The year is 2108, and things aren't going so well for Team Humanity. Earth is so overcrowded that people live in hive-like concrete cubicles called Public Residence Clusters and subsist on reconstituted soy. Things aren't much better 30 light years away, in Earth's run-down Outer Colonies. No wonder the hero of Marko Kloos' first novel, Terms of Enlistment, joins the space-going military to escape those terrestrial slums. By Kloos' second book, Lines of Departure, his protagonist is half a decade into a career that includes vicious interstellar conflict with an indestructible alien species. Think Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers with maybe a dash of James Cameron's Aliens. On March 19,2015, Kloos, a former noncommissioned officer in the German military who now lives in rural New Hampshire, sat down at his computer in his tiny study. Angles of Attack, the third book in his series, was a month away from release; he was on deadline with the fourth. But instead of writing, Kloos found himself staring at an email from the organizers of science fiction's preeminent awards: "We are very pleased to tell you that Lines of Departure is one of the 2015 Hugo finalists in the Best Novel category."
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机译：今年是2108年，对于Team Humanity来说进展并不顺利。地球人满为患，人们生活在被称为“公共住宅群”的蜂巢状混凝土小隔间里，生活在再生大豆中。在地球破烂不堪的外殖民地，距离30光年之遥，情况并没有好得多。难怪马可·克鲁斯（Marko Kloos）的第一部长篇小说《入伍条件》（Entryment of Enlistment）会加入太空军团，以逃离那些地面贫民窟。根据克鲁斯的第二本书《离去的线》，他的主人公进入职业生涯已经有五年了，其中包括与不可灭绝的外来物种的恶性星际冲突。想想罗伯特·海因莱因（Robert Heinlein）的《星际飞船》（Starship Troopers）和詹姆斯·卡梅隆（James Cameron）的《外星人》（Aliens）。 2015年3月19日，克卢斯（Kloos）在他的小书房里坐着电脑，他是德军前士官，现在住在新罕布什尔州农村。他的系列中的第三本书，《攻击的角度》距离发行还有一个月的时间。他在第四节的最后期限。但是，克鲁斯没有写作，而是盯着科幻小说杰出组织者的一封电子邮件：“我们很高兴地告诉您，《离去》是2015年雨果奖最佳小说类入围者之一。”
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