SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

When most authors write about a future Earth most commonly it's either a Western-based civilization, a Far East Asian-based civilization or no civilization at all.

Here the author has gone down a different road and based his series in a Middle Eastern world. From little remarks we get a glimpse of the wider world - the US and Europe split into small city-states, kingdoms or religious states, though we don't really get a sense of the rest of the Muslim world outside the Budayeen.

What do you think of this choice? The author wasn't Middle Eastern, he was American and based a lot of the imagery on New Orleans. I would like to know why he chose the location and religious setting he did.

Do you think it added an additional element to the story or detracted from it or do you think it doesn't matter at all?

I think it helped to establish Audran as a kind of middle man, a member of the society but an outsider at the same time. A native but born of mixed parents, hinting at a religious past that he has now mostly dropped.

What do you think?

I think he had a good grasp on a 'stereotypical' Middle Eastern civilization. I don't know much about the culture but it was how I would of imagined it. It was a refreshing change, thats for sure

Usually the middle east bores me with it's sad, but unrelenting stories of religious war. Thus I tend to stay away from books that feature the middle east as well.

But I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It made more more interested in the culture than I normally am.

I am also glad that this future view wasn't that of a western country. That's also getting to be a rather old, overused and boring plot point.

When we cut through the cultural stereotypes of the societies we write into SF or future fiction, be they Middle Eastern, of the West, or even of other planets, we tend to find that beneath the 'skin' the social environments all evolve from the same type of social
miasma induced by a dictatorial religion of some type.

As in the case of our own present day world, as technology expands, the world grows smaller, as does the differences between cultures and governing orders (including religions.)

It is refreshing that Audran is able to sit the on the edge of a society where he can be seen to belong, yet the enlightenment he is gaining is wider than any stereotyped order, because it challenges all such orders which are except for religious and geological environment, are all the same in their genesis and ultimately their demise.

Thus, although it may stimulate the interest of some readers to have an 'interesting' cultural background to the tale, it matters not that the process of enlightenment takes place in a Muslim or Christian environment, or indeed a different environment of another planet or dimension.

For me the exciting possibilities are the novel storylines of future enlightenment and rejection of social systems and religions, being taken back in time, to husband the development of early man, in a sort of further'fictionalization' of von Danakin's themes of ancient astronauts and alien visitation.

That this author sets his environment in Islam is interesting and will no doubt be an attraction to some readers, but in the final analysis the environment is less important than how well the storyline is developed and the entent to which it is resolved.

Of course the Sci-Fi setting allows for much flexibility in the "accuracy" of his future Middle Eastern setting, but even so it was really refreshing to see this setting. I am not very far yet, so I am unsure of the thematic nuances, but I am really digging the etiquette of Muslim negotiations. Nice touch, that.

Brad, it was those little touches that really did it for me. Effinger could have just said things about how hot it was, and that everyone was wearing tunics and headscarves, and that there were palm trees on the other side of the street, and left his worldbuilding at that. instead, we get into the head of someone who knows that you have to stop at the corner shop for a little gift, say a basket of fruit, before an impromptu meeting at the big boss' house.

ultimately, I was way more engaged by the world and the characters than the plot, so this setting really worked for me.