Reddit reviews The Peace War (Peace War (1))

marooned in realtime and the peace war are pretty cool !

Vinge has a series of earth novels (his space novels are the common "super hard scifi" people trot out).

http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0812536363 and http://www.amazon.com/The-Peace-War-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0765308835 and http://www.amazon.com/Marooned-Realtime-Peace-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0765308843/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

(Those are all functionally a series, with strongly connected characters and stuff believe it or not)

Looks cool, I'll check it out this weekend when I get a WP7 phone. I don't suppose your inspiration was the fictional game of Celest from Vernor Vinge's The Peace War? Looks similar:

>"Tellman initialized the Celest board--to level nine, Rosas noticed. The kid studied the setup with a calculating look. Tellman's display was a flat one, showing a hypothetical solar system as seen from above the plane of rotation. The three planets were small disks of light moving around the primary. Their size gave a clue to mass; the precise values appeared near the bottom of the display. Departure and arrival planets moved in visibly eccentric orbits, the departure planet at one rev every five seconds--fast enough so precession was clearly occurring. Between it and the destination planet moved a third world, also in an eccentric orbit. Rosas grimaced. No doubt the only reason Tellman left the problem coplanar was that he didn't have a holo display for his Celest. Mike had never seen anyone without a symbiotic processor play the departure/destination version of Celest at level nine. The timer on the display showed that the player--the kid--had ten seconds to launch his rocket and try to make it to the destination. From the fuel display, Rosas was certain that there was not enough energy available to make the flight in a direct orbit. A cushion shot on top of everything else!"

There's a trilogy by Vernor Vinge that would be appropriate:

• The Peace War (Amazon)
  
• The Ungoverned (Free to read online)
  
• Marooned in Realtime (Amazon)
  
  The Peace War is a good book, and the heroes are essentially Agorists - the Tinkers, who practice science illegally and sell their products on a black market.
  
  The Ungoverned is one of my favorite stories, ever. It's about an Anarcho-Capitalist society's interaction with a state.
  
  I've not read Marooned in Realtime, but it's the conclusion of the series and I have no doubt it's as good as the others.
  
  Finally, the links to Amazon above are affiliate links. If someone does happen to buy things through them, I promise I'll use the money to buy more Bitcoins :)