Newt Gingrich dry-humping a dead Philip K. Dick

... the post title is the shortest review I could write for this novel that actually imparts any kind of information about it...

I saw the newest Dan Simmons novel - Flashback - at the local bookseller a few weeks ago + pickt it up for my wife ( + me, too, eventually). We're both long-time fans of his, back to Song of Kali which was incredibly disturbing + uncomfortable (great debut horror novel), so I thought she'd be thrilled, esp since the cover blurb promised a dystopic future-shocker...

And it does read like Newt Gingrich grudge-fuckt Philip K. Dick's remains til a novel poppt out nine months later. The PKD-flavored future here includes mandatory armed service (with our conscripted teens rented out to India + Japan to fight their expansionist wars overseas), violent teenage gangs (who then relive their thug lives thru the ubiquitous memory-drug flashback), a Global Caliphate that has engulfed the Middle East + Europe (+ hit Israel with a multiple nuke attack) + has a major foothold in the US, new Jewish concentration camps (see, there's this Global Caliphate...), an active Mexican reconquista movement to take back the Southwest from the US, an independent (+ evidently rather white) Republic of Texas... So far, this is par for the course for a depressing + paranoid PKD-styled view of the possible near-future, but for the inclusion of Islam (PKD was a bit too focused on his personal, paranoiac spin on Christianity to spend much time on Islam back then + he ain't writing anything new since he died...). Well, that and the pervasive + disappointing Islamophobia + Obama-bashing. There's literally a line about how we trusted our young new president back at the beginning of this century + he led us down this road. There are also jabs ( + worse) at global warming, health-care reform + more hot-button topics of our day.

So our hero, former cop Nick Bottom, is a flashback junkie who's abandoned his life (+ son) to mourning his wife's death in the throes of flashback, which allows users to relive their memories, til he's hired by a Japanese political-bigwig to solve a 6-year-old murder that he was the original investigating detective back when his life was OK, which adventure leads him to details about the death of his wife, a chance to reunite with his son (whose own adventures are pretty interesting) + an opportunity to discover some heavy truths about this brave new world he's living in. And it's an interesting world, except for the overbearing editorializing about how Obama's gonna lead us into the downward spiral that destroys the US as a world-power.

I really wanted to enjoy Flashback, but the politics that pervade this novel just continued to distract from what would have otherwise been a great read...I would've included a slightly-backhanded recommendation of this book for fans of the political Right, but we all know that most of those folks can't read ( + the ones who can just don't, cuz Fox News is on...).

To sum up: fuck your politics, dude... just write!