My review of "Triggers" by Robert J. Sawyer has just been published at sciencefiction.com. The book is an acceptable, if disposal, recreational read marred only by the impeccably-liberal convictions expressed by the author.
I remain immature in reviewing these kinds of books. I am driven to a kind of fury at the smug, self-righteous, morally-superior, doubt-free expression of what in reality are biased, inaccurate, trite and rather stupid, priggish, conventional and overpoweringly-boring bien-pensant received wisdom. There, I said it!
However, such fulminations in a review are pointless so in the end I revisit the text and remove these self-indulgences. Then the piece gets published :-).
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"President Seth Jerrison, the Republican successor to Obama, is giving a speech from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The former History Professor from Columbia is presiding over a nation still at war: Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have been devastated by a new kind of bomb with the destructive power of a nuke. The perpetrators? Al-Sajada, an offshoot from the now-defunct al-Qaeda.
Jerrison is just getting into his stride – ‘… we shall not rest until our planet is free of the scourge of terrorism …’ – when that old nightmare makes its appearance: an assassin opens fire, mortally wounding the President..."
Continue reading at sciencefiction.com.