Weblogsky: The Zenith Angle and the WELL

The Zenith Angle and the WELL

I'm leading a discussion with Bruce Sterling on the WELL, focusing mainly on his new novel The Zenith Angle, a technothriller set in the wake of 9/11. We had a bit of a slow start because it coincided with a trip to Zurich, where Bruce is spending a few days teaching media and industrial design at the European Graduate School. Other faculty include DJ Spooky, Sandy Stone, and John Waters. Must be a helluva place.

Zenith Angle is not a futurist piece; it begins with 9/11 and explores how our construction of reality changed that day.

Five years after 9/11, the USA is a deeply polarized society with alienated allies and practically zero diplomatic credibility. The least whisper from the Al Qaeda camp is pored over and valorized; they're crazy, but they're successful. The emptyhanded USA with its witch-hunts for nonexistent WMD looks simply delusional. You'd be hard put to find a Mexican, Canadian or Briton with the least belief that the Bush Administration means anything it says.

This enormous setback came because of the loss of two and one-fifth buildings. We really need a better word for this struggle than "terrorism." People in the US were once pretty frightened about Communist subversives, but very few Americans are genuinely frightened about Al Qaeda. We just resent them furiously, we lost all sense of perspective. Americans aren't terrorized by Al Qaeda, but in 9/11, Americans got jolted into an unthinking revanchist rage that revealed the American state's deep political weakness.

jon posted this at 8:22 AM
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