The Execution Channel

I'm burning through books this week trying to come up with convincing candidates for Hugo nominations.  Fortunately I'm blessed with a pile of quick reads.  Last night's novel was The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod (6/07, Tor, editor: Patrick Nielsen Hayden).  I liked it overall and recommend it, but I was left faintly dissatisfied by the ending. 

I've avoided giving away plot details in the following, but there is one minor worldbuilding spoiler in the first paragraph of the "On the fence" section.

What I liked
Cory Doctorow's back-cover blurb coins the term "blogothriller" to describe this book.  That's exactly what it is, and I loved the depiction of a near-future of information warfare played out on the net.  Hackers, leakers, news bloggers, paranoid conspiracy theorists, and squads of disinformation-specialists-for-hire all push to create or untangle competing pictures of reality.  I can already see the outlines of this world in today's blogosphere; we may already be further into it than I realize.

Less lovable but still plausible enough to give me chills was the extrapolation of current policy to casual acceptance of torture ("stress") and rendition.  Well-done, but depressing.

I was intrigued by the television channel of the title, which mysteriously displays footage of executions (pointedly including accidental deaths from "stress" interrogations) around the world. 

The thriller aspect of the book was well-executed (heh).  I always enjoy the tricks of spycraft, and the unraveling of the central mystery was satisfyingly paced through most of the book.

On the fence
(SPOILER warning - worldbuilding, not plot, skip this paragraph if hypersensitive)
It's not immediately obvious that this is the future of an alternate history (is there a simpler way to say that?) rather than a direct extrapolation from the present.  MacLeod plays nicely on assumptions (at least in bits of information about events in America) to delay that realization.  I may have missed some parallel UK ones which might have made this obvious earlier in the book.  I was pleased to have been so cleverly led astray but slightly annoyed at the heavy-handed Naderesque angle that there is little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties in general and Gore/Bush-43 in particular.  Part of the intended effect may have been overtaken by current events; having two different President Clintons seems less likely now than when this was written and published.
(SPOILER ends)

Characterization, not much of it.  The major players feel more like collections of characteristics than fully-rounded people.  But cool worldbuilding/extrapolating and the mysteries of the plot carry the story along nicely enough that it doesn't matter too much.  It just makes it a little hard to care about any of the characters except when one's sympathy is forcibly engaged by torture.

What I disliked (but not too strongly)
The ending.  I felt we had a lot of exciting buildup and then a let-down in the resolution.  It was set up properly rather than just tacked on, but somehow still felt a little too abrupt and the technological leap perhaps a little too skiffy.  I can't judge the physics in the book - not enough science background - but their eventual application was a significant enough advance that it just didn't fit well in what felt like a story taking place within the next few years.  The fate of the North Korean leadership at the end was priceless, though I'm not sure the funny-fix was quite what I needed (or quite what was intended). 

I felt the channel of the title was not used enough.  Who would do this and why are among  the most intriguing questions in the book!  I was also puzzled either as to why it was used only in one scene or why it was used in the plot at all - if it was set up just to use as a plot device at that one point, that's a sad waste of a great concept.  It should have either been used more or left as creepy background.  I would also have like a more extensive explanation/resolution of its origins/backers than was given.  I approve of loose ends (reality is like that), but I wanted this one less loose!

The ending didn't spoil the book for me, it just wasn't quite enough.  I was left with solid satisfaction but not intense pleasure at the reading experience.

Fix-it-for-the-paperback nitpick:

"The Leuchars Event - as it was now being called - had been relegated by these fresher disasters, which were already being called attacks." (p. 67)

In my grammatical universe, relegate is a transitive verb.

Overall: I'm not sure this will be on my Hugo ballot, but I do recommend reading it, especially if you hang out in the political blogosphere and want to see where we're probably going.

Comments

[Paul A.]

I've been thinking about the history-diversion thing since I read the book. One point that's occurred to me is that the plot relies on the US administration being competent - they sorted out Iraq, they sorted out Iran, they sorted out the rogue nuke problem (without which the plot would have been much messier)... Maybe MacLeod didn't think his readers would buy, even in a sci-fi novel, the idea that the Shrub Administration was capable of all that.

Come to think of it, MacLeod's guest of honour at a con I'm going to next week. Maybe I'll just ask him what the point was.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Paul:
If you do, please let me know what he says! I didn't dislike the diversion per se (I was even sort of pleased at having my assumptions body-checked mid-book), but I didn't find it really necessary either, and as I said above, the Naderesque idea that any government would have ended up using exactly the same tactics bugged me. Maybe I'm just naive!

The idea of competence necessitating the diversion made me laugh aloud. Good point!

[Paul A.]

Well, I asked him.

If I understand his answer correctly, the idea of setting it in an alternate future was a kind of distancing mechanism, to get around some of the problems of writing near-future SF. (For instance: how much real-world detail do you put in? If you don't put any, the fictional world doesn't come alive; if you do, you risk being overtaken by events - but an alternate future can't be overtaken by real events, because it's travelling a different road.)

He wasn't trying to make any kind of point about Gore; it was just that, once he started looking for a point of historical divergence, the 2000 election presented itself as an obvious candidate, and then the already-settled plot required American history to proceed in a familiar fashion from that point. In real life, he says, he's certain things would have been very different if Gore had won, but he figured it was a reasonable thing to ask people to accept for the sake of the story.

Two other things he points about the book that might interest you:

1. The bit about the Korean leadership was indeed intentionally funny, and that chapter was one of his favorite parts of the book to write.

2. He said in the career-summary part of his Guest of Honour speech that the book was carefully seeded with subtle hints about the origin and destiny of the Execution Channel that were supposed to come together in a satisfying way in the mind of the reader, but apparently he was too subtle because as far as he knows nobody has ever got it. (I should clarify that he said this in a "well, I goofed" way, not a "you're all stupid" way.) He didn't tell us what the hints would have added up to, and it didn't seem right to ask.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Paul:
Very interesting, and thanks for reporting back!

I'm glad he didn't explain the Execution Channel elements in his speech - I will probably reread the book and will have a fun time looking for the clues and trying to figure it out.