Ammonite

You will miss so much, in reading this book, if you get hung up on the fact that there are no male characters in this book. I know that I have read Science Fiction stories that had no female participants and didn't blink; no males? Yet Ammonite takes the idea of the amoral galactic "Company" and dives into the human side, in one very specific set of circumstances: a virus limits the usefulness of a planet. Not examined quite so directly is the idea of people as expendable in the Company's pursuit of exploitable resources; what type of resources is never explained, it remains an abstract concept incidental to the story.

On the other hand, this is a story of the intersection of space-going technology and primitive culture, the savages being far more able to survive on this planet than the folks with all the fun gadgets. We get to pause and wonder what is really important to daily life and to making a living and spending your lifetime in something worthwhile. If this novel were new rather than having been first published 20 years ago I would have thought it a sustainability fable. Perhaps it was just before its time.