A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in the middle of reading Dan Simmons' most recent sci-fi epic, Ilium/Olympus. I ended up being pretty disappointed with it, actually, for many reasons that I won't go into here (but a lot of them are detailed in various critical reviews posted at Amazon).
The thing is (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!), there's an intriguing sub-plot of the book that involves the "Global Caliphate" of the future importing (from some other time/space continuum) a race of enigmatic self-replicating creatures and programming them to kill all of the Jews on the planet. And that's only one of many dastardly deeds attempted by the GC. There's a kicker quote that goes like this:
“The rubicon [virus that has wiped out 97% of humankind] was indeed the one great contribution to science that the Islamic world gave the rest of the world in a two-thousand-year stretch of darkness.â€
That line (unsurprisingly) pissed some people off, but perhaps it didn't get enough of their attention. Now, almost a year after the publication of Olympos, comes Dan Simmons' "April Message," posted on his web site, which is a story in which a time traveler comes back from the not-so-distant future to warn the author about the impending global Jihad. It's brought a lot of people who never heard of Simmons before to his website (and apparently caused some server problems in the process.) And a lot of folks, both old fans and curiousity seekers, are surprised and perplexed, wondering what it is he's trying to say, exactly (see the various current threads at Dan Simmons' web forums).
It really isn't that complicated, folks.
It would appear that Simmons' 'Message' character is supposed to be quite a bit more naive about a number of things than Simmons himself. It's a literary device, I guess, but for some perhaps too confusing. The story is not an April Fool's joke, and it certainly isn't presented as idle speculation. It's a continuation of a theme that Simmons has obviously been working on for a while. And by the time he had sketched out Illium/Olympus (at least), long before New Year's Eve 2005, the real Dan Simmons was obviously already well-attuned to his "time traveler's" message.
I don't pretend to have a clue as to what the three last words were. But in Ilium there were three words that Simmons put into the screeching mouths of his voynix assassins (in Jerusalem, no less) that sent a chill down my spine -- especially since by some strange quirk of fate I happened to be reading them as my plane was waiting for take-off last month at Ben Gurion Airport:
Itbah al-Yahud!
(If you need a translation of the idiom, Google it.)
Both Simmons' 'Message' and the anti-Jihadi slant of his book have, naturally, attracted some negative attention. The forums at his website are predictably filled with clueless drivel about the peaceful intentions of Islam and the war-mongering of George W. Bush. Here's a particularly idiotic sample from one dunce who calls himself "Frunk."
A comprehensive strategy for dealing with Islamic terrorism is a complicated policy, but here are the outlines:
1. Get out of Iraq ASAP.
2. Apologize to the Islamic world for past transgressions.
3. Impose a settlement upon Israel that restores the 1967 borders. Assist in the construction of a security wall between Israel and Palestine. Internationalize Jerusalem.
4. Strengthen port security.
I believe that these measures will reduce the threat of Islamic terrorism to tolerable levels.
Well, there ya go.
"Frunk," as it turns out, has never read anything else Simmons ever wrote. Nevertheless, I imagine it's for people like "Frunk" that Simmons took the time to craft his 'Message.' It's not getting through, but there's obviously more to come. If at first you don't succeed . . .
Kudos to Simmons for trying.
