The Execution Channel (Hardcover)

by Ken MacLeod (Author) "THE day it happened Travis drove north..." (more)
Key Phrases: soldier blogs, beam weapon, peace camp, Mad Jack, Maxine Smith, James Travis (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With an adroit combination of paranoid spy thriller tricks and SF gadgetry, MacLeod (Learning the World) depicts a near future that may or may not be our own, when 9/11 and the Iraq war were followed by war with Iran, a flu pandemic and terrorist attacks, and the West teeters on the brink of an all-out nuclear exchange. James Travis, a Scottish software engineer whose hatred for the U.S. has driven him to spy for France, and his daughter, Roisin, a young peace activist, have both witnessed horrendous acts of terrorism, most recently the apparent nuclear bombing of an airbase in Scotland. Nothing is what it seems, however. Government agents use the Internet to spread sophisticated disinformation, but are still perfectly willing to fall back on torture when necessary. Meanwhile, the Execution Channel, a rogue media outlet, broadcasts actual footage of various murders and executions 24-7. Dizzying plot twists and a variety of fascinating, believable technological breakthroughs make this perhaps MacLeod's most compulsively readable novel to date. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In a post-9/11 world just around the corner, attacks on American soil have been followed in horrific succession by a flu pandemic, war against Iran, and an escalating wave of executions throughout the world that are televised daily on a pirate channel. Now what is apparently a tactical nuclear weapon has been detonated on an American-occupied air base in Scotland. While conducting spying operations for French intelligence, British citizen James Travis immediately becomes a terror suspect, as does his daughter, peace activist Roisin, because of carrying illicit photos of the weapon before it exploded. A multilayered story line alternates Travis' efforts to evade UK authorities, Roisin's capture and interrogation, and a propaganda war between a clandestine disinformation team and a notorious Internet blogger seeking the truth hidden in a spiderweb of spin. A master of politically charged sf, MacLeod channels our contemporary preoccupation with terrorism into an engulfing stream of espionage and international intrigue. Although the occasional sf trope may baffle genre outsiders, McLeod's speculative thriller ought to grab political junkies and spy fiction buffs as well as his sf fans. Hays, Carl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765313324
• ISBN-13: 978-0765313324
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #405,141 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arise, ye oppressed masses!, July 18, 2007

By	Ivo J. Steijn (Greater Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Okay, let me start this review by noting that there were some things I did NOT like about this novel. The "execution channel" itself - a TV channel that broadcasts random execution scenes - seems like a plot device that is needed for one punch to the reader's stomach and then discarded. It makes clear how brutal the world depicted in the novel is, but we get that, thank you. The novel also depressed the heck out of me for days.

It's a depressing story. The world has gone to the dogs, and lies are weapons of mass distraction that the governments use to obscure their dirty work. When a series of terrorist attacks cripples Britain after a nuclear detonation over a Scottisch airbase, the lies are so thick on the ground you never quite know if the terrorists are Al-Qaeda, someone pretending to be Al-Qaeda, someone run by Al-Qaeda, or all of the above. It's our world as it is today, but worse. And yes, it can get worse. Easily.

I'll tell you what this novel is not. It's not preachy; it's indignant. Important difference. It's also not leftie Bush-bashing. It's an angry novel about people being afraid of their government, rather than the other way around.

It made me angry. It's also MacLeod's angriest novel since "The Star Fraction" and I, for one, welcome the return of that anger, that justified distaste at the state of the world. I've enjoyed all his novels inbetween that first one and this, his latest one, but they were popcorn compared to the more substantial fare offered here.

It's a great novel. It should make you angry too.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Like MacLeod's other stuff, hoped for better, January 8, 2008

By	C. Stutts (DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I agree with the reviewer who stated the Execution Channel itself is just a throwaway plot device. Specifically, it reveals to the public that the British government has just tortured to death a serving member of its own armed forces under suspicion of being involved in a nuclear explosion on British soil. The novel extrapolates the current "War on Terror" ("Terror Won") into the near future, and the torture is an obvious extrapolation of both Gitmo/CIA secret prison procedures and Britain's own legal response to 9/11. The author unfortunately spends only about one paragraph on one character's thoughts about the transition from 20th Cent. trial by jury to 21 Cent. secret torture chambers in the US & UK, and it is a well written section on a chilling and scary notion. Very topical, don't you think, considering how Gitmo, waterboarding, & US citizen Jose Pedilla's treatment all seem at odds with the Bill of Rights? The author could have written the entire damn novel about how the British and US governments regress to barbarism in the face of terrorism in his scenario, and it would have been relevant. The author could also have spent more time explaining to a US audience _why_ his characters are protesting full-time the US Air Force presence on British soil. Maybe it goes without saying to a Brit, but over here you gotta explain it a bit. Instead, we get alt.conspiracy "false-flag" talk and Communist spindizzies. Communists? J. Edgar Hoover wouldn't give a damn about Commies during our current Arab adventure. Why does the author?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Has some good aspects, but mostly uninspiring, December 18, 2007

By	Peter McCluskey (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The style of this book is better than that of the other books I've read by MacLeod, but not good enough for the style alone to be sufficient reason to read it.
I was disappointed that the substance was not very thought provoking. Unlike the typical MacLeod novel, it is set in a society too similar to ours to stretch our imaginations much, and sufficiently less pleasant to be somewhat depressing.
Much of the book is commentary on the current "war on terror". I agree with a lot of that commentary, but only a few aspects of the commentary have much value.
The most important way in which this novel stands out is that it portrays most characters as people who expect to be the kind of leaders that conspiracy theorists imagine the world to be run by, but regularly end up as more realistic people whose battle plans don't survive contact with the apparent enemy. And there's a good deal of realistic "fog of war" type uncertainty over who the enemy is.
MacLeod deserves a good deal of credit for avoiding a number of biases that make typical novels popular but unrealistic, such as making the protagonists better than human. Unfortunately, the results confirm that this kind of realism interferes with the enjoyability of novels.