With this novel Ken Macleod turns his authorial eye to our own days for the first time but there’s no let up in quality. While his previous books have been set hundreds or more years in the future this takes place sometime in the next decade; with it he hopes to “kick-start … the hitherto non-existent genre of New Cosy Catastrophe.”
The Execution Channel has a tagline of “The War on Terror is over. Terror won.” You won’t be surprised, of course, that a socialist from way back such as Macleod turns that sentiment on its head from what an American reader might expect and the characters whose behavior is most despicable are employees of the UK and American governments. The story starts, literally, with a big bang: some pro-peace activists monitoring an American air base in Scotland photograph the mysterious arrival of a plane, the strange large thing it unloads in an out of the way hanger and the immediate detonation of same.
Initially thought to be an atomic bomb smuggled in by Al Qaeada, with the government avoiding, even clamping down, on any mention of that strange large device and spreading various disinformation memes, the powers that be are not happy those activists smuggled out photos. Fortunately between the many public cameras and satellite coverage the counter-terrorism staff identify almost all the packages posted and the shutterbugs.
Which also puts them on the trail of James, one of the activist’s dads, an IT consultant and French spy, who happens to possibly be responsible for one or both of two additional infrastructure attacks. His son, ironically, is serving in the British army in the never ending Middle East conflict, which he actively blogs about.
The titular channel transmits exactly what the name says: 24 hours a day video of people dying. No one (whose talking) knows just who controls it or how some of the footage makes it online but Macleod’s future includes a post-crash, ultra-religious America and a China fighting to control its western territory (John Robb’s 4GW seems an influence). The climax is set off when a key character dies at the hands of his, er, interrogators, distributed globally on the Execution Channel.
Macleod’s future is scarily possible and not just the horrific level of military action, which I’ve barely touched on here. I also like the way he includes blogs. Besides Travis fil, another major character (who otherwise has no explicit interaction with any other character) writes a popular government conspiracy blog and another set who contract to the US Department of Homeland Security to write fake blogs and undertake other astroturfing activity.
What really happened and why was not easy for me to see until Macleod did the big reveal. I really enjoy books that do this.
recommended
BillSaysThis 