SF isn't about prediction, but ...

[coalescent]

In his heart, Hadamard was uncomfortable with Maclachlan: his protectionism, his fundamentalist Christianity. But Hadamard had to concede that Maclachlan was hitting popular nerves among the electorate. It was, he thought, entirely possible that Maclachlan would indeed become the next President, just as the polls said. And if that happened, Jake Hadamard would be going to him for a new job. (p.132)

[...]

At last she got into the Space Center, by Security Gate 2 off US3. There was an orderly demonstration here, mounted by a creationist group from Texas called the Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Here was Xavier McLachlan himself on a soapbox, all jug ears and ten gallon hat, steadily denouncing the manned space program for the sake of the cameras. (p.202)

[...]

Hadamard was in Washington during the inauguration of Xavier Mclachlan, after his wafer-thin win in the 2008 election.

Maclachlan called it a 'liberation of the capital'.

Armed militia bands came in from Idaho and Arizona and Oklahoma and Montana, to fire off black-powder salutes to the nationalist-populist who promised to repeal all gun control laws. In the crowd, Hadamard saw a couple of Ku Klux Klan costumes, a sight he thought had gone into an unholy past. Come to that, there was a rumour that a former Klan leader was being made ready to become a future White House chief of staff. And in his speech Maclachlan appealed to the people to end what he called the 'Israeli occupation of Congress' ...

And so on.

As soon as Maclachlan lifted his hand from the Bible, US peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Africa started to board their planes to leave. Foreign aid stopped. The UN was being thrown out of New York, and there was a rumour that Maclachlan was planning some military adventure to take back the canal from Panama.

Army engineers--set in place during the handover from the last Administration--started to build a wall, two thousand miles of it, along the Mexican border, to exclude illegal immigrants. While it was being built, troops brought home from peacekeeping abroad were operating a shoot-to-kill policy.

There was chaos in the financial markets. Maclachlan had withdrawn the US from the North American Free Trade treaty, from the World Trade Organisation, from GATT. Reviews of the country's membership of the World Bank and the IMF had started--arms of an incipient world government, Maclachlan said, designed to let in the Russians. He had raised tariffs--ten percent against Japan, fifty percent against the Chinese--and world trade collapsed.

The Chinese, particularly, screamed. And so Maclachlan sent the Seventh Fleet to a new station just off the coast of Taiwan.

Meanwhile all the strategic arms treaties with Russia were torn up, as Maclachlan ordered his technicians to dig out the blueprints for Reagan's old dream of SDI. In fact, Maclachlan wanted to go further. He was inviting ideas for what he called his 'da Vinci brains trust.' The press was full of schemes for fantastic new weapons: smart remote sensors; dream mines that could shoot at passing traffic; smart armour that would use explosive tiles to deflect incoming projectiles; maybe even an electrical battlefield in which electricity-propelled shells would be zapped in by low-flying aircraft.

And back home, Maclachlan had cut off any remaining programs which benefitted blacks and other minorities, and any funding that appeared to support abortion, which had been made illegal in any form.

Xavier Maclachlan was a busy man, and he was fulfilling his campaign promises. (pp284-5)

[...]

"They're calling this display 'Testimony'. They want a contribution from each of us, the Moonwalkers, the story of our spiritual revelations on the Moon, or in space. For the guys who died, like Irwin and Tom Lamb, they're assembling VR sims using old interview clips and autobiography stuff."

"You won't cooperate?"

"Like hell I will. Jake, believe me, it just wasn't like that. It was about getting through the checklist, and not screwing up. No damn hand of God helped me wipe my butt in one-sixth G ..."

Hadamard shrugged. "I guess this is what you get if you outsource your visitors' centre to the Foundation for Thought and Ethics."

"That bunch of fucking creationists?"

"They have buddies in the White House now, Marcus. Look, you just have to go with the flow on this one. It's a sign of the times. Maybe we're entering a more spiritual age."

"Come on, Jake. You don't believe that. This is all just Maclachlan and his tub-thumping fundamentalism. We're going to get dragged back to the fucking Dark Ages if we go on like this. You know they're teaching creationism again in schools?"

"I know." Hadamard sighed. In fact there was more, probably unknown to White: for instance NASA press releases were already being 'vetted' by a monitor appointed by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, for any anti-religious 'bias'; the archive of images garnered from the Hubble space telescope and other satellite observatories was being 'puirged' of any images which might directly support theories like the Big Bang, in a manner which was not conducive to a 'reasoned response' from proponents of alternative 'theories'... (p.290)

The quotes above come from Stephen Baxter's novel Titan (synopsis). It was written in 1997. It's far from being Baxter's best novel; there are elements of it that I like, but the pacing is badly judged, and much of the plot is improbable.

The background has stayed with me, though, and every so often in the last four years I've caught myself thinking about it. It does, after all, feature a manned shuttle disaster in the early pages, and an increasingly significant Chinese space program ... and a right-wing, fundamentalist, anti-intellectual Christian from Texas in the White House. Maclachlan gets into office for different reasons than Bush has done, and thankfully his presidency still reads like a nightmarish caricature. Unfortunately, it now seems slightly less of an exaggeration than it did seven years ago.

Comments

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

The part that surprised me a little when I dug out my copy recently was that the Shuttle was Columbia.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I'm reading 'coalescent' at the moment (among about 5 other books, so it's slow going). I've long thought there is a parallel between the decline of the Roman Empire and the march of the right. Not that Rome was all liberal and nicey-nice, but that the withdrawal of taxation and support for infrastructure was initially met with selfish glee by rich merchants and landowners, who were then astonished to find that their economy collapsed and the society fell to pieces. I think Baxter does make that parallel fairly explicit. Did you name your lj persona after that book? You must have done.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Did you name your lj persona after that book? You must have done.

Sort of. It is a deliberate reference, but I picked the name in early 2003--before I ever read the book, or knew anything about it besides the title. Nine months before it was published, in fact. It just sounded cool. ;-)

(Which is not to say that I don't like Coalescent--I do. But the journal name was meant as a general rather than specific reference to Baxter's work.)