Orrin: ever read scifi/fantasy by Jack Vance? IMHO he has an incredible knack of evoking a very rich background through just a few throw-away lines. I also greatly like his usage of the English language. But to be honest his characters tend to be one dimensional.

I haven't--is there one you recommend?

OJ:

Do you know if you get credit if I click through but put the book on the wish list and purchase it later? I don't like buying books in onesies.

Rick:

No clue--the Other Brother is the financier.

Send your address & I'll send you my review copy.

Just on the surface, the theme does strike me as the "Rising Sun" of its decade, though less alarmist in its way by setting the foundation of the story on more cataclysmic events than what Crichton did with his "We're losing our position as No. 1" theme, in which the threat was on a more here and now level than an altered civilization set almost two generations in the future (Michael's done better lately by sounding the alarm about alarmists, as opposed to being one himself).

Which is what makes State of Fear so funny.

I read the first chapter, and found it somewhat amusing, but ultimately unbelieveable, and not very well thought out.

Part of the problem is that the book imagines instantaneous conversion to Islam by the majority of the American population north of the Mason-Dixon, and that's just not how it's historically worked.

If you read the work of Richard Bulliet, one of the first scholars to attempt to apply quantitative methodology to the question of historic conversion-to-Islam rates, what you realize is that the process of converting a population to a new religion takes many, many decades.

In fact, it essentially takes 200 years to reach 85% conversion of the population, and there are always hold outs. (Like the Copts in Egypt, who still, after 1300 years of Islam, comprise around 15% of the population.)

Anyway, the book is a load of hooey. Perhaps entertaining hooey, but hooey nonetheless.

H.D.:

Our Great Awakenings happened fairly rapidly though.

We were already Christian, of one sort or another when we Greatly Awoke. No giant conceptual jump needed there.

If Ferrigno had posited a Taliban-style regime that forced conversion he might, possibly, have a point. But it's clear that his imaginary Islamic regime doesn't compel conversion, as there are still plenty of Catholics wondering around. In fact there are Catholic cops, suggesting that Christians are trusted enough to be employed by the governement.

This means that conversion to Islam in future America will likely follow historic trends, meaning it's going to take a century or more to reach a majority Muslim population.

Mass conversions of populations, either forced or voluntary, are incredibly difficult to bring about. Christian Rome/Byzantium was still suppressing pagans three hundred years after Constantine, and the Spanish Inquisition was still chasing crypto-jews into the 19th century.

In short, there won't be any mass abultions at the Super Bowl in 2040.

H.D.:

Ah, but note that he doesn't propose a future in which the majority becomes Muslim. The Red States remain Christian and Blue State Catholicism is still doing okay. Rather, as the Bluer portions of the country become ever more European in their social pathologies the natural puritanical impulse in the American character gets diverted into Islam.

It is though certainly more plausible that Evangelicals will be successful here in the States.

More on Jack Vance: http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/JackVance. I'd recommend any of: Tales of the Dying Earth (4 book omnibus, fantasy), the Lyonesse trilogy (fantasy), Cadwal trilogy (SF)

Vance is good. I like the Dying Earth stories, and the Big Planet stories.

All of this forgets the Evangelicals in the Air Force, from whence our Franco would come to save us.

This wasn't the same Bulliet who said after the first WTC bombing;(re Kramer's Sandstorm) that Moslem bombers weren't the problem; our reaction to them was. Seeing how they conquered Spain in
the 8th Century, occupying for the better part
of 7 centuries; I'm not so confident, it wouldn't
take so long.

But what really happened on that May 19?

I'm getting really tired of sharing my birthday with this negative stuff. Ho Chi Minh was born on that date, and meanwhile we had the May 19th Liberation Army, so-named in honor both of Ho and Malcolm X (born on that date in Omaha, which is freaky).

Now it's the date of some fictional Islamic takeover. Oh goody.

My worry, based on many of his earlier posts, is that OJ would actually like to see a future US where the Blue States went Islamic. After all, it would take care of those pesky secularists and allow plenty of opportunities for witchburning.

Yep, that's the same Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia.

I divide Bulliet's work into two mutually exclusive parts. The first part is the very solid work he's done in Medieval Islamic History, and the second part is the polemical pronouncements he's made about current events.

He's very good on the history, very bad on the current events.

But that dichotomy--good on history, bad on current events-- is not unusual among historians of all stripes, and it's why I try not to claim any special authority for myself about the Modern Middle East, even though I know Arabic very well, have taught many specialized courses on Islamic history, and have published in the field.

Happily, for this conversation, conversion to Islam in Spain is actually something I know quite a bit about, as the topic of my dissertation was the Mozarabs, the Christians who didn't convert to Islam, but did become Arabized. That's why I think I can say with some authority that it would take longer to convert Americans to Islam than Ferrigno allows in his fictional world.

Of course, the flip side is that given enough time, two or three centuries, 85 to 95% would be converted.

Papaya:

Now you come close to the point. The Judeo-Christian US isn't likely to convert. Our religion is the strong horse. But what of a secular Europe which believes in nothing and is beginning to have serious social breakdown? Islam is certainly preferable to relativism.

HD:

But what of mere version, rather than conversion?

given that in the book two of our cities are nuked, why wasn't our response more widespread ? why didn't we transport all the muslims out of the country, in response ?

There are video-taped confessions of Mossad agents admitting they did it and nuked Mecca to try and foment just that kind of response.

It's much more likely that this country will simultaneously make soccer the national sport, switch to the metric system, make Spanish the national language and elect Hillary Clinton as President.

Aieee! Raoul, my eyes, my eyes.

Matt,

I would almost trade you birthdays. I share a birthday with LBJ and that really chaps me. Almost any other president except for James Earl Carter would be better than that one.

People in the past didn't have the internet and instant communications, so we can't really extrapolate from history about future mass religious conversions.

Matt, since you can't change when you were born, it's up to you to make May 19th Matt Murphy Day!

Matt and Dick:

At least your birthdays match those of real people, unflattering though they may be. I, however, have the same birthday as Sailor Moon. That's not something you should willingly tell anyone.

The book isn't about how the US would realistically convert to Islam. The timeline, as mentioned, is way too short. It's purpose is a thought experiment to show what the US would be like if it did become Islamic. You couldn't just set it nowadays, so some sort of future timeline is needed. But it couldn't be too much ahead as other imagined future developments might take away the emphasis on the impact of Islam. Even the catalyst for Islamic conversion is unlikely, but that's besides the point. Such flaws may not make the book a great novel, but they allow the story to be told.