Sunday Book Review

Michael Berube has a good review of the strangely gripping piece of science fiction published by the New York Times today. I’m not really a big fan of the genre, but I quite liked it, and I’m sure my co-bloggers will be very keen:

There’s a weird new science-fiction piece by Ron Suskind in today’s New York Times Magazine. In it, a Messianic madman takes over the United States in a disputed election after a hapless time traveller accidentally crushes a butterfly ballot while hunting for dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period. Unable to distinguish Sweden from Switzerland (insisting, to one stunned congressman, that Sweden is “the neutral one” that “has no army”), the madman gradually consolidates his power, banishes all those who doubt or question him, and dispatches “senior advisers” to inform the populace that he can bend all of spacetime to his will…

Basically, it’s Alex Proyas’s film Dark City rewritten as a political thriller. Derivative, but compelling. The stuff about the madman’s crazed, cultish followers is good too, though a little overdone. Throwing in a stock character who says “I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down” and “God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time” is heavy-handed, I think. But overall, as a depiction of an alternate universe inhabited by the insane, it’s pretty interesting stuff from an outlet that doesn’t usually publish much in the genre.

Whew, what an imagination on that Suskind guy! Anyway, this definitely reminds me that I need to give Ursuala LeGuin a shot…