Amongst all the heavyweight intellectuals on this list, gadfly lightweight moi wants to introduce aa lighter tone. Well sort of :-) I haven't so enjoyed a good read for some time as I have since discovering Ken Macleod's writing a few weeks back. Macleod is the purveyor of fine speculative/science fiction. And a man who knows - and takes seriously - his politics (with a most impressive grasp of the microfactions of the left, and a thorough grasp of libertarianism, especially in its real-free free market forms). A Scot (based in Fifeshire I think) he adds an interesting Celtic tang to the SF mix, which is refreshing for those of us this side of the Atlantic who do tend to get a bit bored with the N.American fixations of the genre (and the often banal political content that follows from this, Sterling and Gibson and Robinson honourably excepted, as per the older LeGuin). And Macleod's futureworld is so frighteningly believable. In particular his description of the US domination of the new world order (mark 2) with the use of proxy third world armed troops on the ground and extensive implementation of deathlists by same (a simple extrapolation of historic US foreign policy, which can be characterised as the politics of assasination terrorism of populaces) is close to my personal dystopian viewpoints. A nice touch is the use of the Star Wars weaponry to enforce this hegemony, which is the real reason (in my uninformed opinion, and Generalissimo Bush's telling the rest of the world to eff off over CO2 confirms that prejudice) for the incoming coup leaders adoption of space military technology. Not often that fictional writers do such real-feeling (frighteningly real feeling) work, and detail so many elements of future economic activities and patterns under possible scenarios. Highly recommended. A sequence of books sort of have an order, and background is filled in on later books in the sequence (which are nevertheless spaced out - pun unintended - over millenia of elapsed time). Star Fraction (read this one) Stone Canal (and this) Cassini Division (not yet) Sky Road (on shelf but I'm holding off until I get my hands on Cassini :-) I'm not sure the latest one, Cosmonaut's Keep, is in the same historical timeline. Enjoy :-)
