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.