FASCISM!

Did I get your attention? Well, yeah, that's the main drive, or drive AGAINST, in this novel, but it's no cookie-cutter SF adventure. It's actually rather rich, mostly named as a cyberpunk title coming out of 1985 and revamped to include more updated cultural references to music and even Ipads as of 2012 and repubbed. Do I mind? Hell no. It seems pretty excellent and timely and who am I to say that the author can't change his mind about a few things?

Most authors can't get away with that and too many fans might get upset, wrongly or rightly. Frankenstein, anyone?

Back to this. All the characters in this are getting established to run through the whole trilogy as one single novel, so even tho there's a great blowout by the end of this one, it's not meant to end with one big battle.

Battle? Yep, this is the build-up of a fascist regime and we follow the fascinating peeps who either die or survive the rise of it. This includes the colony off Earth as well as the Earth, itself, with all the racist elements that the Us vs Them mentality you can think of. Religion, neo-nazis, corporate aggrandizement, overpopulation, disappearing resources... you name it.

The rest of us are feeling the downfall of society. I did say this was timely. And the careful attention to detail and world-building, not to mention the depth of characterization, really makes this something special.

Yes, it's a novel of civil war on a global and extra-global scale, with all the misfits banding together. There's one particular scene I loved featuring a certain old-school rocker, totally pre-punk, which made my day.

Am I impressed? Yes. Absolutely. The sprawling nature of settings, how deeply the situations are novelized makes this more like 3 or 4 books in one by sheer weight of detail. And it's often funny and personally relatable. I love my music and obviously, the author does, too. :)

My only quibble is with the somewhat one-dimensional nature of the fascist movement. Most of it could be taken right out of a pop-culture diary without much exploration into the deeper roots of the movement, including the kinds of deeper frustrations that might give rise to it. We're introduced to it as a fact of life and we're in the middle of it.

Perhaps this is true to life, but nothing is ever QUITE this simple. I'm amazed at the scope the novel provides, but I am slightly underwhelmed by the direct application of the fascism. Alas.
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My reaction to reading this novel in 2002. Spoilers follow.

This is the third time I've read this, the first in the A Song Called Youth Trilogy. I understand that Shirley recently revised them, but I haven't read the new edition.

It's probably been about ten years since I last read this book, and this time I was struck by what a product of its time it is.

To be sure, Shirley is, as I thought on my first readings of this, a skillful writer combining action, political intrigue, espionage, rock and roll, and lots of fairly plausible future tech. He comes close to attempting what some have identified as the most difficult to depict world -- the future of fifty years hence. Here, though, he only attempts a setting 35 years into the future.

I don't think Shirley was trying to be a prophet, but I think he intended this trilogy to be taken seriously in its political and social speculations. The Second Alliance villains are very much of the 1980s when everyone was concerned about an allegedly growing movement of radical "right wing" violence as evidenced by the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord or the Order. In liberal circles, there was a great deal of concern about the allegedly growing baleful influence of conservative Christianity and, particularly, about its allegedly virulent offspring, Christian Identity (never that large of a movement in reality).

Here, the Second Alliance is a conglomeration of televangelists Randy Crandall, textbook fascism, and notions of racial purity. (Though the inner circle of the SA are actually cryptopagans who worship racial purity more than an idea of Christ.) Shirley does pin down evangelical Christianity's growth in Latin America, but proves to be one of many wrong about the growth of a radical, racist right. He didn't forsee a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa. Many of the SA are exiled Afrikaners. His Soviet Union is rightly worried about western influence causing unrest, but he, like so many others, imagined a Soviet Union that could militarily and economically survive till 2020 and go to war in Europe, a country able to keep Poland and others in its orbit. He overestimated technical progress in space (envisioning a L-5 sort of colony) and manipulating memories and personality via manipulation of neurotransmitters and brain chemistry -- specific memories can be erased or retrieved. (Shirley was a proto-cyberpunk before William Gibson and the interest in brain chemistry and the media was a mark of early cyberpunk.)

He imagines a world of great media saturation but not widespread computer use or, especially, the internet. The character of Smoke shows an interest in media theorizing that Gibson and Bruce Sterling exhibit, but it's often just the restatement of old ideas about propaganda. I don't know what Shirley's politics are, but they seem, here, to be of the wishy-washy left-of-moderate Democrat type from the 1980s -- the Soviets are roughly equivalent to us in morality, feel legitimate threats to their security (particularly the US missile defense put up in the future -- another 80s' element). It was also quite amusing to see Shirley's future where Jews and Palestinians combine to fight the SA, albeit covertly under Steinfeld. The mohawk fashions of the future are so 80s' punk too.

The ending, with ex-rocker Rickenharp (Shirley's an ex-punk musician) saving some New Resistance comrades by distracting SA troops with a concert atop the Arc de Triomphe, was melodramatic and, I think, weakened the general sought for (and accomplished) realistic tone of the novel. Of course, Worldtalk is another evil cyberpunk corporation that tries to be a surrogate (albeit exploitive and abusive) family to its employees. I also found the notion of America suffering from the Dissolve Depression but still fighting a war (and a fair amount of consumerism going on) rather unrealistic. (The Dissolve Depression is an electromagnetic pulse bomb set off by terrorists wiping out computer records.)

Of course, like almost all people, Shirley did not forsee the Islam world's general hatred of the US, preferring to write off criticisms of Moslems as racists. (Shirley specifically mentions Le Pen (Le Pen's grandson is around, in this future, continuing his ideas) and the Moral Majority as the predecessors to the Second Alliance. The early life of Swenson aka Stisky seems to point to an immorality of US actions against Communism in Nicaragua. ( )