The web between the worlds

From the back cover of Ace paperback May 1984:

Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why Darius Regulo, "The King of Space," had to have Rob for the most spectacular construction project in the history of the human race...

Thus begins a breakthrough novel, written by the President of the American Astronautical Society about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between earth and space, a ladder that mankind will climb to the stars?

Fantasy? The concept has been in the literature of physics for nearly two decades, but only a writer with the scientific background of Charles Sheffield could bring the idea to life.