On the SF Crowsnest Ewan Angus talks to one of my very favourite writers of contemporary science fiction, Ken MacLeod, about his latest novel, the fascinating Night Sessions, which combines an SF take on the post 9-11 world and War on Terror with the classic Edinburgh detective novel and a look at religious fundamentalism (no, not just Islamic, Ken’s too good a thinker and writer to fall into lazy traps), as well as a little about his next novel, The Restoration Game:
“The idea of calling the events following September 11th and what were living through now and no doubt will live through more of in the future, is that in sometime twenty odd years hence this might be looked back on as the ‘Faith Wars’. It was part of the set up of the book, the idea being that both the United Kingdom and the United States might come out of these wars having lost them essentially to the other rising powers- China and Russia.”
“It doesn’t however come to an all nuclear exchange but they do lose the war and could blame it on religious lobbying in one kind or another. And that is one of the factors of the events that some of the characters call the Second Enlightenment whilst others call it the Great Rejection. That being just as the First Enlightenment put forward the separation of the church from the state, constitutionally established in the US but doesn’t quite exist in the UK .”
The paperback edition of Night Sessions came out just recently from the good folks at Orbit and I chose the hardback as one of my books of the year in 2008, its a highly compelling piece of mature science fiction and, as with all of Ken’s books, deals with themes of morality and politics in an interesting way; if you’re looking for a good novel to slip into your carry-on luggage to read on holiday I highly recommend it.
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