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Book 20: "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald
Monday, April 6th, 2009 12:05'What is going on here?'Mr Nandha demands as he walks through the scrum of police, Ministry warrant card held high.
'Sir, one of the factory workers panicked and ran out into the alley, straight under,' says a police sergeant. 'He was shouting about a djinn; how the djinn was in the factory and was going to get all of them.'
You call it djinn, Mr Nandha thinks, scanning the site. I call it meme. Non-material replicators; jokes, rumours, customs, nursery rhymes. Mind-viruses. Gods demons, djinns, superstitions. The thing inside the factory is no supernatural creature, no spirit of flame, but it is certainly a non-material replicator.
Set in 2047 in an India that has fragmented to separate states just 100 years after gaining independence, this story is told from the point of view of about a dozen very different people. But who or what is manipulating them all? Could it be N.K. Jivanjee, leader of a Hindu fundamentalist group that threatens to destabilise the state of Bharat? Or perhaps a mysterious company called Odeco, which has fingers in a lot of very interesting pies?
( Another quotation containing massive spoilers: )
The way that Mr Nandhu's security programs are displayed as avatars of the Hindu Gods really reminded me of David Brin's novel "Earth", as did the multiple viewpoints and the environmental theme, with water-shortages in some of the Indian states caused by the damming of the River Ganges upstream, and Bengal's plan to change the climate by towing an iceberg all the way from the Arctic.
I wonder why they didn't bring the iceberg from the Antarctic. Surely it would have been a shorter and more direct journey than towing it from Arctic Canada, all the way down the Atlantic, round Africa and across the Indian Ocean (or round South America and across the Pacific if they went the other way). I can only think that they would have been hampered by unfavourable winds and currents.
Nottingham Round the World Reading Challenge
INDIA / VARANASI
'Sir, one of the factory workers panicked and ran out into the alley, straight under,' says a police sergeant. 'He was shouting about a djinn; how the djinn was in the factory and was going to get all of them.'
You call it djinn, Mr Nandha thinks, scanning the site. I call it meme. Non-material replicators; jokes, rumours, customs, nursery rhymes. Mind-viruses. Gods demons, djinns, superstitions. The thing inside the factory is no supernatural creature, no spirit of flame, but it is certainly a non-material replicator.
Set in 2047 in an India that has fragmented to separate states just 100 years after gaining independence, this story is told from the point of view of about a dozen very different people. But who or what is manipulating them all? Could it be N.K. Jivanjee, leader of a Hindu fundamentalist group that threatens to destabilise the state of Bharat? Or perhaps a mysterious company called Odeco, which has fingers in a lot of very interesting pies?
( Another quotation containing massive spoilers: )
The way that Mr Nandhu's security programs are displayed as avatars of the Hindu Gods really reminded me of David Brin's novel "Earth", as did the multiple viewpoints and the environmental theme, with water-shortages in some of the Indian states caused by the damming of the River Ganges upstream, and Bengal's plan to change the climate by towing an iceberg all the way from the Arctic.
I wonder why they didn't bring the iceberg from the Antarctic. Surely it would have been a shorter and more direct journey than towing it from Arctic Canada, all the way down the Atlantic, round Africa and across the Indian Ocean (or round South America and across the Pacific if they went the other way). I can only think that they would have been hampered by unfavourable winds and currents.
INDIA / VARANASI
