“The Execution Channel“

by Ken MacLeod

Format: Paperback, 370 pages.

Publisher: Orbit 2007.

Ken MacLeod is one of the most popular and respected (at least in my house) writers of science fiction around. His latest novel “The Night Sessions” is pure SF and you can find out more about it here or here. I have always been intrigued by Ken’s politics, which have been the basis for many of his works, and the subject of frequent blogs (see here). I was intrigued, therefore, when Ken published “The Execution Channel” which to all intents is actually a political/techno thriller and a very good one at that.

Set in an alternative now, where Al Gore beat Dubia and consequently the current mess of world politics we find ourselves in is considerably worse. Now that’s enough to get a lot of people’s backs up, the insinuation that anybody could have done things worse than Bush is a strong statement but MacLeod explains the decisions and compromises which Gore would have had to make, and speculates scarily on the potential outcomes. No spoilers here, as usual, but the book is frighteningly real, both in terms of it’s vision of the disasters that befell Gore’s policies but also its relationship to real world events (e.g. Iran) which are still developing now.

So it’s a scary unsettled world into which we are dropped to observe the lives of the Travis family. James is a software engineer, Roisin (his daughter) is a peace activist and Alec (his son) is serving with the British army in Kazakhstan. It soon gets even scarier as Roisin witnesses what appears to be a nuclear explosion at the Rosyth naval base just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. Given surveillance fears and big brother style monitoring, the Travis family are able to keep in contact using some clever spy techniques and along with blogger Mark Dark attempt to find out what is going on. All the time various governments and black ops units are trying to catch the lot of them and the Execution Channel is on screen to remind them of the possible consequences.

Now Its not possible to explain much more of the plot without spoilers, suffice to say this is one of the most complex, clever and spectacularly interwoven plots I have read since I put down Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. It takes some effort to keep up with the constant movement of information and disinformation but it’s fascinating stuff and written really well. What could have been a dry, political treatise  becomes a cutting edge thriller. MacLeod makes his points forcefully but never at the expense of the story. And so it goes with twist and counter twist, spy v counter spy, nations v nations until we reach a climax (of sorts).

The end of the novel is the final twist and believe me it’s more twisty than a sack full of Chinese gymnasts, you will either love it or hate it, unless you are me (which I hope for your sake you are not) in which case you will read it in full jaw dropped silence thinking “what just happened?” and make occasional wibble noises.

To my mind this is no more Science Fiction than the latest edition of “Hello” but I don’t mind, sure call it speculative fiction but don’t pigeonhole it into a single genre. This book deserves to be read widely by all those with a voting system and expresses political views with the sort of subtlety that Michael Moore could only dream about, you might not agree with these views but you must surely believe that something has to be done to stop this alternative reality becoming an actuality (and it seems like it could still happen).

Well done to Ken MacLeod for having the guts to try something new, whether this will become a regular thing (like his countryman, a certain Mr I. Banks) we will need to wait and see, but I for one, think there is plenty of room for intelligent well written, edgy thrillers, regardless of what genre you pigeonhole them into and there are few thrillers as edgy and well written as this one.

Rating 4 out of 5