling library, you rocked!).  Anyway, this novel has an antagonist who is a bit of a Kingpin character, and he's a card-carrying archetypal Huge Black Guy.  Over the course of the story it turns out that every one of his physical traits is ... shall we say chemically enhanced: his physique, his voice, even his skin colour (he is both biggest and blackest, all part of his mystique) is all injectable, and as the SHTF (in space? LEO? Rama?) and he's denied it, he comes apart like an orchid out of the hothouse.  

Damned if I can remember the story or the character, but it's been nagging at me.  Any ideas, O nerds of the Internet?

You know how, when you create a world, you come up with tech and then your characters or your players do things with it that you never thought they would?  I have that feeling about this truly awesome tactical use of in-atmosphere FTL from Galactica.  I mean, just... wow.  Beats the usual cheeseball "you can't hyperspace near a gravity well" schtick until it's black and blue and weeping for it's Mum.  I may just have to buy the DVDs.

I've been re-reading Excession at the same time (the Sleeper Service's shenanigans make me smile) and I've got Forge of God lined up.  It's Big Ship Week in your super, soaraway Sun.  It'll be Ringworld by Christmas...