It’s All In The Execution
The shortlist for the 2007 BSFA Awards has recently been announced, and we’re absolutely delighted to see Ken MacLeod‘s wonderful The Execution Channel in the running for the Best Novel.
Fighting has spread across the Middle East and Central Asia to the borders of China. In the US, refugees from climate-change disaster subsist in FEMA camps. Images of official executions circulate on the Internet like al Qaeda videos. State agencies sponsor conspiracy theories as cover-ups. As the troops of the last superpower stand astride the last of the oil, China and Russia aren’t the only states considering their options: certain nations of Old Europe are quietly preparing for the worst.
The war on terror is over. Terror won.
As with all of Ken MacLeod’s novels, The Execution Channel has garnered great critical acclaim. The Times calls it ‘Politically engaged, speculative fiction at its finest, with a conclusion that’s absolutely mind-blowing’; noted critic Paul Kincaid, writing for Strange Horizons, says ‘A very good book, perhaps the best Ken MacLeod has written to date . . . an extraordinary novel’; while SFX sums it up as ‘Jaw-droppingly audacious’.
The BSFA Awards will be presented on 22nd March at Orbital, this year’s Eastercon, where a very smartly attired paperback edition will be available for your reading pleasure!
Hmm. . . ‘Orbital’, eh? Dare we see that as an omen . . . ?