If you’re looking for an intelligent contemporary science fiction novel that keeps focused on the near-future, you could do far worse than grab a copy of The Night Sessions, the new book from Ken MacLeod.
There’ll be a review here at Futurismic fairly soon, but in the meantime MacLeod‘s publishers Orbit have a brief blog post where he delivers the “elevator pitch” for The Night Sessions:
The Night Sessions is a crime novel set in 2037. It’s also an SF novel that asks the question: what if we finally got fed up with the influence of religion on politics, education, and law, and decided to drive it out of these areas for good?
They’ve also provided a hefty opening section of The Night Sessions as a free-to-read extract. Go read it, then come back and tell us what you think in the comments.
I’ll read the excerpt, but regardless I’ll probably still call the author “The Highlander” 😉
“It’s also an SF novel that asks the question: what if we finally got fed up with the influence of religion on politics, education, and law, and decided to drive it out of these areas for good?”
I can hardly wait until such an enlightened time arrives. Then, finally, we will have worldwide the the excellent system that now governs places like Russia and China.
If you read the book Mike, you’ll see that MacLeod’s well aware that it wouldn’t be a bed of roses by any stretch of the imagination.
That said, Paul, religious hot-buttons, code-words, and thinly veiled prejudices are helping to make the current U.S. presidential campaign a delight, an absolute delight. I wonder what kind of democratic process we could have if we just let people worship (or not) as they chose, minded our own business, and debated policies on their own merits?
File under “fantasy,” I guess.
I confess it’s a document that I’m not as familiar with as I should be, but isn’t that exactly what your constitution suggests?
Precisely…
The problem is that religion is indistinguishable from politics, education, and law as they are practised. The dichotomy is false, as any student of human cognition would realise.
The difference between religion and politics, education and law is that the last three are based upon reason and can be debated freely without causing “offense”. In this way we refine and adapt our political, educational and legal systems. This is why religion has no place in any of these rational systems. It is inherently irrational and hence needs to be a private matter, a private opinion akin to ones preference for white or red wine. Unfortunately religion, through a quirk of history, seems to poke its irrational nose where is does not belong. This is what messes things up and these are the issues addressed in this rather good book.